BIF is one of my favorite gatherings. We come here to share our stories, our tribulations, our aspirations. This applet offers some life lessons from SYPartners.
I hope it serves as a gift in your practice.
We believe it’s worthy work to envision, believe in, and fight for greatness. This applet is a small downpayment in service of that purpose.
This is George Yamashita.
My dad. My inspiration. And my hero.
As a young engineer, he was part of the Apollo team that put a man on the moon.
Our beliefs are deeply shaped by the stories we hear. In our household, the main narrative was that nothing was too difficult to figure
out—if you had a vision of what you wanted
to create.
Too often we dream small because we feel diminished. We feel inadequate in the face of challenge, change, or seismic shifts. But yet, creativity is an unlimited resource—not bound by scarcity.
Fully emboldened by creativity, we are capable beyond measure. The secret? We must actively choose to live a creative life—it’s a conscious decision of significant consequence.
100 billion galaxies in the universe. 300 billion stars in our own galaxy. 1 sun. 1 earth.
7.125 billion humans on earth. 180 million spermatozoa, one of which reached the
perfect egg.
And that is you. The whole thing is a miracle, when you really step back. It’s one huge act of creativity to even get you on this planet.
Once you realize that we are all born creative beings—all capable of extraordinary things—you come to see that our attention and our energy are not infinite.
What will you do with the energy that is your life?
Today, try this:
+ Take a slow walk with your phone or camera
in hand.
+ If you were seeing things for the very first
time—as if they didn’t have a name—what
would you witness?
+ Take a photo.
+ See your world anew.
Living a creative life starts with the act of being mindfully awake. To truly see, where others only look. To gather incredible building blocks of ideas, thoughts, experiences—all of which serve as rich ingredients for imagination.
How can you be fully awake to the world?
To solve problems, to understand in new ways, and to innovate, you have to be able to build an active muscle—the ability to reframe. To look through a new lens. If you’ve seen something one way, flip it. Look at it through a different lens: time, someone else’s perspective, flow, emotion, symbology, history.
Our brains seek consistency, to forge neural pathways and stick to them. Those repetitive thoughts in turn dominate what we permit ourselves to think about.
We live full creative lives when we’re able to bring the daily practice of creativity into every aspect of our lives—the nurturing of our souls, our physical wellbeing, our work, and our relationships.
While we may all be born creative beings, so many forces work against us—school, societal conformity, our own psyche. To live as a fully realized version of yourself, you must develop your own daily practice of creativity.
Fear leads to:
Impossibility Subtle cynicism
Detachment Bitterness
Blame The limiting of self
Avoidance Anger
Belittlement Pain
Love leads to:
Possibility Optimism
Resilience Partnership
Acceptance Freedom
Expansion Self-affirmation
Proactivity Joy
Creative sparks often come from individuals, but ideas are refined and made real through collaboration with others. And the quality
of that collaboration hinges on the strength
of your relationships. At SY, we believe that duos—you + someone else—are the most potent form of collaboration. For a great creative collaboration to work, each person must bring empathy and trust, acknowledging the humanness of the other.
The art of compassion—the essential element of collaborative creativity—is developed when we show up again and again as the best versions of ourselves. We must be compassionate — to engage with the intention of relieving the suffering of others.
My dear, I wonder if before the end
You ever thought about a children’s game—
I’m sure you must have played it too—in which
You ran along a narrow garden wall
Pretending it to be a mountain ledge
So steep a snowy darkness fell away
On either side to deeps invisible;
And when you felt your balance being lost
You jumped because you feared to fall, and thought
For only an instant: That was when I died.
That was a life ago. And now you’ve gone,
Who would no longer play the grown-ups’ game
Where, balanced on the ledge above the dark,
You go on running and you don’t look down,
Nor ever jump because you fear to fall.
— Howard Nemerov
“The only courage you ever need is the courage to live
the life of your dreams.”
— Oprah Winfrey