Rand’s novel about the greatest architect in history makes a profound point about integrity. Not only in reference to the structures of buildings, but also the hearts of men. 

Roark claimed that an honest building, like an honest man, had to be one piece and one faith; what constituted the life source. And if one small part committed treason to that idea, the thing or the creature was dead. The good, the high and the noble on earth, he said, is only that which has kept its integrity. 

He quickly learns, though, that in practical life, one can’t always be so flawlessly consistent. There’s always the incalculable human element of emotion. 

My heart skipped a beat when I first read this passage. Because consistency was always something that mattered to me. My expectation for myself was to become unified system without internal contradictions or disharmony. 

It didn’t work. Turns out, most of us are an absolute clusterfuck of contradictions. We’re all just one big series of overlapping and conflicting impulses. And no matter how hard we try to scrub away those layers of inconsistency, another one always resurfaces. 

But this contradiction doesn’t mean we’re hypocrites, it means we’re growing, moving, imperfect human beings taking new shape and form. 

Therefore:

Let us stretch our hearts wide enough to embrace paradox. 

Let us feel alive in all our contradictions, without trying to put our many selves in neat little categories and patterns. 

Let us live multiple life purposes fit together seamlessly into a composite life purpose agenda. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

How are you making sense out of multiple selves that seem at odds with each other?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!

Tune in and subscribe for a little execution in public.

Join our community of innovators, artists and entrepreneurs.

New behaviors can feel weird at first. 

It’s like hiking a trail that has no defined path, tons of stray branches, sharp rocks and spider webs that stick to your face. Blech. 

But the beautiful thing about nature is, it doesn’t need a reminder to never give up. 

Look around. Nature is engaged in an infinite process of creation. It doesn’t need our help, only our patience and trust. 

And so, whatever new behaviors and habits we’re trying to introduce into our lives, just like the path, we must keep walking. Because the more we walk it, the more it will start to smooth out, and the less we will get tripped up along the way. 

And now for a benediction of hope. 

Let us not be in such a hurry to heal. 

Let us trust the tempo of nature’s timing. 

Let us be grateful for steady progress regardless of size or shape. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Do you say yes to what enhances your growth and no to what impedes it? * * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!

Tune in and subscribe for a little execution in public.

Join our community of innovators, artists and entrepreneurs.

The job market tricks us through technology. 

Like when we’re unemployed and we apply for a hundred positions in a single day. Our brain tells us that we have executed a task that should produce a result. 

But in reality, it only took forty minutes of our time. And we never even had to leave the house to do it. It’s not like we hit the streets briefcase in hand. We auto submitted our resume through a bunch of career portals without even reading the job description. 

And that’s the trick. The story we tell ourselves about that magic number of one hundred applications is a false and outdated narrative. Twenty years ago, one hundred apps might have been statistically significant and strategically sufficient for landing a new gig. 

But not anymore. Corporations, technologies, business models, hiring managers, job marketplaces, all of these elements in the career supply chain have been upgraded. Meanwhile, our sense of proportion is still running on an outdated operating system. 

Toffler famously wrote more than fifty years ago that change was avalanching upon our heads and most people were grotesquely unprepared to cope with it. 

Today his insight still applies. The rate of technology has accelerated faster than our constitutions can handle. 

And unless we upgrade our attitudes, beliefs, values, postures and habits accordingly, evolution will flatten us like steamroller crunching over an old, dead animal along the road.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Is your outdated minds deciding in advance what you will see?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!

Tune in and subscribe for a little execution in public.

Join our community of innovators, artists and entrepreneurs.

Were you born with a strong desire to asset your individuality? 

Is it your nature to rebel against the mindless, mainstream conventionality? Do you give your mind license to daydream in some unorthodox directions? Are you someone who is oppositional in nature and moved by chasing freedom? And do you develop hives when your ability to manifest your individuality is thwarted and frustrated by the constraints of society? 

Welcome to the club. You’re my kind of guy. 

But beware. Because there is a dark side to doing you. 

Maisel’s book on creative recovery cautions us that there is risk associated with a creative person’s felt sense of individuality. His research found that for those of us who have a deep desire to be our own person, speak in our own voice and manifest our potential, we are not only susceptible to anxiety and depression and addiction, but we also run the risk of chronically overwhelming everyone we meet with our nonconforming nature. 

When we make everyone around us deal with our idiosyncrasies, it can backfire. It can create resentment and exhaustion and frustration on their end. 

That’s one thing my first job at an advertising agency taught me. Despite my great enthusiasm for the river of goo that oozed out of my brain on a daily basis, most clients were not helped when they were bombarded by a ton of information. 

My avalanche of idiosyncrasies and ideas might have felt like fresh powder to me, but for the general public, it was tough sledding. And as a result, massive amounts of frustration set in. 

It felt like they were preventing me from manifesting my potential. Made me want to drag them across the board room table by their pretensions skinny ties until they lost consciousness. 

But looking back, they were just doing their job. They were just trying not to get fired. 

Meanwhile, my job was to contend with the repercussions of radical individuality. 

Who knew being yourself was so expensive? 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What is the cost of standing in opposition to those who would prevent you from walking your idiosyncratic path?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!

Tune in and subscribe for a little execution in public.

Join our community of innovators, artists and entrepreneurs.

Ries coined his infamous definition of an entrepreneur in beautifully broad terms. He described it as:

Anyone who creates something of value for people, under conditions of extreme uncertainty. 

You don’t have to be a scooter riding, cappuccino drinking, hoodie wearing, french bulldog owning tech bro to be an entrepreneur, or even think like one. Each one of us can cultivate a greater comfort level with uncertainty. 

Because the reality is, in the vast majority of our professional endeavors, there are no directions, there is no map, there ain’t no proof, and there won’t be reassurance that everything will be okay. 

My favorite cartoonist said it best:

The maps were made by the people who went first and didn’t die. 

It’s morbid, but motivational. It reminds me of my first year at a tech startup. One lesson was made crystal clear to me. Human beings have an inherent longing to resolve the burden of life’s ambiguities. It’s deeply uncomfortable to us. To the point that we will either abandon the problem completely, or jump into premature closure to avoid the pain.

But we can’t allow that tendency to muck up our work. When feel that faint vertigo caused by an ambiguity we can’t quite detect, we have to sit with those uncomfortable emotions attached to the uncertainty, like fear and control and trust and unworthiness and hope, knowing that they will pass, knowing that they’re not who we are, and knowing that this isn’t the first time somebody tried to travel without a map. 

Look, many things other than our own will are sustaining us. 

We may as well enjoy the journey and not care whether or when the path will end. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What one thing could you accept to make every part of your journey easier?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!

Tune in and subscribe for a little execution in public.

Join our community of innovators, artists and entrepreneurs.

The madness of the creative process is, your entire sense of time gets warped. 

Because while you’re making something, it takes up your whole life and body and mind. 

But then, when you finally put that thing out into the world, it feels so small. It gets compared to every other thing that’s ever been made. And it lives as just one little tile in an infinite mosaic. Not as the enormous soul shape it was when you first created it. 

Why do our brains play this cruel trick on us? 

Nolan’s masterpiece about dream inception brought this to life on the silver screen. In a dream, he tells us, your mind creates and perceives the world simultaneously. So well, that you don’t feel your brain doing the creating. And so, when you dream, your mind functions more quickly, so time seems to pass more slowly. Five minutes in the real world gives you one hour in the dream world. 

Unfortunately, we can’t remove the teeth from this cruel bite of reality. Once we step out of our dream and into the real world, time warps. Once we give birth to this thing, it never feels as big and special and remarkable as it did during conception. 

And that’s okay. Part of our work as creators is to have agency over joy during the process, but not to harbor expectation around the product. Because at that point, it’s out of our control. 

We must surrender to the infinity of the marketplace, doing our damnedest to take our work on the ride it deserves, but instead of beating ourselves up and cursing the void, we then find our way back to the canvas to start once again. 

Time does march on, and we are part of the parade. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

How is your relationship with time affecting your creative practice?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!

Tune in and subscribe for a little execution in public.

Join our community of innovators, artists and entrepreneurs.

One of the arguments against taking medication is, patients might become dependent on it as their sole source of healing. 

To the point that those medications may divert them from seeking out other solutions. 

Interestingly, my experience was the opposite. When my gastroenterologist first prescribed medication for my chronic stomach pain, he reminded me that the pharmacological path wasn’t a panacea, but it was a good place to start. 

It was a tool for establishing a new baseline that would make it easier to seek out other nonmedicinal strategies for healing in the future. 

The doctor was right. Once my body adjusted to the new meds, instead of resting on my chemical laurels, feelings of deep determination welled up inside of me. And thus began a journey of diligent, systematic effort to find anxiety management techniques that worked for me. 

Therapy, meditation, mindfulness, hypnosis, yoga and support groups, to name a few, became the arsenal of mental health resources that was layered on top of the foundation laid by the medication. 

That way, there was a system in a place. A toolkit that could be whipped out on a moment’s notice to predictably pop myself out of a state of imbalance. 

It reminds me of a great movie about cannibalism. 

After great debate, the starving passengers decide to eat the flesh of their dead companions in order to survive. Canessa, although he shows fear, shame and disgust at the prospect of consuming human meat, shoves the flesh into his mouth and proclaims to his fellow passengers:

I tell you one thing, if I have meat in my belly, I intend to do something. 

Sure enough, he’s motivated to lead the search for a way out of the mountains. And after a twelve day trek, he escapes the mountains and alerts the authorities of the location of his companions. 

That’s what medication did for me. It was the meat in my belly that helped me climb the mountain. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What story are you telling yourself about your pain?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!

Tune in and subscribe for a little execution in public.

Join our community of innovators, artists and entrepreneurs.

The beautiful thing about trees is, they trust without question that their leaves will regrow. 

That’s why they gently let them go when the season comes to an end. Their faith in the wind, the soil, the roots, the sun, the rains, and of course, the passage of time, is what allows future blossoms to come. 

Human beings could learn a thing or two from the trees. Because for many of us, our tendency is to get stuck in an endless cycle of replaying glory days. Traveling in a time machine and patting ourselves on the back, as opposed to courageously shaping a new life worthy of our past successes. 

Or, as my comedian friend likes to say, you don’t actually have to change your life, you just have to find somebody with a lower standard to make you feel good about yourself. 

But the trees remind us to believe in our own power to grow. To let go of our past accomplishments when the time is right. To reinvent ourselves with each new season that comes to pass. 

And it’s nothing personal, either. As they say in recovery, a seed doesn’t betray other seeds when it grows into a flower. 

The good news is; change is taking place everywhere at every moment. It’s not a matter of when, but how. 

Which means we have a choice. We can steer the strong winds of change to match our evolving aspirations and priorities, or we can hold onto the past with angry bite. 

We can get weighed down trying to do the impossible, or we can mindfully attend to the parts of our lives over which we actually have agency. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Does your past success lead to future complacency?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!

Tune in and subscribe for a little execution in public.

Join our community of innovators, artists and entrepreneurs.