Belief Systems—Unlocking Your Potential

Key Takeaways

your belief and what is possible has changed and that's all it takes I know it's hard for some of you to hear this because I do teach a lot of people how to find their value in the marketplace but the thing that you need to do is to believe and then do it that's a secret formula [Music] hey what's up everybody we were just at the AIGA National Design Conference is my first time ever attending and it's a congregation of designers of all types from around the country I was there because they invited me to do a keynote talk and I could not pass up on the opportunity to be able to interact with fans and do impromptu live streams alright how you feeling look it is now six minutes to game time six minutes to game time I gotta shake off the cobwebs Chris most creative people think if they learn some secret sauce if they were just given tools or techniques that they would blossom and become the creative people they were meant to be but the truth is it's all boiled down to your belief system what you believe to be true and not to be true so masa gots a true or false question okay do you get out of life what you put into it - or false okay thank you that's how we do it's like a bunch of designer it's very quiet so true you get out of life what you put into it right okay we'll look at this input output it seems to make sense but what I want to do is to interrupt this and insert one critical step that you may not be aware of and that is interpretation input and depending on how you look at things determines your output right so we have to kind of think like what is real and we think real reality it's all the same and in fact it's not there's this thing which you believe to be real which is just really subjective individual reality and sometimes that rubs up against objective physical reality so your life really depends on how you look at the world what do you see so listen re-examine the same flowchart again your input depending on the interpretation has an infinite number of outputs if you want to be angry you will find a way to be angry and if you want to feel hurt you will find a way to feel hurt I just happen to choose to be happy that works much better for me so I've develop a belief system that lifts me up that reminds me that when I fall down it's okay and that everything is a work in progress and I have something to learn there's also a lot of negative self-talk low self-esteem low self-worth and that translates over when a client asks you to do something what's happening is we don't have the internal validation so we're gonna look for it externally and when we look for that validation from other people they can take advantage of you fail fail is a very powerful crippling word for many of us it prevents us from taking a start even well isn't fail just the first attempt in learning and what about no the door closes something it's just time for your next opportunity how about fear oh that's a big one more people do less because of fear fear could be a fantasized experience appearing real hasn't happened yet don't give up our pain what could pain me maybe pain is necessary for good things it could be the precursor to anything notable you've seen this chart a hundred thousand times probably this is the comfort zone and you know that's where the magic happens and we like to stay inside a comfort zone so what can safe mean so we've been taking negative words and making them positive what if we took a positive word and made it negative so you don't want to be safe anymore well safe could be simply always following everyone now who wants to be safe here okay good and this is working safe could be state average forever if you want to insult the designer just tell them your work it's the average [Music] I think especially relevant to the HHH design conference which is a gathering for all designers to come together they are the ones who are championing and fostering community and that's what we're doing just in an online form this is how we're able to reach out and have conversations with people from not only just in the United States but all over the world the community is what makes the future possible but our plan for the live streams and the reality of the live streams were two totally different things here we are setting up live stream iPad we are internet internet a jack is that what's going on we're planning to go live or win for me what are we doing here [Music] don't mistake somebody's best right as what they do all the time irregular I think that's a disservice to creative people so here's another valuable piece of advice I think if you're a creator make stuff without judging it okay and make it all the time and be very prolific and then somebody will say that's amazing that's amazing and then learn to listen to that and we can do this right now in real time on the internet you post something on Instagram you look at the numbers you look at the engagement here we are guys I have the distinct pleasure having Debbie Millman stepping into the booth with us so Debbie Millman she's done that a lot of incredible things she may be the longest running person who's done like a design podcast it's design matters and really I just want to open it up and use whatever time I have with you and talk about whatever is hot on your mind what I got from talking to Debbie Nuland was about this insecurity and how that is the genesis for a lot of creative people and that was a very foreign concept to me but the more I thought about it the more I realized that this is running through line with a lot of creative people I'm really interested in the psychological motivations of creative people how do they have the courage to be creative what gives them the sense that they can be creative where does that sense of creativity come from how is it fostered what struggles do creative people go through that might be unique to the creative mind do you find that there are certain common themes as to how somebody goes from being and then being creative is there something that that's a common thread well uncommon I would say I have not found that yet I mean I actually think that one of the threads very well maybe a pervasive sense of insecurity that creativity is a way to Express thinking and ideas and that creativity becomes a response to the insecurities but I don't have any empirical evidence to suggest that it's really anecdotal I think the live Q&A had its real opportunity when a young woman stepped up and started asking questions about pricing and I just broke out into like let's get the whiteboard I want to demo this for you I want to teach you something and she could not have been more perfect in terms of the right attitude and the pushback that I was getting it was absolutely perfect now here's how it works we have very little attention to give things so when somebody finds out about you they're gonna say work with Jody she's great at doing web comps so it's programmed in their mind Jody web comes Joey web comes that's what they think they don't think of you for this other thing right we form these mental shortcuts all the time we do it all of us do it it's called heuristics it's also a form of bias right we operate on too little information all of us it's a survival technique so here's the next thing okay I want you to stop selling stop selling okay you want to close more jobs start serving different S word how can I be of service to you you've asked me zero questions how can you diagnose if you haven't asked me any questions okay start thinking about some questions you want to ask me remember our goal is to figure out is there a problem we can solve or is there a problem period to be solved [Music] a lot of times I try to envision reaching out to just a small group of people they say that if you can impact the life of one person within this conference of 1,400 people you've done something wonderful what I didn't expect to hear were other conference speakers coming up to me afterwards and saying I needed to hear that I'm doing a talk tomorrow I'm doing the workshop tomorrow and you really energized me you gave me some tools that I can use and that was really awesome they were applying what it is that I taught and being able to do that just made me feel just incredible just through the roof some of that message cut through and they're able to walk away with something that they can use and apply for the rest of their life or at least for the rest of the weekend [Music]