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  • #277 Feel the words

    If you know what you want to say but you can’t find the words yet, write without thinking about the words.

    Write while thinking about the feeling.

    Allow yourself to feel it first.

    Feel it fully, then write the words.

    Feel it fully, let stream-of-consciousness words come out..

    Feel it fully, then start sculpting away.

    Keep feeling it, and keep writing about it. Every day. Because sooner or later, feeling the words words will reveal what you want to say.

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    #8 Musenküsse

    klimt-the-kiss-musenkuss
    Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss (1907-1908).

    der Musenkuss (German) The kiss of the Muse

    Creativity becomes much easier if you see it as a game of finding new ways of describing what has always been there.

    Observing, rather than inventing.

    It’s liberating. Because now the game changes from pulling ideas out of thin air to a game of discovery. Observation. Paying attention. Building upon what’s already discovered, then connecting the dots in way nobody else has.

    Most of all: listening, when the muse finally arrives and visits you for a kiss.

    There’s this voice in my mind
    Impossible to ignore
    And yet I fill my head with noise
    Drowning out
    What deep down I know to be true
    Do I even want to admit
    That this song in my heart
    Is not about me
    But about you?

    P.S.: I’ve observed the same principle in language learning (and wrote a book about the consequences of this mindset shift).

    Which begs the question…

    Where else would we do better if we observed a bit more, rather than trying to invent from scratch?

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    #187 Causality on its head

    You don’t have to feel certain to start taking action.

    You take action to start feeling certain.


    You don’t need to be calm to do yoga.

    You do yoga to become calm.


    You don’t need to have a quiet mind to meditate.

    You meditate to cultivate a quiet mind.


    You don’t have to speak Spanish fluently to have a conversation in Spanish.

    You have a conversation in Spanish to learn to speak Spanish fluently.


    You don’t need to know how to love to start loving someone.

    You start loving someone to learn how to love.


    And while this chain of causality sounds logical, sometimes the logical things are the hardest to remember.

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    #97 Not loneliness. Solitude.

    All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone

    Blaise Pascal, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/19682-all-of-humanity-s-problems-stem-from-man-s-inability-to-sit

    We often equate sitting quietly in a room alone with loneliness: a word with a negative emotional charge.

    But sitting quietly in a room can also bring solitude: the simple state of being by yourself, without any negative connotation.

    Solitude can give relief of the pressure to be constantly “socializing” (through social media apps or in real life).

    Relief of the pressure to socialize can make space.

    Space you can use to hear the thoughts in your head and the feelings in your body.

    Thoughts and feelings that can tell you what’s truly important to you.

    And then you realize that what’s truly important to you is nothing new.

    It’s something you already knew, before you learned not to listen.

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