One Squiggly Line Blog
Hand-drawn pictures can make things clear, simple, and fun in blogs, too!
Here’s a little create Halloween fun. Print out this DoodleBlocks sheet or put it into a drawing app on your ipad. Then fill in the blank boxes following along with the Halloween theme. Be sure to spend no more than 2 minutes per block. Also, be sure to continue any lines that touch the boundaries of the block — remember creativity is all about making connections. And be sure to color!
More DoodleBlock fun and a 30 day challenge available in the One Squiggly Line Classroom.
Why are we afraid of failure?
It’s embarrassing. It’s humiliating. And perhaps it makes us feel weak and small inside.
When’s the last time you failed? How did it make you feel? Do you remember your reaction?
Perhaps it was a test. Poor performance at work. An interview. Suggesting a new idea.
Were you nervous? Did you cry? Get angry? Did you shy away and never try again?
Oftentimes these emotions are uncomfortable. Although difficult to experience, they lead to some of the most important lessons, opening up many doors for us later on in life.
We live in a culture where everything appears to be perfect and “normal” on the outside. Our social media accounts portray this.
The reality is that life is messy. We’re not always perfect people. And if we try to always stay within the lines, we’ll never know what lies beyond.
It’s important to allow ourselves to be open to failure and rejection, because on the other side is a reward - either a lesson to be learned, or you achieve what you intended.
This doesn't mean to be stupid with our failures, but rather, to be smart with our intentions and our reactions.
It’s not the failure itself that’s important. What’s important is that we learn from our failures and implement these lessons into our lives.
Ask yourself: If I fail at this, what’s the worst that can happen?
Failure is one of the most important tools for a creative life.
When we’re comfortable encountering failure and rejection, only then will we be able to experience results that we’ve never seen before.
A creative life is one that has experienced failure multiple times - not recoiling from it, but embracing, learning and implementing its lessons.
Failure is a steppingstone to personal success and creativity.
Do you know what love feels like?
Does it make your heart skip several beats? Does it make you feel nervous? Excited? Content? Happy? Calm?
Love feels different for everyone - we each have our own love language. It’s our goal to identify how we respond and react to love.
In order to do so, we must become more familiar with ourselves.
This doesn’t just apply to romantic relationships. This applies to all aspects of our lives - our jobs, our friends, ourselves, as well as our significant others.
It’s important to fall in love with our lives, or at least certain aspects of them, as our lives are too short for mediocracy. Our lives are too short for mediocre careers, hobbies and relationships.
We must not settle for something that doesn’t stir our heart. We must try and live our lives in accordance with our passions.
In order to find love, we must know what we’re passionate about.
This all takes takes time, experience, and even failure. We must not be afraid of encountering new experiences, as every new and unfamiliar experience is valuable in helping us learn more about ourselves.
How are you going to learn more about yourself and your love language? What experiences do you want to have this year? What areas do you want to grow in?
Friendly hand-drawn visuals can breathe new life into an old message. The topic of New Year's resolutions has been covered time and time again. So much so that people stop really paying attention to it. In effect, it becomes invisible.
When that happens, a new approach is needed. Something to break the pattern and grab people's eye. No need to make it fancy or complex. Simple can be very powerful. Plus, when you keep things simple, they're less scary so you're more likely to follow through.
Many people don't consider themselves creative because they can’t “draw” or “paint”.
The reality is that creativity can take on a variety of forms - many forms beyond the physical realm. In fact, creativity starts and is born from our internal world. Our goal is to figure out which medium best portrays our personal creativity.
Thus, we must make sure we cultivate an environment that is conducive to creativity. But how do we do that? How do we know what that environment looks like? Isn’t it different for everyone?
Yes.
The first step, and the most important step, is to become more familiar with ourselves.
We must be able to recognize the types of things that stir our heart, set our soul on fire, and make us come alive. Because once we recognize them, then we can begin to replicate them.
And the only way to find out is by trying out a variety of different things, as creativity demands quantity.
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
-Howard Thurman
By: Meredith Illig
I took an Uber home today and the driver dropped me off at a location near my apartment that I’m not used to getting dropped off at. Initially I was a bit frustrated because I had to walk a couple yards further than normal.
But, as I was walking, I started to appreciate it because it gave me a new perspective that I needed at the time. It was mid-week, and I had been going through my same routine without too much thought - wake up, go to work, go home, etc. This small instance changed my mindset for a moment and bumped me out of my normal routine. The scenery had changed, and I saw my apartment from a new perspective which I hadn’t seen before.
This brought me back to when I first moved here. To my mindset, and to the excitement I had. I felt different, as if I adopted a new pair of lenses. My day felt different from the other ones, and it got me thinking that I need to break more patterns.
So I decided to go to the gym. I also sat on the bench at my apartment, peacefully enjoying nature. And I prayed for the first time in awhile.
I decided to break up my usual routine, and instead fill it with new perspectives.
It was refreshing.
I didn’t feel so robotic. I felt alive.
It’s important to change our routines from time to time. New perspectives bring forth creative thinking patterns.
If we stay on the same path everyday, chances are we’ll tend to have the same thoughts as we’ve always had. If we don’t evaluate our lives on a regular basis, we can easily fall into the trap of forming habits that are not conducive to a creative life.
We must evaluate and edit our lives on a frequent basis.
“The only thing you sometimes have control over is perspective. You don't have control over your situation. But you have a choice about how you view it.”
-Chris Pine
Creativity demands quantity. Creativity comes from being exposed to a lot of different stimuli. It comes from having a lot of different experiences. It’s being able to draw from each of these experiences, and the unique reservoir associated with it. When we have a lot of different experiences, we can continue to build upon new and old ideas with the wisdom we’ve gained.
In order to come up with a great idea, we need to have large quantity of ideas to pick and choose from, and experiment with. It’s easy to pick the first ideas that come to our mind, and it’s oftentimes the case that we stop after the first few ideas and fail to go further.
We need to open our minds to more ideas. We can’t stop at our first ideas. Our first ideas are typically generic, and already thought of before. The more ideas we come up with, and the more we suspend our judgement, the more novel our ideas are. We must stretch our minds to think further, and to suspend any judgement.
This is particularly helpful with brainstorming - of trying to come up with a good idea, whether for a work project or a personal project.
The creative mind is the mind that doesn’t stop at the first idea.
Visual thinking is a simple way to increase the amount of knowledge that sticks in your brain. And the more knowledge you have, the more building block you have to create with.
Hand-drawn visuals to make things clear, simple, and fun so you can understand more deeply, communicate more clearly, and act more confidently. Visual Notes ~ Illustration ~ Sketch Animation ~ Graphic Recording ~ Other Creative Services.
One Squiggly Line | San Francisco Bay Area & beyond!, California, USA