“This ability to make things work for ourselves has become, in the 2010 world of instant gratification, the norm. The problem with the status quo, no matter how comfortable it is, is that it will undoubtedly be challenged (which is a good thing). There will be a time when, no matter how hard you try, you can’t make it work. You just can’t figure it out, though you feel like you should be able to. I call this moment the anomaly, and it is the most important moment of your life.”
(this is a sample from rob’s contribution to my upcoming book, the ah ha moment)
rob - a close friend i met while living in San Francisco - is easily one of the most intelligent people I know. some of my most fascinating and deep convos have been with this guy. what’s most intriguing about our relationship is that despite our seemingly antithetical personalities, we always find common ground in our beliefs, perspectives and overall approach to life. what rob will define as hard, i’ll define as life-enhancing. but in the end, these are just arbitrary terms (or emotions) seeking to define an inexplicable series of events. whether it’s falling in love, losing someone you love, getting married, raising a child, starting a company/job, losing a company/job, traveling the world and everything in between… the battles, wins and emotions involved are difficult to ascertain until personally experienced.
what matters in the end is not trying to define what something is… what matters is going out and discovering what that something means to you. life is about discovering what is and what could be… it’s about doing to find out (rather than planning to avoid)… it’s about living life in a continous state of revolution and forward progress.
“Think about it, we can only be the best people we can be. The best friends, lovers, entrepreneurs, teachers. That’s it. Its up to other people to form their own opinions and reactions to what we are doing that we feel is right … I still piss people off, and there are people that still are disappointed in my words and actions, but I’m not. And that is what matters.”
— the amazing, inspiring and refreshingly authentic, micah baldwin
micah is one of of the most honest, real and genuine people i’ve ever met in my life. he reminds me to always embrace who I am, regardless of what other people think. i feel lucky having micah in my life. i also feel incredibly lucky to have his contribution in my upcoming book, the ah ha moment.
“The difference between a spark of genius and an idle daydream is what you do with the idea.
We hear a lot about the power of ideas, the power of inspiration. Truth is, the perfect idea counts for little by itself. What matters is execution: what you do yourself, what you share with others, what you finish before you go to bed every night.”
- Jeffrey Tang, The Art of Great Things
just a snippet of the contribution he made to my upcoming book, the ah ha moment. thrilled to have him involved!
from deep to thoughtful to witty: how to create inspiring work & the ‘ah ha’ moment
soon i’ll be publishing a book on HOW to create inspiring, admirable work and I’m calling it ‘the ah ha moment.’ it’s about living passionately and ACTING on your ambitions. more deets on the book here.
i’m so damn impressed with the stories that I decided to share just a quote or two of a few stories every day until the book is published.
from deep to thoughtful to witty, here are the stories of kyle, david and andy.
enjoy :)
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But behind every apparent paradox lies a number of deeper insights. The best question to ask is why you even believe something to begin with.
This is the question that leads to more information, to more connections, and ultimately to more insights.
via kyle s
(i met kyle at big business breakfast at Katz’s Deli while visiting New York in December. we clicked immediately and are pretty much bff now. we often find ourselves pondering the purpose of life and every other philosophical paradigm. it only makes sense that Kyle explores human insights and trends at PSFK.)
—
And I’m sitting there and my breakfast companion is late, so I’m staring out the big front window. With the rain and darkness and my reflection in the window, I for a second see the older me staring back, though I don’t really take any notice at the time.
I wake up the following morning thinking about him though, not realizing that two days from now I will call up my travel agent friend and buy a one way ticket to a part of the world I’ve never been. And I’ll do that because I’ll suddenly remember the older me sitting staring back at me in the window, and see him deep in thought in that distant future moment, and it will occur to me that I owe it to my future self to take care of the “What ifs”; something my dad said to me not long after his own father died. “What I’ve figured out is that life is about getting rid of the ‘what ifs..?’”. One down, so many to go.
(david is a lovely Australian musician who currently lives in Toronto. we haven’t met in person yet but I plan on seeing him in new york in the coming months. i came across david after finding his brilliant presentation Digital Strangelove, “or how I learned to top worrying and love the internet” which has over 40K views. check it out.)
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Amber asked for a contribution describing my experience with “a-ha” moments, a request I gladly accepted. Eager to start writing about the foundation for “a-ha” moments - I mimicked the behaviors of creative people I observed daily at countless coffee shops in Chicago. The moleskin and multi-colored post-it note purchases were simple, but I struggled to compile a creative playlist optimized for writing (Freddie Hubbard and Wayne Shorter were the winners if you were wondering). I naively assumed, “This combination creates brilliance! If I channel just a small portion, I will produce amazingly insightful writing about inspiring insight.” Unfortunately, my “proven” approach yielded little more than ten unfinished thoughts discussing everything from the irrelevance of time to my personal mandate for rebellious behavior in daily life. I effectively created a poorly written manifesto on how to over-think a simple request…
(the witty and charming andy knows how to push the envelope more than most people i know. ex-bickering buddy / cubemate at a digital agency in Chicago, andy recently founded ScaleWell which provides startups with the capital to reach milestones and gain traction.)
