What`s your story?

Len WilsonChurch, Faith, StoryLeave a Comment

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The other day a stranger greeted me with the ice-breaker question, “What is your story?” Although it may sound like small talk, his question is one of the most important and revealing things you can ask somebody.

Most of us go through life with a negative view of our own story.

We remember our mistakes; we’re convinced we’ve screwed up. We think we come out of dysfunctional histories – our families, our hometowns, our money or lack of money. We think we have made, and continue to make, bad decisions. We know what Eric Clapton means when he sings, “I must be strong and carry on, ‘Cause I know I don’t belong here in heaven.”

The circumstances change from chapter to chapter, but the same nagging problem remains: there’s something about our own story we don’t like.

When you meet somebody and you ask them, “What’s your story?”, you’re not just throwing out a colloquial, how-ha-doing greeting. You are asking that person perhaps the most important question you can ask, and their answer says a lot about how he or she understands their own life. Your answer to the question says a lot about how you see your own life.

We see our story, and our identity, as the sum total of our life experiences.

Many of us define ourselves by our life experiences; we think who we are comes from what we’ve done. We adopt the unexamined idea that our identity is in our history. But maybe our problem isn’t the plot twists and turns of our life, or the characters and scenes we’re stuck in. Maybe the problem is that we don’t understand, or that we have forgotten, our real story.

What if our story is more than just our seemingly random set of life choices?

What if we’re not actually alone, making our own life’s scenes up as we go like a crazed screenwriter? What if there’s a bigger story unfolding all around us, and we’re a small but crucial part?

See, I believe that following Jesus is about learning that neither the idea that we are the director of our life purpose, nor that our lives are devoid of meaning, is true. Instead, we are created by a divine God, made in God’s image, and that we have a story, and that in spite of everything that has happened, our story is a good story. And that in Christ Jesus, we have the opportunity to rediscover the story for which we are made. We’re not alone, writing our own future as we see fit, but we actually have a divine director who wants to show us what happens next.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ…2 Corinthians 5:17-18

Art and inspiration for this post come from The Story, a sermon series at my church, Peachtree. Learn more here.

 

About the Author

Len Wilson

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Writer. Story lover. Believer. Branding philosopher. Breakfast chef. Tickle monster. Dr. Pepper enthusiast. Creative Director. Occasional public speaker.

Stop Looking to Habits of Famous Creative People

Len WilsonCreativity2 Comments

creative-circles

A popular book and Internet blog topic has been the study of lifestyles and habits of famous creative people, such as this and this. I’m bored of them, and today I realized why: to look at creativity as a set of techniques or tactics robs us of a deeper understanding of creativity’s power.

It’s oft-stated in the church community that God is Creator, and that, since we’re made in God’s image, we are thus creative. Consider: If creativity is part of the essence of what it means to be human, is it something we can easily distill into a simple recipe, heat and serve, like Ten Habits of Famous Compassionate People?

Or is it much deeper than that?

In my book Think Like a Five Year Old, I note that our unique perspective on life is in fact the origin of our creativity:

Creativity is about listening to, and living out of, the voice in your inner being – your heart, mind, soul and strength; in other words, creativity is about being attentive to and acting in response to the combination of ideas and reactions and preferences that form your view of the world. This perspective, this unique form of expression, is the identity given to you by God and the origin of your creativity. We come with it preloaded. We’re each born an artist. We’re made to be creative. As an image of God, when we exercise our heavenly impulse, the result of our expression, regardless of our field of endeavor, is art. This power, which reflects the essence of God, reveals itself in the passions we feel.

This passage suggests that, if we’re feeling uninspired or fatigued, the solution isn’t something extrinsic – to change our circumstances or surroundings or self-identity, or to adopt a famous creative’s set of habits from a blog post or list.

Of course, looking at famous people’s habits is fun, and I don’t want to overstate its value by complaining about it. But I also don’t want to subconsciously spy on the creative routines of well-known people out of a hacker’s mentality that if we can uncover some common thread and apply it to our own lives, we’ll improve our lot. This is magic in the worst sense of the word, a replacement of identity and faith in God with an easy trick or set of tactics. Instead of looking to other people’s habits, if we look inward to rediscover who we are and how we’re made, from this place of wisdom we might recover not a grab bag, tactical creativity but an expression of our human identity.

Rather than adopt new routines, or look to the habits of well-known persons, what are the implications of looking inward to find our creativity?

About the Author

Len Wilson

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Writer. Story lover. Believer. Branding philosopher. Breakfast chef. Tickle monster. Dr. Pepper enthusiast. Creative Director. Occasional public speaker.

Creativity ≠ The arts

Len WilsonArtists, CreativityLeave a Comment

paper bulb copy
Play a word association game with me. What do you think of when you hear the word “creativity”? One of the associations I hear most often is the word “arts,” such as when people say something like this recent social media comment:

Everyone is creative but not everyone is artistic.

This statement is perhaps meant to affirm artists, but it’s unsettling, because of what it implies.

Someone can hear this and experience a range of emotion: the high of thinking she has gifts to offer – “Oh, I’m creative?” – followed by the deflation of realizing she doesn’t – “Oh. I’m not artistic?” Her shoulders slump, because she wants to be creative, but because she’s not an artist she thinks her ideas don’t count. I have heard variations of this story on several occasions.

Or, another response, as someone compares himself to friends and colleagues: “I don’t have a creative bone in my body.” When in fact what he really means is, I don’t make films or do graphic design or paint or draw.

People associate the words “creative” and “artistic”.

We meet artists, and we label them creative, and their work – painting, design, writing, music – as art.

But is this a precise association to make?

Consider this statement:

Everyone has legs but not everyone is fast.

Humans are bipeds. We stand on two legs. This is a fairly universal attribute. But some – perhaps only a few – have physical giftedness that position them to pursue athletic achievement.

The former – legs – is universal; the latter – strength and speed – is a specific gift, given to a few.

Creativity is more universal than the gift and skill of artistry.

Creativity is as intrinsic to being human as having two legs – even moreso, because while tragedy might rob or alter our bodies, creativity is in our spirit, put there at our inception.

It’s fine if artists care a great deal about creativity. They should, because it’s central to what artists do, just as athletes should care a great deal about leg strength. But that shouldn’t slow down everyone else, who can learn and benefit from a greater understanding of creativity.

  • What are the implications of disassociating creativity and “the arts” and thinking of creativity as something deeper and more intrinsic than having a specific skill?
  • Seth Godin uses the word “art” as the product of our unique creativity. He challenges our definition of “art” and our association of creativity and the arts. Has the association of creativity and the arts inhibited you? How?
  • What ways can you see the benefits of creativity in your life that have nothing to do with what are traditionally considered “the arts”?

 

About the Author

Len Wilson

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Writer. Story lover. Believer. Branding philosopher. Breakfast chef. Tickle monster. Dr. Pepper enthusiast. Creative Director. Occasional public speaker.

The Only Three Times Most of Us Are Ever Creative

Len WilsonCreativityLeave a Comment

beeker
I can feel it when my Creativity leaves.

It happens most days, sadly. I watch it walk out the door like a dour, fuzzy muppet, oversized face down, dragging its suessian hands on the floor. It passes the line of people at my door who stand in queue with questions and messages and needs and just so many needs. Need #31. Need #42.

The books, and I’ve studied them, say that most of us lose our Creativity because we self-inhibit. In fact, educators have a name for this. They call it the “fourth grade slump” because that’s about the age when most of us develop an acute awareness of other people’s judge-y-ness.

And judge-y they are. To overcome this oppression, we try to be neutral and avoid actual, out-on-a-limb expression, but if we’re honest, other people can be just as judge-y about how to compile a spreadsheet or allocate a resource. So there’s no escaping it. But people can be really judge-y when we try to actually suggest a new idea or make something. Being creative is like raising your hand in a fluorescent room full of people staring at the floor.

The really good ideas are at first fragile. They require hands cupped in protection. We can do low level creative things like doctor a photo or write a tweet, but the really great Creativity leaves when the room gets crowded with Needs and judge-y-ness.

The other day, when the Needs lined up at my door again, and I watched Creativity drudge off, it occurred to me that there are only a few times in life when most of us are really creative.

 

The first is when we’re completely ignorant.

This is the beauty of being a five year old. Completely, blissfully, wonderfully ignorant to the demands of the world. A fellow five year old has a negative opinion about your new art. Who cares? An authority figure wants you to organize something instead. What? It’s time for bed or to come to dinner. Hang on, I’m busy.

Of course, we eventually turn six, then 31, and we cannot unlearn what we learn, and cannot unhear what we hear, about life and the world and other people’s opinions.

Perhaps this is why there are so many stories of outsiders blowing up an industry, like Louis Gerstner, the cookie executive who is credited with turning around IBM in the 1990s. It’s only the ignorant and unconnected who are able to fully ignore the forces of stasis, no matter how well-meaning, whose “concerns” apply gravitational pull to new ideas, stifling innovation and effecting in some cases horrific launch pad disasters. (Actually, one study suggests that outsiders do best when the company is in crisis, which says something about the constancy of our chaos.)

It’s why the first 100 days in a new job are so critical. Yea, when you’re new and ignorant, you get knocked over a lot and make some embarrassing mistakes, but so what. Embrace your newfound, temporary ignorance. It’s an opportunity to actually make something, and it doesn’t last long. It’s also the beauty of risk. New environments re-ignorance us from the monotocrats.

But of course a person can’t change jobs every two years — or homes, or marriages — and we can’t go around pretending to be ignorant to entice our dearly departed creativity back. So ignorance doesn’t really work as a strategy for more creativity.

 

The second is when we’re completely desperate.

As the great Don Henley pined, freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.

Some people treading the long tail of decline say they’re desperate, but they’re really not — not yet. As long as you still have a steady paycheck for the foreseeable future, you’re not desperate. Your big idea failed on launch, but stumbles along with small market share. The second month in, you know you made a bad decision, but you decide to tough it out. You end up hanging on to the old thing for much long than you any reasonable scenario would suggest in the hope that it will, of its own accord, reignite. (The most nonsensical reaction is when purveyors of decline actually make badges out of their consumption and stasis, like a pastor who proudly proclaims that the dusty sanctuary is God’s design for the church.)

Desperation doesn’t darken our door nearly as often as we think it does. It only really appears when the perceived pain of change becomes less than the present pain of insufficient funds notices we’re getting on life. The scary moments, when they do come, become the megaphone to rouse us from our consumer slumber.

Desperation can lead to great things, so I’m not opposed to this under special circumstances, but I’ll pass for now on pursuing despair as a strategy.

 

The third is when we’re completely secure.

This leaves the third and final option — complete security.

For a period of time I consulted with teams of people attempting to design live event experiences in church settings. One of the aphorisms I’d cite, in an attempt to help teams create a sense of personal intimacy and goodwill amongst each other, was that insecurity is the first destroyer of creativity, because the really good ideas are tied to a sense of self and identity. Our best stuff can be almost unrecognizable at first. Good ideas sprout with the affirmation of others, at least until we’ve become so experienced that we can recognize it ourselves, although I’d really say that even then, or at least in own life, years of experience and titles and prestige and fans don’t foster complete security in our own ideas.

It’s stereotypical and likely off-putting to use football anecdotes, but I can’t help but think of the career of NFL hall of fame coach Tom Landry. Landry, who retired in 1989 and passed away in 2000, is considered one of the greatest innovators in football history. Several of his big creative ideas are still in use 25 years after he left the league.

In today’s sports climate, I wonder if any of this would have happened. He didn’t win a single game in his first year, and finished with no more than 5 wins in his next four. After five straight years of 5th, 6th and last place finishes, most coaches would have been fired. Instead, the team owner gave Landry a ten-year contract extension. He didn’t have another losing season for 22 years, a record that stands today.

We need healthy environments — people, job situations, financial security — to foster creative thinking and behavior. And while each of the three is to some degree out of our control — that is , not something we can make happen tomorrow — security is really the only scenario we can hope to make a long term reality.

So next time your Creativity leaves the room like a dour Muppet, ask yourself how secure you are. And if you like the answer, or think you might be able to like the answer, then make some decisions based on it; in other words, begin to adjust your schedule so that it’s not built on fear for job security or status or future paycheck, but on what you need in order for Creativity to stay in the room a while.

 

About the Author

Len Wilson

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Writer. Story lover. Believer. Branding philosopher. Breakfast chef. Tickle monster. Dr. Pepper enthusiast. Creative Director. Occasional public speaker.

Brand Not Campaign: Secrets to Casting Vision, Part 3

Len WilsonMarketing, Strategic Thinking3 Comments

brand-not-campaign

This is the third in a five part series on secrets effective communicators use to cast vision, communicate big ideas, and affect change. Here’s part one. Here’s part two.

Contrary to popular opinion, “Just Do It” isn’t Nike’s brand. It’s merely a (very successful) campaign.

You’ve probably never heard of Nike’s actual brand statement, or “mantra”. That’s because it’s not public. It’s the private measuring stick the organization uses to stay on track over time. Here it is:

Authentic Athletic Performance.

Huh? What do you do with that?

A Brand Comes From the Gut

Brands can be confusing; I talk about brand statements here. But for now focus on this: a brand statement is emotional, not technical. It’s the reaction you want people to have when they think of you.

If you’re having confusion about what among many ideas is most important, you need a brand statement.  The brand statement is the means by which you define yourself to the people whom you’re trying to reach.

Brands come from the mission statement. Here’s Nike’s mission statement:

To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.

Notice how Nike’s brand statement above is a user’s emotional description of the mission statement. The user wants gear to maximize their performance as an athlete.

Once you have this, you have to make it actionable. This is often difficult to make happen, even for experienced marketers. You do it with a positioning statement.

Every Brand Needs a Positioning Statement

Here’s how it works:

BRAND —> POSITION —> CAMPAIGN

From the brand comes the position, which is simply the actionable version of the brand.

The trick is in the context. Every organization has a general goal in mind. Make money. Educate people. Win championships. In church, some say the brand comes from The Gospel of Matthew, chapter 28, where Jesus says “Go and make disciples” (Sound like something Steve Jobs would’ve stolen) – and that we don’t need to modify it. But we’re doing our thing in a specific time and place. So context is crucial. You have to get specific.

A positioning statement is a) a concise description of your target audience and b) a compelling picture of how you want that market to perceive your brand. It is the application of the Why, from part two. As Jim Joseph states, “Positioning is a summation of all the attributes you’ve selected for your brand. A positioning statement acts as a guidepost when it comes to making decisions in your life.”

Remember: Though it may read like something from your promotional materials, your positioning statement is an internal tool.

How to write a positioning statement

Here’s how to do it:

For [Audience], I am/we are the [Exclusive] among all [Category] because [Inspiration].
  • The Audience is the specific group of people you hope to reach and affect.
  • The Exclusive is how you plan to uniquely benefit your audience.
  • The Category is your industry.
  • The Inspiration is the reason people should believe what you claim.

This is what Amazon wrote in 2001:

For World Wide Web users who enjoy books, Amazon.com is a retail bookseller that provides instant access to over 1.1 million books. Unlike traditional book retailers, Amazon.com provides a combination of extraordinary convenience, low prices, and comprehensive selection.

From the positioning statement comes the more concise brand mantra.

From the positioning statement comes the ad campaign

We get it backwards when we start with the ad campaign. It comes last.

There is only one why. Not many whys. Don’t just jump from project to project and campaign to campaign. You’ll never gain traction.

Campaigns change; positioning occasionally changes; the brand never changes. 

About the Author

Len Wilson

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Writer. Story lover. Believer. Branding philosopher. Breakfast chef. Tickle monster. Dr. Pepper enthusiast. Creative Director. Occasional public speaker.