Most people merely consume their way through life, their lives are all-consuming where almost every aspect of their lives is someone else’s creation. It’s no surprise why we do this, as we often spend the first quarter of our lives, our most important years of learning, consuming other peoples creations instead of creating the life we want. Are you creating the life you want or consuming the life you have?
Get In To The Habit Of Asking Yourself: “Does This Support The Life I’m Trying To Create?”
“The easiest thing to be in the world is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don’t let them put you in that position.” ~ Leo Buscaglia
“Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.” ~ Albert Einstein
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
“It’s not our life that determines how we live, it’s how we LIVE that determines our life.” ~ Sallie Felton
“Learning is creation, not consumption. Knowledge is not something a learner absorbs, but something a learner creates.” ~ George Couros
"The secret of American schooling is that it doesn’t teach the way children learn, and it isn’t supposed to; school was engineered to serve a concealed command economy and a deliberately re-stratified social order. It wasn’t made for the benefit of kids and families as those individuals and institutions would define their own needs. School is the first impression children get of organized society; like most first impressions, it is the lasting one. Life according to school is dull and stupid, only consumption promises relief: Coke, Big Macs, fashion jeans, that’s where real meaning is found, that is the classroom’s lesson, however indirectly delivered.“ ~ John Taylor Gatto
The idea is not to feel like you have to create everything, but showing your kids that they have the power to create the world they want will have a big impact on them as they will be more motivated to start tinkering and inventing ideas for what’s possible and even impossible. When we create, we bring our individuality to the world in a magnificent way because we are directing our lives and painting our very own canvas. You see, most people that have achieved great success in life didn’t get there by degrees or accolades, it’s because they made their own way and created a life of passion.
“Children have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves.” ~ Jean Piaget
“The object of our attention becomes the reality of our world.” ~ Gregg Braden
“This existence isn’t about learning to accept reality; but rather remembering your power to create it.” ~ Michael Cummings
“Nothing will stop you being creative more effectively as the fear of making a
mistake.” ~ John Cleese
“Children in the 21st (century) have been transformed from net producers of their own toy and play culture, to net consumers of play culture imposed by adults.” ~ David Elkind
“Our salvation lies not in knowing, but in creating!” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
“Creativity is a gift. It doesn’t come through if the air is cluttered.” ~ John Lennon
“Almost all creativity requires purposeful play.” ~ Abraham Maslow
“The things you own end up owning you.” ~ Chuck Palahniuk [Author of the award-winning novel Fight Club]
“The best things in life aren’t things” ~ Ann Landers (1918 - 2002)
“The more you know, the less you need.” ~ Yvon Chouinard, [Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman]
“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” ~ A.S.
“Money doesn’t bring happiness and creativity. Your creativity and happiness brings money.” ~ Sam Rosen
“He who buys what he does not need, steals from himself.” ~ Swedish Proverb
“Our economy is based upon people wanting more; their happiness on wanting less.” ~ Frank A. Clark
“The principle goal of education is to create men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.” ~ Jean Piaget (…men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered.")
“The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.” ~ Albert Einstein [Ideas and Opinions]
“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” ~ Albert Einstein
“We all need empty hours in our lives or we will have no time to create or dream.” ~ Robert Coles
“Human beings are radically different from the rest of life on earth. We have imaginations. As a result we have unlimited powers of creativity.” ~ Sir Ken Robinson, [Out of Our Minds]
“The question is whether or not you choose to disturb the world around you, or if you choose to let it go on as if you had never arrived.” ~ Ann Patchett, [Novelist]
“The challenge is to make anti-consumerism joyful by emphasizing the satisfaction and necessity of becoming more sustainable and refusing to fuel a system grounded in the exploitation of people and the environment.” ~ Alan Bradshaw [Professor of Marketing]
“Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system of debt, they can’t afford the time to think. Tuition fee increases are a “disciplinary technique,” and, by the time students graduate, they are not only loaded with debt, but have also internalized the “disciplinarian culture.” This makes them efficient components of the consumer economy.” ~ Noam Chomsky
https://twitter.com/Fact/status/1189089234738659329
School is all about consuming, following the herd, instead of creating:
As The Minimalists would say Create More, Consume Less which is why they also love unschooling:
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“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.” ~ Steve Jobs, 1997
“Fitting in is a short term strategy that takes you nowhere. Standing out is long term strategy that takes guts and produces results” ~ Seth Godin
“If you want to have a better performance than the crowd, you must do things differently from the crowd.” ~ Sir John Templeton
“When you are born into a world where you don’t fit in, it’s because you were born to help create a new one.” ~ Anonymous
“Nature is busy creating absolutely unique individuals, whereas culture has invented a single mold to which all must conform. It is grotesque.” ~ U. G. Krishnamurti
“The reward for conformity is that everyone likes you but yourself.” ~ Rita Mae Brown
“Freedom & creativity require breaking out of the hypnosis of social conditioning.” ~ Deepak Chopra
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The differences between fitting in & standing out
To Fit In, You Need To:
Conform
Consume
To Stand Out, You Need To:
Harness Your Individuality (differ)
Create
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This all begs the question, what can we start creating in our lives instead of consuming?
There are tons of YouTube videos that can really help motivate and inspire you to create almost anything.
- Experiences | Create experiences instead of consuming curriculums because children learn by doing, not consuming.
- Food | Growing our own food
- Meals | Making our own meals
- Personal Care Products | Make your own soap, shampoo, toothpaste, makeup (fruit makes for the best makeup, especially blackberries), lotions, shave cream (or just use coconut oil instead of consuming a product made in a factory).
What are you creating instead of consuming?
Schools teach people to GET instead of MAKE…
