“Like shooting a basketball or playing a guitar, being creative— the miracle of forming something new and valuable through action or thought—must be practiced, no matter what the medium of expression.”
Source: The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential
“The fact is, your creative potential is unrealized without execution. You love Apple products not only because they’re beautiful, you love them because they work really well. You love your favorite restaurant not only because the food is great, but because it’s consistently great.”
Source: The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential
“Emotional generosity is when an individual or organization combines empathy—the willingness to feel, understand, and share another person’s experiences and emotions—and sacrifice, surren- dering something you need or desire so that someone else can have it. The result of combining these two attributes is trust: the belief that someone or something is good, honest, and reliable. And when someone trusts you, they’re willing to emotionally connect with you. That connection, that bond, is invaluable, both in personal relationships and organizational loyalty and growth. When people feel trust and connection, they allow themselves to be taken on a journey, and that’s what makes it possible to create something truly special.”
Source: The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential
“It was at that point I fully appreciated Michael’s generous spirit, his lack of selfish motives. By giving himself to people like me, he gives himself the greatest gift imaginable: Michael fills his world with an energy and fulfillment that will sustain him well beyond his ability to contribute.”
“Before humans started messing around with the system, nature existed in harmony for millions of years—a beautiful symphony of seasonal change, birth and death, creation and destruction. This same harmony that drives the natural world applies to the intangible, emotional world of humans. We, too, must achieve harmony between all the elements of our lives, between the internal self and the external world.”
Source: The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential
“A harmonious state of being is defined as a state in which your internal needs are aligned with the actions you take and the surrounding energy of the world. The only way to create this harmony is by aligning your priorities with what you do every day.”
Source: The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential
“The swoosh is worth more than the sneaker.”
Source: The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential
“Bottled water is another example. Free, high-quality water is available in much of the developed world. But the developed world is exactly where the majority of bottled water is consumed. In 2012, in the U.S. alone, we spent $11.8 billion dollars on bottled water. Because packaging is a fixed price and water is a low-priced com- modity, what exactly are we paying the rest of the money for? The answer is that much of the value is tied up in the brand, the idea, how it makes you feel, the creativity.”
Source: The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential
“Freed from incessant worry about securing the bare essentials to live, the majority of us in the Western world are able to focus on tending to our higher needs—on pursuing happiness, on thriving. And one group has benefited from this shift more than all the rest—millennials, the largest, most diverse generation ever.
Millennials, those Americans born between 1980 and the early 2000s, spent their youth in relatively comfortable surroundings. They watched as their parents—the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers—obeyed the rules of the industrial complex, getting steady corporate jobs and saving for retirement. Their parents achieved modern society’s definition of success: material wealth. But millennials could see that, rather than bringing fulfillment, this path often ended with their parents unhappy, divorced, stressed-out, or on antidepressants. In response to this, millennials went in another direction. Well-educated and communicative, they learned from their parents’ experiences and adjusted their needs hierarchy to put meaning ahead of money.
Millennials want lives marked by creativity, spiritual satisfaction, expanded knowledge, societal contribution, and multilayered experiences. Sound familiar? We’re in Maslow territory—millennials are seeking to live self-actualized lives and enjoy peak experiences, a generational change that has had extensive repercussions.”
Source: The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential
“Extraordinary opportunity is now available and accessible to individuals and organizations with the creativity, passion, ambition, and work ethic to manifest their ideas. And, coincidentally, this is happening at the exact same time that a growing portion of the population is seeking out and rewarding creators for their work. Millennials (and those living with a millennial mind-set) support and consume products, services, and content made by passionate and authentic individuals and organizations they feel a connection with. That’s what we call a product-market fit. Except it isn’t a micro-market—it’s the largest market in the world, and that has changed everything.
Welcome to the Age of Ideas.”
Source: The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential