If you could be a Jedi. Would you?

You know, the heroes from the Star Wars movies. A friend posted this question on Facebook recently. 

Would I want to be one?

Sure, but don’t think I could handle the pressure.  What pressure? 

From The Empire?

Space creatures?

The Jedi Council?

No, from artists when they’re not grateful. 

Sometimes I wanna choke one out with the force. 

To kill them? No! I’m no animal.  Just maybe till they black out.  You know, I just wanna make a point. 

Let me explain…

And I TOTALLY went thru this myself so I’m just as guilty of not following this philosophy.  

You gotta be grateful for what you got and for what you get. 

‘But Adam” you say, “I am grateful for everything I have.”

Really?

But what about when you get a ridiculous deadline?

What about that one client that always pays or shows up late?

Or that one project you did for “family” that you weren’t thrilled to do?

You have to appreciate it all because that’s where your power either shrinks or expands. Wallace Wattles in The Science of Getting Rich put it like this. 

‘The moment you permit your mind to dwell with dissatisfaction upon things as they are, you begin to lose ground. You fix attention upon the common, the ordinary, the poor, and the squalid and the mean; and your mind takes the form of these things.”

Notice Wattles doesn’t say you ‘attract’ these things. He said you BECOME these things. 

It’s like Newton’s third law:

“An object at rest remains at rest, and an object in motion remains in motion at constant speed and in a straight line unless acted on by an unbalanced force.”

And guess what, Pumpkin? YOU’RE the unbalanced force!

Imagine this. You’re chillin. 

Painting. 

Cutting hair. 

Whatever you do. 

And then bad news hits. It could be work or it could be your personal life. You wanna get passed it asap! 

You don’t want to be stewing about it or posting on Facebook, ‘you won’t believe what happened to me…’. 

I mean, you can do it. But know when you do you lose your power and break the flow.

I know you can’t go from, ‘my client gets on my nerves’ to I’m so grateful immediately. But YOU CAN play with your dog. YOU CAN watch cat videos, or do Zumba for 60 seconds. 

Anything that you enjoy that will help you raise your state. 

And THEN, be grateful for that. 

Adam

I started thinking, who really needs to worry about AI?  

The skilled masters of our industry?  Or maybe artists that are afraid of being different? 

And let’s not forget about Fake Bitches… 

And by that I mean people who are literally trying to be something different to everyone.  

For likes.  

Or clicks.

Or for whatever kind of dopamine hit they need for that day. 

I don’t know about AI in writing and other fields, but I’ve seen some cool AI art so far.  You probably have too.  

But have you noticed about 80% of it is just a little homogenized?

When everyone starts using the same tool and techniques, things get average.  It may be better than what it was before but average won’t get you to fulfillment.

Average won’t make you happy.  

You know how I know?  You wouldn’t be reading this…

I love the exchange of Dash and Helen Parr in The Incredibles:

DASH:  “Dad always said our powers were nothing to be ashamed of.  Our powers made us special.”

HELEN:  “Everyone’s special, Dash.”

DASH:  “Which is another way of saying no one is.”

I don’t care if you use AI or not, just don’t let the tool smother your voice. 

Be MORE of who you are in your art, online, and in your marketing.

Say something. 

Believe in something.

No matter what it is.

Being REAL is more important now than ever.   Natalie Franke said something cool about the experiences we create for people.

“The beauty and the humanness that only we can offer this world will be even more valuable.”  

Damn right it is.  And it’s gonna grow like Apple stock in 1997.

You may think I talk about Star Wars and Harry Potter a lot. 

I get it. 

But I got news for you.  In my personal life I watch a lot of Star Wars and read A LOT of Harry Potter.

It’s who I am and it’s what I do. 

And guess what?  It’s going to resonate with some people and others will want nothing to do with me.  I’m cool with that.  

My goal for the past couple of years is this.  And I got it from Oprah so you know it’s good….

I want to be the highest expression of myself.  

Which tool do I use at work?

Which friends do I hang out with the most? 

Which books do I read?

Which clients do I take on?

That’s easy to answer. 

The ones that help me be the highest expression of myself.  And because that is my goal I do my best work.  

And when you use that formula you’re happier.  

And you get paid more.

Adam

I’ve been studying imagination a lot lately.  

And I keep bringing it up because it’s so important to you doing your art.  And working the kind of schedule you wanna work and making the kind of money you wanna make.

I could speak tons about the topic and drown you with quotes and case studies.

But I won’t.

I’d rather show you one of my favorite lines from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  These two lines do an amazing job illustrating my point.

Harry:  “Tell me one last thing.  Is this real?  Or has this been happening inside my head?”  

Dumbledore:  Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on Earth should that mean that it is not real?”

When we’re kids, our imagination is off the charts.  

But the older we get the more we live our life believing only in our 5 senses.  The 5 senses are cool but…  I have a one year old Malinois that can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch.

How do we use our five senses to get the good stuff?   

The big goals?  

We don’t.

We use our imagination.  We desire something and we live our lives from that end result.

Cool.  So what’s the problem?  

It works both ways.  

For years I never pursued being an artist.  My art self-esteem was about as high as nuts on a cricket.  My vision for my art was simple.  

I’m not good enough to make a living drawing.  And guess what?  

I never was.

But once I couldn’t stand working for the insurance company, my desire to be an artist went into over-drive.  

Soon not only did I believe I could make it as an artist but in my imagination there was only one question.  

Who would hire me first…  

Marvel or DC?

Robert Frost said, “You’re always believing ahead of your evidence. What was the evidence I could write a poem? I just believed it. The most creative thing in us is to believe in a thing.”

When you believe in a thing a you want, your energy flows.  You get enthusiasm and feel satisfaction.  Even if your life isn’t what you want it to be.

Even if you work a job you can’t stand.  

But on the flip side if you use your imagine to focus on…

Where you AREN’T.

Or what you don’t have or…

What you’re NOT.

You may as well be selling vacuums door to door.

And for the record, there’s nothing wrong with selling vacuums.  I just bought one a month ago.  Many of us need them.  

They make the world a better place.

But YOU don’t have to sell them.  

Work on your art.  

And YOU make the world a better place that way.

Adam

My mother-in-law loves playing the lottery. 

Like…obsession level. 

Like how Harry Potter obsessed over Quidditch.  Or how Voldemort was obsessed with finding the Elder Wand. 

It’s like that….

Well, last week my mother-in-law got the Mega Ball for the Mega Millions lottery but no other numbers. Instead of being grateful for winning a few bucks, she whined and complained. 

I half jokingly told her she got the most important number.  Now all she had to do was  work on getting the other numbers. 

This comment was about as welcoming to her as the COVID 19 virus. 

Today she told me in her angst she mixed up her tickets and accidentally threw it away. So that few dollars she won was gone.

Poof!

This reminded me of a universal truth.

By not being grateful or by not using what you are given, you may end up with zero.

Hell, less than zero.

It reminded me of a story Jim Rohn used to talk about.  It was about the Law of Use and the parable of the talents from the Bible. 

If you’ve never heard of the parable of the talents it goes like this. 

A master had three servants and he gave them all talents.   A talent was a measure of gold by the way… 

He gave one servant 5.

One servant 2.

And one servant 1.

The master wanted to see what they would do with the talents so the master left town for a bit.  When he returned he found out:

The one who had 5 grew them to 10. 

The one who had 2 grew them to 4

The one who was given 1 hid it and did nothing with it.

The master was happy with the first two but lost his shit on the third guy.  

The master took his talent and gave it to the servant who had 10. 

So what is the moral of this story?

Whatever you don’t use, you lose.  But again, it can get even worse that that. 

What if you lose 20 pounds and then you stop working out and eating right. You may not only gain the weight back but you may even gain more than the original 20 back.   

And that happens to dieters every day…

What if you marry the perfect person and stop nurturing your relationship? 

At best maybe you’ll have a mediocre relationship or you may be even worse off before you met. 

My point is this.  Use your gifts.

Do your art. 

Obsess over it!

Make your light shine so bright everyone can see it.  And as Natalie Franke said in her book Gutsy, “no one ever changed the world by dimming their light.”

And when you use the gifts that you are given and stay to true to who you are, IT happens.  

And when you’re grateful for it, synchronicity knocks on your door like solar panel door-to-door salesmen!

And so do miracles.

Adam

I love horror moves.  

But you ever wonder why so many crappy ones get made?  

Let alone explain why some get massively popular…

Look at Friday the 13th.  A guy goes around in a hockey mask and kills people in a forrest.  For like, 40 years…  

Or Michale Myers and the Halloween movies…  

Or the Nightmare on Elm Street movies…

At least I’ll give those movies #1 of Al Ries and Jack Trout’s 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.  Part of their success is, The Law of Leadership:  It’s better to be first than it is better.  

But today I just saw a trailer for Slotherhouse.  It’s about a college student who adopts a pet sloth who eventually murder’s people in her sorority house.

So let me get this straight.  You want to make a murderer out of one of the cutest and slowest animals on Earth?  

That’d be like remaking the movie Seabiscuit with a burro with a bad leg as the star.  

I’ll admit, I’m shining you on a bit because I know exactly how movies like Snakes On A Plane get made.  

It’s because the creators of these films have a vision for what they want and they stuck to it until it was produced.  

It’s the same way skinny people get buff, fat people get slim, and it’s how skyscrapers get built.  Someone imagined it FIRST and then made it happen.

Is imagination important?  Of course it is!  

It’s everything!

Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

Tesla said, “it takes imagination to create your path.”

Steve Harvey said, “It is the preview to life’s coming attractions.”

So if your life or biz ain’t looking the way you want it to, you first need to look at what you are filling your imagination with.  Are you filling it with… 

What you don’t have?

Bills?

The skills YOU THINK you need?  

All those things will keep you broke and far from the life you want.  

And by the way, vision and imagination are the same thing.  

If you want a new BMW and you don’t have one.  Your vision of you getting a new one is…where?  

Your imagination.  

It will reside there until it appears in your reality and becomes your truth.  

And as Neville Goddard says, “truth depends upon the intensity of imagination, not upon facts.”

So, um, let it in.

Adam