Creative Manifesto

START WITH A PLAN

RUN ON YOUR TIME

DON'T LET YOUR SUCCESS CONTROL YOU

LOVE AND LEARN FROM EVERY FAILURE

REFRAME YOUR PROBLEMS

CREATE VALUE BY NURTURING RELATIONSHIPS

EMBRACE PAST EXPERIENCES

WORK WITH WHAT YOU HAVE

CULTIVATE YOUR PASSION

KEEP AN OPEN MIND

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Top 10 LOREM IPSUM DOLOR SIT AMET

When you start a task, seemingly limitless drive fuels you; the desire to succeed at reaching your goal makes planning feel unnecessary. Neglecting it, however, can be catastrophic for both you and your task’s outcomes. Due to your unpreparedness, you are less likely to be resilient to potential setbacks, especially when compared to someone that planned. Similarly, your lack of distinguished, predetermined goals makes you susceptible to perfectionist tendencies and resultant feelings of dissatisfaction. Following in the footsteps of conceptual artists such as Pablo Picasso, you can easily avoid these by planning adequately beforehand. Picasso, for example, planned meticulously, working through possible difficulties, before starting his masterpieces. Likewise, he worked exclusively to meet his goal, to share his artistic discoveries, and upon achieving it, he would easily move forward feeling satisfied without striving for perfection. Whether you are grocery shopping, writing an essay, or going on vacation, you can also manage setbacks and improve your sense of satisfaction by first focusing on planning instead of rushing to attain your goal.

Start with a Plan

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A major drawback of focusing primarily on success is the development of tunnel vision; you unknowingly neglect countless alternate opportunities to bring value to your life. By keeping an open mind as you navigate through life, you are essentially forced to live in the present instead of living for the future. It also shines a new light on the world for you, revealing novel, valuable opportunities that may even potentially result in conventional success. In fact, the ideas of many influential innovators were not birthed from a drive to be successful; they simply kept an open mind and inevitably stumbled across their idea. As Steve Jobs described, “When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. […] they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things"; you have to be attentive to new experiences and ideas. Regardless of the context, personal, professional, or social, if you focus on actively keeping an open mind instead of fixating on success, you will not only be on the journey to living a satisfying life, but you may potentially come across an innovative idea as a by-product.

Keep an open mind

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Although social media has countless benefits, it also significantly impacts your perception of success. You are made to believe that the road to attaining conventional success is effortless. Seeing influencers flaunt their lifestyles or your peers attaining outstanding accomplishments while having time to relax and socialize, further perpetuates the illusion of an easily attainable, goal-centric definition of success. When you chase this façade, you quickly realize that attaining those goals is unrealistic, and even if you attain them, they won’t bring you the contentment you assumed. In actuality, the path to a happy, satisfying life is to identify and dedicate time and energy to your true goals and passions. The importance of identifying and cultivating your passion is personified through Oscar Peterson. Since his childhood, he would spend countless hours practicing his art every day. Peterson once stated “I don't do something because I think it will sell 30 million albums. I couldn't care less”; his goal was to solely cultivate his passion, not attain wealth or fame. As evident from Peterson’s example, if you dedicate your time and energy to cultivating your passions, success may be a by-product, but it won’t be foundational to your happiness and life satisfaction.

Cultivate your passion

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When you chase the mirage of success, your perception of efficacy and privilege is biased. By media depictions of the wealthy and famous, you are led to believe that existing privilege is the prime determinant of success. If you lack privilege, you can be left feeling dejected due to your perceived lack of control. Similarly, if you have certain privileges, yet aren’t conventionally successful, feelings of incompetence can arise. Regardless of your privilege, prioritizing comparative success and having an external locus of control are responsible for your compromised contentment. You can instead lead a happy, satisfying life without letting societal views influence you by taking inspiration from the architectural practices of Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara. They are often confined with unideal requirements, yet they can create extraordinary creations by focusing on what brings them value and satisfaction. Like Farrell and McNamara, learning to work with the available resources to create value can guide you to a satisfying life compared to exclusively fixating on conventional success.

Work with what you have

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Conventional success inherently promotes toxic positivity. When there is any depiction of success, whether, through media or society in general, any experience that is associated with negative emotions is suppressed, instead replaced by false positivity to uphold the notion of perfection associated with the façade of success. If you are chasing this façade, you will inevitably attempt to suppress any negative experiences, and the associated memories and traumas. Constantly suppressing these emotions, however, takes a significant toll on your psychological health. To prioritize your mental health, you need to stop striving for the societal standards of success, and instead focus on promoting a life filled with peace, satisfaction, and happiness by acknowledging, accepting, and working through your past traumas or negative experiences. As artist Doris Salcedo said, “If we don’t acknowledge the past, we cannot live in the present and have no future”; to build a satisfying life, you must first strengthen the foundation of your past.

Embrace past experiences

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Success and the desire to attain it bring out an inherently selfish, materialistic side of people. As your aspirations change to becoming successful, the value you once placed on relationships shifts to the accumulation of wealth, power, and status; you crave the temporary gratification and validation these materialistic possessions provide. The allure of success may seem tempting; however, having placed undue importance on it can leave you with an empty void once the novelty wears off. To lead a satisfaction-filled life instead, you need to place importance on developing meaningful relationships with those you care about. This can be done by following a simple, yet impactful formula by Theaster Gates, an artist recognized for unifying art and social practice to foster social relationships: Love + Labour = Value. You must nurture your relationships and develop a deep bond of Love, by dedicating your time and energy, your Labour, to create lasting Value in your life.

Create value by nurturing relationships

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Life can be described as a continuous cycle of facing, solving, and overcoming problems. Therefore, problem-solving is an essential skill to have if you wish to live a relatively satisfying life. On the contrary, success, defined by the achievement of socially valuable traits, is inherently outcome-focused. If your primary goal is to become successful, you will naturally adopt an ends-centric mindset, fixating on achieving the end goals, instead of adequately working through the issues you face. Such a mindset negatively affects you in two ways: it decreases your resilience to challenging situations, and places limit your imaginative and problem-solving abilities. To avoid the inevitable repercussions on your overall life satisfaction, you must develop the ability to reframe problems, instead of seeking solutions that meet your end goal. When you focus on understanding the problem, your imagination is not restricted by boundaries an ends-centric mindset has, nor do you feel challenging situations to be a source of stress or discontentment. As author Tina Seeling said, reframing problems “allows you to see the world around you in a brand-new light”; one simple skill can help you see past the illusion of success to a life of satisfaction.

ReframE your problems

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Whether you are learning to walk or building a business, failure is fundamental for you to grow and develop as a human. Despite knowing this, you develop a strong and toxic tendency to avoid failing as you begin to prioritize materialistic success. This avoidance results from societal views of success and failure as its foil; success is applauded while failure is frowned upon, if not punished. Media depictions of success further strengthen this misconception; the successful are depicted as perfect individuals who flawlessly attain their goals while the unsuccessful are characterized by repeated failure. You are conditioned to believe that to succeed, you must avoid failure. As a result, you hold yourself back to avoid failure as it overburdens you with feelings of inadequacy, unhappiness, and dissatisfaction. Embracing your failures, you can avoid these emotions and replace them with development instead. Painter Paul Cézanne personifies the importance of failure through his experimentalist, trial and error methodology; for him, his paintings were mere experiments providing him invaluable learning opportunities. Although failure inherently conjures negative emotions, embracing a trial-and-error-based ideology instead of striving for success can help you mitigate these and pave a path towards a happy and satisfying life.

Love and learn from every failure

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Once you embark on the path to success, it has a way of drawing you in. As you earn the materialistic hallmarks of success, your ego gets an unquenchable thirst for more. Even if becoming unfathomably successful is not your life goal, experiencing it at some point is unavoidable. Like an addiction, the desire for success can inevitably take control of your life if you don’t take the reins; happiness, satisfaction, and relaxation would subsequently all become secondary. Following the example of gastronomic genius Ferran Adria, you can avoid this by keeping your ego in control and prioritizing what brings value to your life. Despite having wealth and fame, Adria prioritizes his passion for cooking, even going as far as shutting down his restaurant at its apex to focus more on developing gastronomic innovations. Using Adria as an example, you can look past the illusion of success by not letting materialistic desires compromise your overall satisfaction with life.

Don't let your success control you

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Following a set timeline is ingrained into the societal expectations of living a successful life. To be on the road to success means meeting milestones such as graduating in your 20s, getting married by your 30s, or retiring in your 60s. If you deviate from these, you are instantly faced with concern and judgment; society views it as an indication of unsuccessfulness. Consequently, you can be pushed into a bleak, disappointing life if you avoid decisions that cause you to venture on your path. You may stay in an unhappy marriage, dissatisfying career, or rush into retirement just to keep up the façade of a successful life; however, it is all meaningless if your life lacks happiness, stability, and contentment. To live a truly satisfying life, you need to let go of comparing yourself with the societal standards of success and instead, run on your own time, making decisions that maximize your happiness. This is demonstrated by Frank Gehry, a world-renowned architect who attempted several careers before finally discovering his passion for design. As Gehry said, you must follow your path, as inevitably, “Something will come out that is very appropriate for the time and place”.

Run on your own time