Be the prime influencer of your own satisfaction

The vast majority of people define themselves and their worthiness according to the material world and its narrow standards.

They’re so impressionable that their sense of self hangs on the hooks of popular opinion, public approval and professional prestige.

Their esteem is like the stock market, rising and falling in lockstep with the latest success or failure.

And challenge is, when they encounter someone who is the opposite, someone whose sense of self hingers upon their own relationship to the universe at large, they don’t understand it. Don’t trust it. They might even lash out at it. How can you just ignore what the world thinks? Who the hell are you to shine so brightly? What gives you the right to be the prime influencer of your own satisfaction?

Part of our job as creators is procuring inspiration from any and all contexts, irrespective of its contents.

How well do you do that? If you’re grasping for inspiration in your work right now, let me recommend a personal creativity management tool called perceptual democracy.

Think of it as a filter. You treat everything you encounter with fundamental affirmation and radical acceptance. Knowing that your next great idea could come from anywhere.

Forget about agreeing with or even liking what you see. Even if a book, movie, performance or piece of art isn’t your thing, you can still gain energy from it. From the architecture behind it.

This perceptual democracy will deepen your intellectual flexibility and expand your imaginative reservoir.

And prolific work will follow suit.

What genre are you inventing?