by Tara Joyce | Apr 5, 2010 | Cultural Creativity
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“What if we looked at the world as a design project – how might we begin to make it better?” – Bruce Mau
Design is not just aesthetics. It doesn’t exist for business, culture, or nature; business, culture, and nature exist because of it.
It’s not making stuff pretty. Design is solving problems and changing lives. Design is applying your creativity strategically. And because of new technological advances, our increased sharing of knowledge, and our ingenuity, it’s now possible to design everything.
And when I say everything, I mean it. I’m not just talking about your stuff, I’m not just talking about matter. I’m talking about You, your existence, I’m talking about designing meaning.
Design defined.
To design (with a sense of purpose) is to:
- understand what is needed
AND
- satiate that need
It’s really that simple.
Design is You breaking out of old patterns of thinking and behaviour. Design is You being empathetic and conscious to human needs and desires. Your own, and others.
Do it. Design it.
You can design your dream day if you understand what you desire and fulfill it.
You can design your dream business if you understand what you need and quench that need.
You can design your dream website if you understand what you require and execute it.
You can design the meaning of your life. And business. And everything in-between. You have the choice and the talent.
You won’t have to do it alone.
There’s a personal design revolution afoot. Some of us don’t want design done for us. We want it done with us or by us.
We want to use our imagination. We want to apply our creativity strategically.
We’re choosing to design our world like no one else can.
photo by: photographer padawan *(xava du)
by Tara Joyce | Mar 22, 2010 | Cultural Creativity
The biggest assumption each of us makes is to infer that everybody sees life the same way we do. It’s so hard to challenge the expectations we have of others, and accept that they do not think the way we think, feel the way we feel, judge the way we judge, and abuse the way we abuse. They are not us. We can’t even begin to pretend to know how anyone else feels.
This, I think, is why we have a fear of being ourselves around others. We think that everyone will judge us, victimize us, abuse us, and blame us, the same way we do to our Self. We believe we know how others see us. So, before they can have the chance to reject us, we reject our Self, and alter our behaviour.
Our assumptions set us up for suffering, yet we keep on making them, for this is easier than facing our fears, asking questions, and getting the clarification we really need.
photo credit: DerrickT
by Tara Joyce | Mar 17, 2010 | Cultural Creativity
Have you heard of the B-Corp (a for-benefit corporation)? They’re companies who have voluntarily revised their bylaws to include social and ecological benefits in their definition of the shareholder value they deliver.
There’s over two hundred and fifty in Canada and the US today.
Seventh Generation’s one. So is Yale School of Management.
The term was coined as a play on S corporations and C Corporations, two legal corporate structures under U.S. federal tax code. Unlike S and C Corporations, B Corporations have no official tax status, though there are efforts to change that.
by Tara Joyce | Mar 15, 2010 | Innerpreneurship
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For me.
Before I began writing this blog one year and nine months ago, I’d never published a damn thing under my name. My past writing experiences consisted of:
- scratching angrily in my journal
- dreaming up poorly-constructed and never finished Lois & Clark and X-Files fanfiction
AND once I had left the tortured years of teen-dom
- penning mildly clever marketing copy
When I decided to leave corporate marketing, and shape a business around my vision for my life, what I knew definitively was that I wanted to write more. At the time, I really didn’t care how, I just knew I needed to do it.
So, I thought, to practice and to aid in my ability to get client work for Elastic Mind, I would start publicly journaling all that I was learning about building my own business.
The idea, Innerpreneuring, came later.
I’d been brainstorming about my business direction for a month or so when I noticed Geek Gods, Karma Queens, and Innerpreneurs in the Marketing section of the bookstore. I had been hanging out in the Business section of the bookstore a lot, hoping that by osmosis I would be able to calm my fears and shape my business into one that didn’t totally suck.
The word, Innerpreneur, kept calling to me, but the book seemed a bit silly, so I ignored it. I judged the book by it’s cover… and title. Shame on me. Obviously, on one of my trips I finally opened it, read the description of Innerpreneurs, and was completely compelled. Not only did it describe my vision of how my business could bring meaning to my life, it also described the exact group of people I wanted to work with. Eureka!
I’m no fool.
Having worked in Marketing, specifically online Marketing for years, I knew how the game works. When I learned about us, I knew I had found my niche, the group of people that I could create the most value for.
I was still getting clear on what I could do best (at the time I was offering web content consulting) and discovering our group helped me to see that I wasn’t alone in my values or in my views on entrepreneurship, life and everything in-between.
So I theorized that I could create Rise of the Innerpreneur and:
1. Document my business growth and learning
2. Express my Self and provide myself with a place to practice and publish my writing
3. Help other like-minded business owners (and soon-to-bes)
4. Attract my ideal client to my web content writing web consulting strategic coaching and web development business… it’s taken me a little under two years to get clear on what I do best… and I still feel like I’m discovering it.
5. Be a portfolio of my web wizardness
But it was still a gamble.
I didn’t know if you would care – about my business, about my writing, or about Innerpreneuring – but I needed to take the chance, for me. It was what I felt I needed to do, for my happiness, and I trusted that.
But it did seem like a decent bet that there would be at least one other whackjob Innerpreneur out there, like me, and that I could, perhaps, create some value in their life.
Almost two years later, I and my business continue to grow, and it is exciting and frightening to see how my little gamble pays out.
photo by: monkeyc.net
by Tara Joyce | Mar 9, 2010 | Cultural Creativity
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The cult of ‘creativity’.
I’ve had an issue with the word ‘creativity’ for a long time now. It intimidates me.
I feel like ‘creativity’ is put up on a pedestal. You’ve either ‘got it’ or you don’t.
I take issue with the message that some of us are truly creative, but that most of us aren’t.
‘Creativity’ kinda has an attitude.
The stigma around ‘creativity’ leads many of us to feel like we never create anything, for we feel we don’t emulate the high ideals of what ‘creativity’ is. We don’t see our creations as tour de forces, and we don’t think our talent is otherworldly, so we end up seeing ourselves as somehow less than creative.
I know I did for most of my life.
Looking at ‘creativity’ from a less cult-ish perspective.
If we stop narrowly associating ‘creativity’ with the stigma of great art, or with adult education programs like Introduction to Pottery, and look at the reality of creativity, we see that it’s found in every choice we make.
Each of us is creating daily in the medium of experience. Our gestures, our words, our actions, our objects, they are all choices we make that determine our experience.
In every aspect of our lives — the good, the bad and the just plain boring, we have a choice in how we think, act, and feel. And we express our creativity through the choices we make.
Our choices are our art.
Believing that you create your reality requires accepting responsibility for your past, your present and your future experience. It means you aren’t a victim, and that others can’t be blamed for your state. Your choices created the life you have today. It’s an empowering, yet utterly painful and uncomfortable reality.
Yet, to me, it feels far better than giving up my power and leaving ‘creativity’ up to the chosen few to enjoy.
photo credit: Remy Saglier – Doubleray
