The legendary designer Paula Scher said, “I still [a little over 5 decades into her career] make things that are pretty awful. It’s part of the process. You have periods of tremendous productivity and other periods where you’re fallow. The fallow periods are really important because that’s where you’re figuring something it out. You have to work th... See more

I am also slowly learning that being present is not just about giving my full attention to whatever is happening right now. It is also about recognising that what I have is good, and then wanting what I have.

Some prompts for thinking and writing.

1. You win $100,000,000 in the lottery. How do you allocate it?

2. Write out an average day in the life of you in 10 years. What makes it beautiful?

3. If you had to flee America and start a new life, where would you go and why?

4. You go back in time to when your great grandparents were your age. How would you explain the fu

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"For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them." — Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace

“A little secret:

You don't need the right answer to start. You can start by asking a question. Simply asking, “How can I be a better friend?” or “How can I be a healthy person?” will call forth answers naturally.

In the beginning, just repeating the question is enough.”

Maybe “what have you done for the world” isn’t even the right question. It assumes an acting upon, separate from-ness. What if the good stuff happens less when you act upon the world and more when you become one with it? Part of it.

Writing is mystagogy. It is leading oneself, or others, into a great mystery. Their own lives are a mystery. It is a good place to start.

The normal and the everyday is a mystery, too. Yet few people have the eyes to see it that way

Let go of self-delusion, which is maybe the hardest thing of all to let go of. Shape the thing you’re making into a pure expression of the thing you’re making: “Cut away, strip away the unnecessary, and strip away what people expect.”

To initiate this step of creation, it is always good to move into a state of wonder, contemplation, possibility, reflection, or speculation by asking yourself some important questions. Open-ended inquiries are the most provocative approach to producing a fluent stream of consciousness: • What would it be like to … ? • What is a better way to be … ?

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