“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”
—Robert Browning
All Posts in 'Finding Your Vision' Category
Will Smith’s Wisdom
Great video with compiled clips of Will Smith sharing the wisdom he’s picked up through his life. I’ve long been impressed with Will and the depth of his character. I don’t believe he’s just a star, or an actor, or one of the elite with extreme amounts of talent. He is a powerful example of achieving one’s dreams, and, from what I can tell, a humble, passionate, loving person who wants to share the joy in his life with others. Enjoy the great words of wisdom from Will:
Genevieve Clay is following her vision as a writer/director
Genevieve Clay, writer, director, and filmmaker, is dead-set on making her mark on the world. She is the recent winner of the tropfest film festival, and isn’t stopping there. She has some great advice for filmmakers, though I’d say it’s probably great advice for anybody:
You’re going to get criticised sometimes and some of your work isn’t going be great and you’ve got to be prepared for that. You’ve just got to push through anyway and say, ‘that film doesn’t define my talent’. Experiment with what you’re doing, don’t be boxed up.
You’re not going to make something great on your first go. You can’t think that you’re some freak genius even though you might be, you still need people to mentor you and talk to you and say ‘this is working and this isn’t’ and don’t be offended just take it on board.
And lastly, just suck it up. It’s cutthroat and disappointment is the biggest killer of dreams and the only person that’s going to stop you from getting where you want to go is yourself. If you can just suck it up and keep going no matter what the disappointment is, you’ll get somewhere.
8 Questions for deciding what to do
Jon Swanson has posted a great short list of questions you can ask yourself when deciding where to focus your efforts in life. I think these questions are particularly astute, and indicate to me that Jon understands a great deal about finding one’s vision.
Try to go beyond reading this list. Absorb it, ponder upon it, and use your most powerful imaginative faculties to discover the answers to each question. Where discovering your vision is concerned, these questions are pure gold (I particularly like 1, 2, 3, and 8):
We’re all making lists. We’re all looking for three words, for next steps. We all know that we just need to start, that the first step is the most important, that finishing matters. We all know all those things. We all know how to find the tools to help.
Here are 8 questions to help you decide where in your life you want to apply those tools.
- What do I want to finish?
- What do I want to change?
- What do I want to maintain? (Sometimes you are actually doing fine about some things).
- What do I want to refine?
- What do I want to stop doing?
- What do I need to do, though wanting has nothing to do with it?
- What can I finally throw away?
- What do I want to go back to?
You’ve heard of Pixar, right?
How about the documentary titled The Pixar Story? If you haven’t seen it yet, find it, and watch it as soon as you can (hint: look on select Wall•E DVD/Blu-Ray discs). The Pixar Story is a great doc about Pixar’s epic struggle to become what they are today. I think its safe to say that most folks probably think of Pixar as an overnight sensation that hit it big with their first feature film, Toy Story. That’s what I thought, too. I didn’t know how wrong I was until I saw this enlightening film about one of the most storied companies in our recent history.
What strikes me most is the amount of passion, vision, and pure perseverant love the Pixar folks have for what they do. They aren’t going to a job every day. They are doing what they love. They believe they are doing something that is making a real difference in peoples lives. Its no wonder they have been so successful at making their films.
“Pixar is seen by a lot of folks as an overnight success. But, if you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.”
– Steve Jobs, Pixar
Steve, no doubt, was a huge asset in the key moments of Pixar’s development. He spearheaded the IPO, giving pixar the real legs they needed to make it in the big time.
“We learned the important thing is not the idea, the important thing is the people. It’s how they work together, who they are that matters more than anything else.”
– Ed Catmull, Pixar
Difficult to argue with that philosophy. It’s hard to imagine a company with this type of outlook not having bucketloads of culture and passion.