Columbus, Creativity and Connectivity

Get Silent.

I cannot emphasize this enough.

Our world is moving faster than ever. Business can achieve unbelievable levels of productivity never before recorded in human history.

We can connect with friends in Siberia, Morocco and Costa Rica all within seconds.

We can ask our phones to help us answer an immediate question.

In a matter of seconds our phones can map out the fastest route for us to get from point A to point B.

But when was the last time we got silent with ourselves? When was the last time we created unique solutions to complex problems?

I recently read an extraordinary piece of writing on Medium by Nicholas Cole who talked about true creativity and the lack of it in society. He had some amazing points which sparked this piece.

Some of the best work ever created in human history was created in silence. When Alexander Graham Bell was inventing the telephone, millions of people around the globe were not making noisy phone calls.

When Columbus “discovered” the western world there were no sonar or GPS tracking systems directing his every nautical mile.

When people looked for answers they looked up to the stars, not down to their mobile devices.

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We were once dreamers, explorers and creative problem solvers to whatever our Tribe or the community needed solved. People actually talked and created masterpieces together through hard work, creative thinking and resilience.

Now we let our world push what is already created on us.

We let our phones dictate our days and routes to work.

We allow our cars to tell us when we may be in danger.

We instantly carry the weight of the world’s problems through social media.

Simply put — we take on so much information and create so little.

One of the things that fascinates me about human history is our ability and drive to be explorers, creators and pioneers of our craft. I would have loved to have been around when the first person discovered fire. Imagine what must have been going through his or her head! Have you ever seen a kid play with fire? Well that kid would have been me. I would have explored its limits, created ways to harness its power and find practical uses for it. Then I would have given it to other tribes to do the same.

Beautiful!

My encouragement for you today is this. Get silent and get creative. We are here to create life, not to let the digital world take our lives away from us by shortening and eliminating decisions. Go create something great. Pioneer change and innovation. Discover the world that you want.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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