Unchain the Brain

In week eight of the Shattering the Meme novena, we examine the meme of self-limitation.  No matter how much we may say we want change in our lives, we tend to cling white-knuckled to the comfort of the familiar, never realizing how much that is keeping us stuck.

Unconsciously, we believe that we are only allowed a certain measure of success and that anything else is presumptuous.  In our careers, this manifests as a holding back, no matter how unhappy or unfulfilled we might be.  After all, what would your boss think if you said you wanted to own the company one day?  How would a client react if you said at the start of the project that you wanted to have it published?  It is certainly a conditioned response, this self-limitation meme, but did you ever stop to think about what would happen if there were no big thinkers?  We might all still be living hunter-gatherer existences.  It is not presumptuous to think big, it is wasteful to limit yourself.

In our lives we have a total of four resources; time, energy, relationships and money.  Everything we need is acquired by spending one or more of them.  The money thing is pretty self-evident as we live in a cash based economy.  But what about the others?  Well, much as having money wouldn’t do you any good at all if you buried it in the ground and didn’t spend it, you have to spend your other resources in order to enjoy what they can bring into your life as well.  Notice that I said spend not squander and also realize that these four resources are interdependent.  To live at your highest potential you have to understand that these resources (in effect all that you have) must be leveraged by actively investing in the life and career you want to have.

Well, that didn’t work
Failure.  That would mean that we had squandered our big four resources, right?  Wrong.  We operate in such fear of failure that it is easy to forget that it is the only means to success.  Our brain shuts down around the idea of risk-taking, or we dream big, but only at a really fuzzy global level and don’t see how their are opportunities for action all around us that would set us on the path the realizing those dreams.  Part of unchaining your brain from that rock is to cultivate resilience.  Failure of a task or venture is not failure of you as a person.  It simply means that that particular thing did not work out.  You may even be on the right tack and just need to allow for a different variable.  Find out why what you tried didn’t work, make the necessary adjustments and try again.  Even something as big as losing a job or a client does not make you a failure, it simply means that something wasn’t a good fit.  Resist the urge to extrapolate that event to your whole life and let pessimism and “I told you so” limited thinking kick in.  Instead, realize that you always have choices and resources.  Commit to moving forward and take control of the situation instead of being a passive victim.

Kick the “but”
When I work with clients and make suggestions that take them outside of their comfort zone, it is not uncommon to hear the “yes, but...” response.  What they are really saying is that their fear of the unfamiliar is stronger than their desire to succeed.  When you put it like that, all those excuses sound downright silly.  But we don’t very often put our “yes, but...” statements in that context, do we?  Instead, we buy into all of them, we turn our fears into pseudo-facts and talk ourselves right off that ledge.  Did you ever notice the relief you feel in those moments when you can convince yourself NOT to make a bold move?  However, what do you really get by staying stagnant in your life or career?  It’s easy to think that you are conserving your resources of time, energy, relationships and money by playing it safe, but the exact opposite is true.  No matter how much it may cost you to take a risk, think about what it costs you to stay stuck.  Is your energy sapped?  Are you upset all the time?  Do you harbor resentments?  Are you really enjoying and savoring life? 

Stay Curious
Instead of fearing change because you are focussing on what you may lose, think instead about change being the gateway to endless possibilities.  In nature, change is the means of generation.  Do you feel depressed that it is autumn and the leaves are going to fall, or do you enjoy the splendor of the trees cloaked in shades of yellow, red and orange?  You, too are part of the universe and the events in your life are meant to constantly evolve and change. There are cycles of growth. Even when you are in a “winter” it is only in preparation to regenerate again in a “spring.”  Recognizing when your fallow period is related to being stuck or that you are just between leaps evolves cultivating a curiosity and sense of wonderment.  In short, an appreciation of change.  Instead of shutting down your potential with “yes, but...”  reframe that response to say “what if...” and see what happens.  Stay open to all of the possibilities instead of focussing on the problems.

Shatter the Meme:
As human beings, we would be nowhere if we didn’t have a sense of wonderment and the desire to experiment.  It is your birthight to embrace the possibilities that come from a world where change is the only constant.  There is no virtue in limiting yourself and not working to achieve your fullest potential.  Instead, you are wasting your resources and cheating the world out of the opportunity to benefit from what you uniquely have to offer. Let your creativity soar- removing all the obstacles to your time and energy you place in your own way.

Minority Report

In week seven of the Shattering the Meme Novena, we focus on how to stop feeling like a victim.  Overcome feelings of being left out or treated unfairly by looking past the superficial differences and finding the more profound sense of connection that is available.

Do you have a chip on your shoulder because you feel that everybody else is ganged up against you?  Do you focus so intently on how you are different from everyone else (race, sexual orientation, gender, age, experience level) that you forget to notice how much more profoundly you are the same?  The minority meme is rife in creative professions because the criteria for success is so subjective.

If you feel insecure or dissatisfied, it’s way too easy to focus on that sense of isolation and to feel like you are a victim.  And minority status can be defined in many, many ways.  For example, you may feel like the young gun misunderstood by the senior members of your firm.  Or maybe you feel like you are more creative and loose in your work process than your hard-driving professional environment and that you are steamrollered, never getting an opportunity for your ideas to blossom.  Even the “usual”  kinds of minorities, based on race and gender  allow you to feel like you are not in control, thereby absolving you of all responsibility for your own success.  How do you really want the world to see you as a (fill in the blank) minority group, or as a talented creative person with the unique ability to (fill in the blank)?  I would suspect that it is the latter, so how do you stop allowing the former to shape your identity for yourself and others you interact with?

Birds of a feather
It’s important to see what you have in common with others in your workplace, to really work to find others with the unique and unusual traits that you share so that you have something to really bond over.  Even if you work at a firm where the culture is very innovation oriented and your co-workers and superiors are equally committed to thinking outside the box as you are, you will find an even greater affinity and sense of connection with someone who shares your trait for say, using storytelling techniques in the design process.  If you don’t feel that there is anyone you can connect with, can you identify others in your professional community who you can form an alliance or mentorship with?  Find your tribe and draw strength and energy (as well as validation) for the point of view and work style that you contribute to the profession. 

Step outside of the box
The less you define your self as any type of outcast, the less others will perceive you in that way.  Understand that what makes you different is what forms the basis of your identity.  You get to choose how you are perceived and defined by either playing into a stereotype, or playing into your strengths.  It’s critical to know the difference.  For example, I am an introvert.  Introverts are not the least bit shy, but we can seem rather aloof, as we tend to be more comfortable with an outside-looking-in approach to the world.  For many years of my life, I let others (first my extroverted mother, then teachers, then colleagues) make that core personality trait wrong.  I fought to push myself to be more extroverted, which of course, only led me to feel more like an awkward outsider.  Then my path crossed with Dr. John McIntosh, who headed up the urban design program for Arizona State University.  I was a young architect on the Phoenix Housing and Neighborhood Commission and looking to make a difference in my community and John saw that.  He helped me see how I could orchestrate the right collection of people in the room to take action on initiatives, not just talk about doing something.  Even more than that, he modeled unabashed introversion, while being a well respected and influential community leader.  I realized through my connection with him that I could do the work I wanted to do without having to change my personality.

Take a stand
As important as it is not to make yourself a victim when you feel less than connected to a group you work with, I am not insinuating that there is not real discrimination of every stripe going on in the world.  And that needs to be addressed, not ignored.  If looking for common ground is still not breaking the ice, or someone is willing to “play nice” and say things you want to hear to your face, but takes actions that show they view you otherwise, call them on that.  Ask them point blank to explain to you why they are not following through, or why the opportunities you have expressed a desire to achieve seem inaccessible.  Then, listen, really listen to their response.  If you receive constructive advice you can take action on, work with this person to put together a success plan with a timetable.  If you hear a response that creates self-doubt in you, makes you feel embarrassed for asking, sweeps your concern under the rug, or makes you feel inadequate, then your feelings of being a victim may very well be stemming from psychological manipulation called gaslighting (read my detailed post on that) or downright prejudice on the part of this individual.  In that case, you need to call a spade a spade and  leave that situation.


The purpose of looking past differences and finding common, shared traits is to help you feel less intimidated about building a network, finding a mentor and going for your goals big time.  The superstar of design that you admire is still just an designer and had to deal with the same basic challenges as you do every day.  Looking at them in that way, takes away the unapproachable “aura of success” and lets you see how you can best approach them to form a connection.

Editing out the opportunity

It’s week four of the Shattering the Meme Novena.  Especially in a recession economy, which focusses on lack and limits, our focus must shift to releasing judgement of ourselves and others in order to be more open to the possibilities that come from less rigid thinking.

How well do you know yourself?  Your real interests and capabilities?  I bet they are in there buried down deep, disconnected from what you actually do for a living, expressed maybe as a hobby, or maybe not at all.  Today, I would like you to ask yourself why.  Why are you so disconnected from what you really love to do?  Go, on, give all your reasons.  I’ll bet you have some really good ones.  Masterful rationalizations, all.  So good in fact, that I bet you have never even attempted to set any of the things that would help you realize your dream life in motion.  Or maybe you did in a halfhearted way, since you didn’t want to take that much risk or invest that strongly in something that wasn’t going to work out anyway.  Yeah.

What you have actually done without even realizing it was to edit opportunity right out of your life, just as a surgeon would excise a tumor.  You never truly explored the possibilities or made many plans.  You just knew you couldn’t or shouldn’t go in that direction.  What an insidious meme, the one that leaves us subconsciously longing and always suppressed, all the while believing that we are better off just doing what life expects of us.

Judge and Jury
When I work with coaching clients, this is often the biggest hurdle I find.  As a first step, I encourage them to do some very introspective work to get clarity about what they love to do and attach that to the reason they want to do it.  Then I ask them why they are not doing it already.  That is a profound question.  The answer, when you stop to think about, it is that you are not allowing yourself.  This lack of permission comes wrapped in all kinds of reasons that seem valid until you dig a little deeper.  Things like, “I have too many responsibilities right now to spend the money it would take to get set up,” or “The market for that is too small to really allow me to earn a living.” When I ask my clients how they know that those outcomes will occur if they allow themselves to explore a particular passion, they often have no answer.  They just know.  Because their conditioning (education, early childhood, work experience) told them so.  Before they even allowed the idea to be fully formed and vetted, all on their own, they shut it down.  Deemed it unworthy of seeing the light of day. 

Make the investment
It can be scary to follow your heart.  But you need to think about all the things you are losing by not doing so.  What is your happiness worth?  What does the stress you are experiencing right now doing work that doesn’t serve you cost in terms of your health and well-being?  What does the rat race do to your quality of life, or that of your family?  In economic terms, this is called the opportunity cost.  What you choose to forgo by playing it safe.  Playing is safe also prevents you from receiving the big payoff in every dimension of your life that comes from living with passion and purpose.  Clients, employers, members of your network, will all notice you in a much more positive way once you choose to invest in acquiring the skill and experience you need to do the work that you really love instead of the work that gets fed to you by default.  When you look at all of the costs of playing it safe (physical, mental and spiritual), it becomes obvious just how precarious of a position you put yourself in by staying stuck instead of making the bold moves towards living your true life’s purpose. Playing it safe isn’t so safe after all.

Beat back the lack
We can all fall prey to focusing on what we don’t have.  Especially in this economy, where we are faced with constant bad news, it’s easy to believe that we need to hold back instead of charging forward.  We want to conserve instead of expand.  To carefully guard our reserves, whether time, money or networking capital “just in case.”  Well, the rainy day is happening right now if you are anything but fulfilled and purpose-driven in your life and career.  The stress of trying to maintain the status quo is what makes you feel like you and what you have to offer will never be enough. Believing that there just isn’t opportunity to be had becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  What’s needed instead is to look at what you have to offer and to whom it will make a difference.  Sharing what you have to offer starting right now and making a difference in the world is far more important than holding back.  I liken this thinking to refusing to make a $20.00 donation to your favorite charity because you want to wait until you get rich and can give them an endowment.  It’s kind of ridiculous when you look at it in those terms, isn’t it?  Every little contribution you make does make a difference.  What’s more, is that they add up and propel you forward.

Shatter the meme:
The number one regret of the dying as reported by nurses who cared for hospice patients was that they had not lived a life true to themselves, but instead tried to meet everyone else’s expectations.  Allow yourself to think about who you really are and what you really want, even if it seems ridiculous or frivolous.  Play with the thought, get comfortable with it instead of immediately filing it away because you can’t see the path to achieve it.  In fact, banish all thoughts of “how” and just focus on why you have this dream.  The more you can get in touch with what motivates you, the easier it will become to not only see opportunities, but to fearlessly pursue them.  Then, choose to take action.  Once you do, you will be surprised at all of the opportunities that start to come your way related to your true life’s purpose.  It’s not a miracle, they were always available to you, but now you no longer have them painted over with wite out.

What does Success Look Like to You?

On week two of our Shattering the Meme novena, we look at how to tell the difference between illusion and reality, especially when it comes to how we define our success.  Success is not a destination, but a measuring stick.  When calculating how you measure up, make sure you are being honest with yourself and using valid criteria, not other people’s beliefs and agendas.

Mirror mirror on the wall...the evil queen just didn’t get it.  To her, beauty was defined very specifically as physical appearance. The mirror had a very different definition of beauty, or maybe it just changed its mind (since we never do learn of the mirror’s evaluation criteria, it’s hard to say what it was that made Snow White suddenly jump to the top of the mirror’s ranking). Whatever she had been doing to be declared “fairest of them all” suddenly stopped working for the queen and away went the daily affirmation that she had become so used to receiving. The queen was stuck in one definition of success - beauty - that she built her whole life around. When it was taken away from her, she reacted by trying to restore the past. 

Why go on about a fairy tale?  Because I think many of us define success as some version of vanquishing enemies, being a hero and living happily ever after.  Success comes to be an illusion, built on living up to other people’s expectations.  What success is really about is knowing that you are living your life to your fullest potential.  That requires taking the time to discover your true gifts and find a way to live your life as an expression of them.  Some common success memes that get shattered right now:

Letting others define you
Do you attach yourself to heroes and tie your self worth to how much praise or attention you can get from them? The queen could have spared herself a great deal of misery had she taken the time to think about what it was about beauty that really mattered so much to her.  She might have discovered beauty was not a particularly important or necessary criterion for a good queen (pity Queen Victoria wasn’t around until later).  Instead, she let a mirror define her, without even knowing the basis of the definition.  Everything was right with her world until she stopped hearing what she wanted to hear.    Have you lost the ability to know what you want for yourself because you are so busy trying to be something you think others will value?

Trying to eliminate the threat
Change is the one thing you can count on, and you either get out in front of it or get left behind.  In the red ocean view of the world that so many architects have unfortunately adopted, competition is a threat because you believe that it’s kill or be killed.  The evil queen set out to eliminate Snow White, thinking that that was the way to put herself back on top.  She never stopped to think about what her competition might be doing differently or how she might express her own beauty more strongly.  How many times do you think you are doing everything “right” and stubbornly persist in the same behaviors, becoming more and more competitive and cutthroat?  Success is never a static monolithic thing that you can “set and forget.”  It’s a constant state of becoming.  Understand that you need to adapt your strategies for achieving success to the changing factors around you.

Using the wrong criteria
I don’t know if much can be said to redeem the archetype of the evil stepmother, but it’s highly likely that the woman had some other positive attributes besides beauty.  By being stuck on a single dimension of herself, she was in an all or nothing position, where failure at life itself was the only alternative to being the “fairest of them all.”  How many times do you hold yourself to a standard of perfection?  Of all that you are capable of doing, all the things that you are really good at, you focus instead on a single attribute and allow yourself to feel like a failure because you haven’t achieved the fullest expression of that yet.

Ineffectively seeking feedback
Success is not a destination, its a measurement of whether you are on track to achieving personal fulfillment.  That said, it does require some external measures. However, external measures are a bit of a garbage-in/garbage-out proposition.  Let’s look at our evil queen example again.  This woman had a magic mirror, for God’s sake.  It always told the truth.  That’s a pretty powerful tool.  You think she might use it to find out if enemies were plotting the demise of her kingdom, or if a famine was on the horizon.  Instead, she asked it whether or not she was beautiful.  That’s because she was so stuck on being successful in the one way she had defined it for herself that nothing else mattered.  She could have gotten all kinds of useful information that would have made her loved and powerful (which is probably why she thought being beautiful was important anyway), she wouldn’t have had to compete to be “the most” of anything, and could have had everything she wanted just being herself.  But she didn’t trust that she was enough.  Use your feedback sources, be they a mentor, a client, a friend, a list of accomplishments to good effect by not filtering the information you seek so narrowly that you miss the larger message of how well you are really doing.

Shatter the Meme:
Think about what you want to happen in your life in order to consider yourself successful.  Look at those things you think are necessary for success and ask yourself why you think they are important.  Did someone else tell you that they were the only way to “make it?”  Do you think that someone whose opinion matters to you will be impressed?  Are other people expecting that you do these things in order for them to value you? Who said that particular attribute even was important?  Was it your mother, or a professor you admired?  What do they really know?

 Don’t get me wrong, I believe that we need to constantly challenge ourselves, to move outside of our comfort zones and grow.  But when you allow someone else, no matter how well meaning, to tell you what you should value you start to take on an idea of what success should be that is not your own.  You could check every box on their criteria list and still not feel successful because accomplishing those things may not resonate with you.  Success is living the fullest expression of yourself.  It is not living out someone else’s dream.

Shattering the Meme

For the third annual novena at the Patron Saint of Architecture, I want to help you to see all of the unlimited potential you have and start putting it to work for you.  Novenas are an annual chance to look in-depth at issues that affect how we operate in the world.  In past novenas we looked at how we can truly make a difference in the world, and how to overcome the things that drain our creativity.  This year, we will center around all of the things that we may not even know are holding us back, so that you can shatter those memes and become all that you were meant to be.

Memes, those ideas or beliefs that pervade our culture, are hard to avoid.  Like frogs in the pot, we don’t even know that they’re affecting us, they just seem to be the way it is.  As creative people we are especially susceptible to memes because there’s a certain voodoo around the act of creation.  When your work involves acts for which there is no right answer, you can only respond by evoking memes. The memes of a culture and its expectations, the memes of professional conduct, the memes of what a relationship with a client is supposed to look like.  But what if the meme is wrong? 

We can see the short-term effects of memes in viral internet content.  People get caught up in the topic, idiomatic speech may even be affected.  Then it passes.  Observing these micormemes allows us to see how something can be incredibly relevant due to factors taking place at the moment then pass away like a fad. I want to try to look at metamemes in much the same way.  That’s a lot harder to do.  Even if you can see that there may be something beyond, you might not see why it’s even in your interests to pursue it. 

Live outside the fishbowl
It’s important to realize that memes can operate on two different levels.  The horizontal level is what we absorb from our peers and other surroundings. Those memes can be, but aren’t always, easier to identify.  The more insidious memes are the ones that operate on a vertical level through cultural inheritance.  It’s what you learned about the culture of your profession from your professors and mentors, what your employers and co-workers have enforced, even what your parents thought.  If memes are all around us and have helped to form our beliefs about who we are and what’s possible in our lives and careers, that means we are not necessarily aware of them.  In this nine week series, we are going to bust through some common memes and shatter all of the limitations they hold.  I warn you, this will be both challenging and scary.  Your first reaction will be to disagree, but I ask you to sit with it and really think about why you might be unwilling to question a given issue.  We may not arrive at the same idea for shattering it, but just the realization that there could be a different approach is powerful.

Change the Equation
Believe it or not, most of us live our lives as if everything we encounter were a basic algebra problem.  We use the formulas we know to solve for x (ex. 6 + x = 10).  Unfortunately, solving for x means you have used a meme to eliminate the other variables, in our example that would be the number six or even the outcome, the number 10.  This very straightforward approach to problem solving often causes us to have tunnel vision about achieving outcomes.  If you have ever become frustrated about why you could be doing “all the right things” and still not get the desired outcome, you know what I am talking about.  I want to challenge you to think of things in a different way:  what do you really want the outcome to be?  Not the outcome you think you should achieve, but the one you really want.  Then, work backwards to see how you could achieve it.  Allow there to be more variables and less givens about the situation.  Use a little calculus, or even some differential equations.

Enter the World of Innovative Transformation
Innovative transformation is about challenging yourself to have a game-changing response to the opportunities in your life, instead of your automatic one.  How often do you start a new project the same way you start every other project?  I’m willing to bet you have all kinds of reasons why this is the best or only way to approach things.  You might be open to tweaking your process, but probably feel resistant to throwing it out wholesale.  But what if you did?  Silence all those limiting beliefs and just think about that.  What could happen?  Now think about all of the little things, the small and large decisions you make every single day.  Instead of making them on auto-pilot, start being conscious of them, and start asking yourself what assumptions are tied up in your typical actions.  Change your thinking and change your life.

For the next eight posts, I’m going to present common metamemes that we all deal with and give you strategies for looking at them in a whole different way.  I hope you’ll share your thoughts and experiences as you work to shatter each one.  The Patron community supports you and I know that you are unlimited.

Feast Day 2013: You are Unlimited

Today the Patron Saint of Architecture celebrates three years of helping bring inspiration and creativity to the forefront of what we do as architects.  What started as a personal need to affirm that architecture could and should be so much more than the professional opportunities that I was experiencing has now become a worldwide network of people who share that same purpose.  Each year, I build on the original intent and expand the content offerings; going from this blog to a facebook page, Pinterest account and, in this past year, a book.  As I challenge myself to experiment with new media and outreach efforts, I hope to not only build a community of creatives, but to encourage all of us to stretch outside of our comfort zone. 

I’ve come to realize that the comfort zone is a pretty deceptive place.  It’s what we know.  So we operate within a set of self-imposed constraints that limit our thinking about what’s possible.  Many of these constraints come from our education and professional experiences, and have permeated our understanding about what it means to practice architecture.  That’s why this year’s novena will be Shattering the Meme.  We’ll spend nine weeks exploring things about the profession of architecture that we just assume “have” to be that way and work to stop accepting the limiting premise of each one. 

In conjunction with this novena, I am launching my first ever series of teleclasses.  Based on my book, Career Crisis, which launched in April, the teleclasses begin next week with a free introductory session.  I am excited to bring the theme of applying your passion and purpose meaningfully to your career alive in an interactive way.  It’s one thing to read something, but nothing compares to actually being able to work through issues in a more direct way.  As architects, we often feel that we can and should be able to do it all, from graphic design to marketing to management, so it is natural for us to  think we can be our own coaches as well.  But coaching by its very nature is not a DIY endeavor. A coach can help you to understand your unique situation in a whole different way.  You need someone to encourage you to think beyond what you think is possible and challenge you achieve things that you really want (because that's the scary stuff you won't ever push yourself to do).  Someone who will tell you when you are allowing yourself to get distracted by being “too busy”  or when you are losing focus. 

You can begin to experience what it's like to work with a coach in the teleclasses, where we will spend an hour on each career theme and also do some individual “laser coaching,” where I will take questions from participants and provide targeted advice live on the call. 

If you want more, you can always work with me one on one in my career coaching program, which is a three week long intensive process.  I’m also pleased to announce a new coaching offering this year:  I Need a Quickie is specifically tailored to architects who really want to seek out coaching, but are still afraid to invest in themselves in this way.  While nowhere near as intensive as a coaching program, this new offering will let you buy an hour of one on one time with me to talk about career issues important to you.  I’m hoping that by offering this bridge to coaching, many of you will see how valuable it really is to work with me or another coach to up your game.  Wherever you are in your career, however much or little you have accomplished, you can always set your sights higher and achieve even more. 

We kicked off last year with the Change the World Novena, where I profiled architects who have taken it upon themselves to make the world a better place through the built environment.  Many of you viewed those architects as people who were somehow different from you.  You thought, “What they’re doing is great, but I can’t do that.  Who am I to think I can change the world?”  This year I’m not accepting that excuse- you are a gifted, creative, person, or you wouldn’t be an architect.  Who are you not to use that talent?  Get unstuck and shatter all those memes that are convincing you otherwise!

Avoiding the Architecture of Fear

Wow.  My post on the limiting beliefs of architects grew legs, stood, up and ran out the door. It was being chased.  While I never expect that readers of my blog will agree with me wholesale, reactions to this post fell very strongly into two camps.  The camp that agreed with me and said "Right on,  we need to overcome these limiting beliefs," made me feel that I had written about a meaningful and timely topic.  The camp that threw cold water on the very premise of the post confirmed it.  I noticed a very specific pattern that emerged among the naysayers.  It was fear.  Fear of being irrelevant,  seen as extravagant or uncooperative by clients.  It is this very fear that is being manifested as a reality in our profession.  Therefore, I have taken these comments, condensed them into some major themes around fear and share them with you today.  Since most of the discussion was generated on the American Institute of Architects Linked In Group, you can visit this page if you want to see the comments and discussion chain firsthand.

Fear: I will play into their worst stereotype
This one is tricky because no one wants to be typecast as the black clad ideologue with funky glasses who is using their client as a vehicle for their own artistic license.  Many comments I received were concerned that architects are our own worst enemy and that by pursuing a higher level of design, we were alienating our clients, showing them that we weren't listening to them and running up the costs.  It wouldn't be a stereotype if there were not some grains of truth here, mostly born out by Starchitects and their wannabes.  However,  being an advocate for solving the right problem and innovative solutions instead of being a waitress is not the same as being out of touch.  If anything, it shows you are more in touch and are providing the service they hired you to perform, instead of being a rubber  stamp.

Good design is too expensive, or too risky
Maybe it's because the design magazines are filled with examples of exotic materials and systems.  Maybe it's  because we don't really believe that you can be creative on a budget.  I was astounded at the number of people who lashed out at the very idea of bringing a higher level of design to their projects.  It truly saddened me to see architects with the mindset of a low level developer, believing that they were  providing value to their clients by delivering the staus quo.  Rather than meeting client expectations for adequacy, meet their expectations for a truly amazing space that meets needs they were heretofore afraid to state. Good design is carefully considered and responsive, and can absolutely be done with basic materials and on a budget with only the premium of creativity on your part.  A better thing to consider is how much you are paying to play it safe and add to the already bulging inventory of unremarkable buildings.

The profession can't afford this
Talk about fear-based thinking.  These commenters thought they were taking the high road by adopting a lofty, philosophical position about risk management and responsible architecture.  No wonder our profession is struggling.  What a limiting mindset to meekly take a backseat,  hoping to just be of some usefulness.  This only buys into a developer driven mentality and frankly, shows you already believe that architects are obsolete.  What the profession cannot afford is a bunch of synchophants who are afraid to be creative.  I had to chuckle that the most controversial comment in my post was a quote, "If you know it will work, it isn't creative,"from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic.  This quote to me captures the very essence of creativity: being unafraid to take on a new challenge, to think outside of the box, to stop recycling ideas from past projects.  Isn't this what our profession needs most?  Yet, many took that comment to mean that taking a risk meant abandoning functionality.  True, form should follow function, but how to best house that function is what the act of creating architecture is all about.  It's called a practice because it is an experiment.  Otherwise, we are just drafters.

To me, these fears underline the reason so many of us feel we are in a career crisis.  We have accepted the premise that we are lucky to have work and therefore we had better not rock the boat.  We are playing it so safe that it becomes doubtful that we are actually producing architecture at all.  I can empathize with my post-dissenters because I have worked for firms that propagated these fears and the limiting beliefs that spawn them.  I felt completely demoralized in my work during those years because I felt like I was not making anybody better as a result of the projects being produced in these conditions.

There is a better way and I have made it my mission to help other architects find it.  You can choose to follow along with my blog posts and facebook community, but if you are looking to get on the path to career transformation, you need to look at a more immersive experience.  I invite you to consider one on one career coaching, or to take part in my new telesminar series.  Based on my book, Career Crisis, the teleseminars will explore themes of finding your passion, understanding where you are in the creative cycles of your life,  and how to best position yourself to work in the way that is most fulfilling to you.  It is time to stop practicing an architecture of fear and move forward into producing meaningful, enriching spaces that allow us to work at our highest creative potential.

The Limiting Beliefs of Architects

As a profession dedicated to making our clients’ vision a reality, we do a lousy job of realizing our

vision for our own careers. Maybe that’s because so few architects have taken the time to have a career vision. They think they do, because they have embraced the thinking of their teachers, mentors, co-workers and friends. It’s a surprisingly pessimistic and monolithic point of view for a profession that prides itself on its creativity. As I was working on my book, and thinking about my career coaching sessions over the last few years, I realized time and again how much of the problem we have in getting fulfillment from our careers comes from limiting beliefs. These beliefs are so deeply a part of our “architect culture” that we don’t even recognize them. I teach people how to realize their passion, and the biggest challenge I encounter when working with them are these experiential lessons which are reinforced throughout our careers unless we break the pattern:

Competition is the path to success
We are primed from our days in the studio during college to compete with one another. To believe that there is a winner, and by default, losers. The RFP and interview process underscore this idea, leading firms to undercut one another in a race to the bottom. This commoditizes our work, which causes the design process and resulting building to have less value to both the client and society as a whole. It is a mindset of lack, believing that there is only so much pie to go around, and we better do whatever it takes to get our piece. It leads us to settle for less than we deserve in terms of compensation and design effort, to focus on bringing service instead of true innovation.
Danger of this belief: you feel your time has no value.
Overcome it by thinking differently about what you do and why. Don’t accept the premise of winners and losers, instead focus on the unexpressed needs you see in the situation and how you are uniquely qualified to meet them.

It’s fame or shame
I recently read an article by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, where he makes the incredibly profound statement, “If you know it will work it isn’t creative.” How many firms actually embrace a culture of experimentation? Even the ones that do have a pretty low threshold for failure. No one thinks that a scientist working in the lab on experiment after experiment, each result building on the knowledge to improve the next experiment is a loser because it may take years, even decades to discover something. But in our “creative” profession, we grovel with our tail between our legs whenever the client or contractor finds fault with us. Paradoxically, we are always looking for the project and opportunity that will be our “big break,” while secretly stewing over the successes of our competition.
Danger of this belief: you are afraid to take risks.
Overcome it by taking a step back from the everyday steps in the process and start to look at the big picture. Ask why not more often and don’t be afraid to have, then fully vet, big ideas.

Being provocative means you are smart
No, it likely means you’re an out of touch pompous ass, who’s had a few brilliant ideas. Our “upbringing” as architects tends to reward those who are unconventional just for the sake of being unconventional. Maybe because we buy into that fame or shame mentality so much. The provocateur is usually trying to overcome the conditioned risk adversity by putting so much out there that people will start to feel that they are unenlightened clods trapped in conventional thinking if they shut down the ideas. Unfortunately, this approach only reinforces a negative stereotype and is rooted less in a willingness to help people think differently about their needs than it is about the provocateur’s desire to get attention.
Danger of this belief: solving the problem is not as important to you as making a statement.
Overcome it by investing more insight into your effort. I believe that big ideas are not only important but necessary. However, the idea needs to have relevance to the situation at hand and be tied to solving a problem. Even more important the big idea needs to feel inclusive and allow others on the design or user group team to build upon it.

You can’t get rich and be an architect
Oh, look how hard you’re working, you poor burned out thing. Procrastinating out of exhaustion until the rush of adrenaline at the eleventh hour gives you that flash of brilliance you need to triumphantly complete the task. This reinforces a competitive culture, where burning the candle at both ends is a badge of honor. There is a kind of nobility in being the misunderstood artiste engaged in a valiant fight against the system. The truth: All nighters were a bad idea back in school and they are an even worse idea once you enter the working world. Vision and clarity don’t visit the exhausted. What’s more, if you are working long, crazy hours, you likely are going off on your own instead of collaborating.
Danger of this belief: you believe that individual effort matters more than collaboration
Overcome it by working smarter. Engage your team both in and out of house. If someone else can do a task even 80% as well as you can, it’s worth delegating it to them. Be a mentor and seek out mentors of your own. You don’t have to do this alone, and the end result will be better than if you burn yourself out trying.

Our profession desperately needs to become a lot more introspective. We need to reposition ourselves for the future like we mean it if we want the relevance we so desperately claim to seek. So as you look over these limiting beliefs (and we are all guilty of all of them to some degree), ask yourself, “what’s holding you back?”
For a more in depth look at how you are limiting yourself and strategies to fearlessly pursue the career you really want, check out Career Crisis.  Let me know what you think and how it helps you unbind your creativity.

What’s your Mountain?

How is being an architect like scaling Mount Everest?  I always read accounts of climbers with a sort of sick fascination, part of me wondering what would ever possess anyone to take on this task.  You can’t even see very far from that high up, and your body is so ravaged by the lack of oxygen and extreme cold that you can’t hang out up there and enjoy it.  As someone who is not athletic and is proud of myself that I attend yoga class three times a week, I don’t have a refined appreciation for the physical.  Especially an extreme sport like mountain climbing. I didn’t see the appeal of putting your life on hold for nearly a year to train, then scale this mountain.  Why, why, I thought would anyone risk their life like this?  Why would they make themselves so uncomfortable, put their bodies through such a grueling experience?  I recently read Mark Inglis’s story of how he scaled Mt. Everest as a double amputee. Mark’s account helped me to see that it was about more than just the ego. 

It’s easy to take the concept of scaling Everest as a totally literal pursuit.  The man vs. nature plot at its finest.  But that would be getting it wrong.  You don’t climb the mountain to conquer the mountain.  You climb to conquer yourself. It’s about setting a challenge and devoting yourself single-mindedly to meeting that challenge with every resource of your physical, mental and spiritual being.  If you are going to climb Everest, you cannot let anything stand in your way, especially not yourself.  You clear out your life to train and then make the climb.  And then you let go, you work with, not against the mountain.  You respect its seasons, weather patterns and above all the advice of your guides.  Depending on the year, you may not make it up and the fact that by waiting, you live to make the attempt another time has to be enough.

So back to life as an architect.  What’s your Everest?  What big goal do you have that you would devote yourself to achieve?  What matters so much to who you are that you will make the time and the space to realize it?  If you don’t know, or came up with some wimpy goal like “get a promotion,” you are not alone.  Maybe just thinking along these lines made you feel slightly depressed because your career is so NOT going the way you hoped it would.  You may even be rolling your eyes right now and thinking that having a goal as big as yourself is as ridiculous as it is unattainable.

I’m here to tell you that it’s not.  You can have a career that is life-affirming because it reinforces your sense of purpose in this world.  But first, you have to be deeply in touch with what that purpose is.  You have to have a personal mission statement and a plan that includes steps you can do today that align you with that purpose.  You have to clear away all the fears and all of the rationalizations that are holding you back.  Like the mountain climber, you have to eliminate all the waster activities in your professional life that are not directly moving you towards your goals. 
As a reader of this blog, you aren’t content to have just an average career.  You want to make a difference.  You want to operate as an inspiration to the world.  And I want to help you get there.  In addition to my blog posts, I offer career coaching services that allow you to work with me one on one on your individual career quest.  I’m also so excited to announce that I will very shortly be publishing my first book, Career Crisis.  This book contains many of the strategies I use with my coaching clients, but it let’s you use my techniques and act as your own coach.  It’s not very long on purpose because it’s not meant to dictate, but to guide you.  You have to do the work, but if you do, I promise you’ll be amazed at the transformation you see in your career and in your life.

Find your career mountain and know that you can get to the top.  Get ready to challenge yourself to your greatest potential, to concentrate your efforts to a single purpose, to push through hardships, and finally, to stand up on that summit and say, “Yes, yes, I did it!”

(Re)setting your Intentions

New Year's resolutions are something I have always viewed as pointless.  You either want to make a change or you don't. If you do, you begin that process at the point you set the intention, not some arbitrary time on the calendar.  However, there's no shortage of self-improvement advice this time of year, which inspired to write this New Year's Eve post because I felt that all of that wasn't enough- you need a lot more than retrospect on the passing year or self-improvement tips to help you have a successful year.  You need clear intent.

There's all kinds of superstitions and advice about what (or what not) to eat or wear or do to usher in good luck for the new year.   Some friends and I had a lot of fun exchanging our family good luck traditions on facebook, which led me to think about my favorite quote, "Luck favors the prepared."  You bring opportunity to yourself by being ready for it.  When you have a clear sense of who you are and what you want from your life, you become open to the things to which you can say yes, or no, on a daily basis that will usher in transformation.  No resolution will do that for you.

This chart perfectly sums up the open attitude
and clarity of purpose needed for success

Change, and the willingness to embrace it brings opportunity.  As a feng shui expert, I've been preparing for a new year by cleaning and clearing clutter from my life and will spend tomorrow re-setting intentions for the year ahead with my family.   I find this a good way to mentally let go of that which no longer serves me and make room for new opportunities. So don't drive yourself crazy trying to set all kinds of new goals.  Look within and take stock of how you have evolved.  Have you gotten sidetracked from your existing goals?  Do your goals from five years ago no longer serve you?  Are you complacent in your goals, or do you need to step outside your comfort zone to really achieve something big?

I invite you to do your own space clearing.  In the process of weeding out that which you don't need, use, or love, think about what the stuff you surround yourself says about who you are.  Place objects that affirm who you are or want to become in a prominent place.  Success is about your willingness to change.  You don't need more resolutions, just goals attuned to the person you wish to become.  Wishing you a happy and abundant 2013!  

See a countdown of the most popular Patron posts of 2012. 

What scares you as a creative?

Happy Halloween everyone!  Tradition has is that Halloween is the start of a transitional time when we are more connected to the spirit world- next stop is All Saints Day, when we look to our spiritual guides followed by All Souls Day, where we honor our ancestors, friends and mentors who have gone before us.

Keeping with the spirit of these three days, I wanted to take a little time as your virtual mentor to reflect on releasing the fears that hold you back, identifying your inspirations, and finding people willing to help guide you on your path to fulfillment. I love this infographic I found at Design Taxi for its humorous (precisely because it hits on some core truths) look at creative phobias.  That's the trick part- the way that we talk ourselves out of going for the things that we really want in our careers.

Now for the treat:  I am developing a series strictly related to mentoring and am looking for your input on the issues that are most important to you.  Please take some time to post in the comments section about your pressing career dilemmas.  You don't have to get personal or overly detailed (if you want to do that, please email me at thepatronsaintofarchitecture@gmail.com for a one-on one coaching session), just list some of the basic hobgobblins blocking your path to success.  Those career cobwebs' days are numbered.

Mission-driven

Week two of the Change the World novena takes us to the Democratic Republic of Congo to explore the concept as space as a basic human resource and the leadership role architects can play in making sure everyone has access to a supportive built environment.

 L'Ecole de Centre de Emmanuel: View of Courtyard

Leslie Nepveux is a young architectural designer.  Her story begins not unlike that of most young architects.  She worked hard to earn her degree in architecture from Oklahoma State University, graduated in 2005, got a job, and got laid off five years later.  Like many of us, Leslie was also searching for deeper meaning in her career and not so much finding it in a traditional work setting. A casualty of a bad economy and the old experience conundrum (no one wants to hire you without it, but if they don’t hire you, you won’t get it), Leslie took the bold step of deciding that she wasn’t going to wait around for the career-defining experiences she wanted to come to her.  She ignored all of the conventional wisdom and wrote her own set of rules.  Then she went to Africa. 

She wanted the work she did to make a difference, and she knew something about the needs in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) from her parents, who had served as missionaries there.  So, she emailed a contact of her father’s who is based in DRC and asked if they’d like to have an architect on the team.  If you’re thinking, “of course, they said yes, and it was probably like volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, only in Africa,”  you would be wrong.  What Leslie brought to the table was something only an architect could: vision. 

The local community non-denominational church in Kinshasa, DRC serves the region through a series of sister churches. They had identified two pressing needs related to the built environment; an addition to the three room school in Kinshasa and a prototype clinic/school building that could be constructed in more rural areas.  Because the area is so impoverished, waiting to raise the funds to hire a local architect would only delay the much-needed work.  Leslie’s offer to volunteer her time couldn’t have been better timed.  After sending out letters to friends and family to raise funds to pay for her flight and lodging, she set off on a two-week trip to Africa to meet with the Building Committee, explore the site and collect information from members of the community and conduct traffic studies and site observations.  She also took the time to learn about local construction methods (buildings are made of bricks formed on site utilizing excavation soils). 

Leslie’s skills are in management and production, but she had to pull together a planning and design team to respond to the project.  She assembled a team that included interior designers, structural engineers, and architecture professors and conducted a twelve person brainstorming session to generate big ideas.  What emerged was a concept that emphasizes the community’s needs for flexibility and leverages the functional and physical location of the school as hub of the community.  Multi-function classrooms also serve as office or meeting space when necessary.  An open outdoor courtyard space can be used for gatherings or performances.  Throughout the design process, she kept in touch with her clients in Kinshasa electronically, making tweaks to the design (the courtyard shape went from “L” to “U”), while also making sure that her construction details were simple and allowed interchangeable local materials.  For example, while the design calls for the classroom walls to be constructed of stone with a rebar foundation, that locally made adobe can be substituted, to make use of the excess soils on site as needed.  Leslie is currently in the process of helping her clients obtain a more complete cost estimate, which will then lead to fundraising efforts in order to begin construction. 

Leslie has volunteered all of her time to the projects in Africa and supported herself over the past two years doing contract work.  Like many who have had to cope with losing a job, she has also struggled with balancing earning  a living with being able to devote herself full time to doing the work in Africa.  When I asked her what the most significant things she has taken away from her self-directed internship, she had these insights:

It’s more about the concept than the design.  Especially in a third world country, materials and methods can be very fluid and dependent on availability of resources.  It’s important to stay flexible and that means that the concept driving design has to be that much more powerful and relevant in order to survive through construction.

Engaging the community is important.  Without their buy-in, the best efforts can be derailed, or your work will not have it's intended effect of helping people.

 You can (and should) work with an architect.  Leslie hopes that her work has helped to increase awareness of the value that architects bring to a project.  “Communities need to know that they are capable of hiring architects,” she says. Outreach efforts certainly help.  In addition to her experiences in the DRC, Leslie went with an engineering team in October of 2011 to Ghanna for a two week master planning charrette.

Leslie has recently been named a Design Fellow at the Building Community Workshop, a non-profit community design center doing work she loves, partly due to her self-sought experiences, which gave her the specific skills and expertise she wanted to cultivate.  Leslie’s message to her piers is very profound, “ As bad as the economy has been for employment, it has helped us grow and realize other areas of our life where we can practice architecture.  Being diverse is important and we get one-dimensional from our training.”  Seven years out of college, she has worked internationally, made a difference in several impoverished communities, learned about vernacular building techniques, managed a schedule, budget and design team, worked with clients and user groups.  She gave herself the career path she wanted, instead of hoping that opportunities would come along if she just took a job “for the experience.”

More than once during our interview, Leslie said, “I wish I could do more.”  If you’d like to help her design vision become a reality, you can make a donation to the Congo Projects

Leslie Nepveux is a 2005 graduate of Oklahoma State University. She is currently a Design Fellow at the Building Community Workshop and only a few exams away from completing the ARE. You can see more of her recent work in Africa at cargocollective.com/congocollective

Liberation: six steps to set your creativity free

Does your thinking always default to “fault?” Are you trapped in an endless game of “gotcha” with yourself?  Have you imprisoned your creative spirit in a cage of self doubt? As someone who expects perfection out of myself I can relate to the fears and desire to overachieve and exceed expectations that hold creative people back.  I recently read an excellent article on letting go by Tony Schwartz that got me thinking about how we can set ourselves free of things that don’t serve our highest self in order to make room for the things that do.  Sounds like a scary proposition- but it’s not.  What it is is nothing short of liberation.  Just as fear of failing can immobilize us and keep us stuck in a rut, letting the perfect be the enemy of the good causes us to aim low, and apologize for taking chances.  It causes that judge and jury in our heads to consistently level a guilty verdict. This is my list of six common creative prisons and recommendations for breaking out:

Shackled to the past
Maybe it took you a while to really get the hang of model building, or a design program.  Maybe you got some harsh criticisms of your work.  Maybe that first internship was a bit rocky as you learned the ropes.  Maybe, just maybe you learned from all of this and are now competent.  However, you got used to viewing yourself as inexperienced and mistake prone.  That self-image no longer is a true representation of the architect you are today.  Like the person who’s conquered a lifelong weight problem, and can’t stop seeing themselves as fat, you are locked inside your initial years as a fledgeling architect. Re-write your resume, update your LinkedIn profile, do something to affirm the architect you are today and keep celebrating that in order to change your self image so that you can feel empowered to make decisions from the point of view of who you are, not who you were.

Confined by busywork
No one ever says on their deathbed that they wished they’d worked more.  If anything they probably wished they’ed enjoyed life more and made more of an impact.  No, you can’t blow off deadlines, but you can prioritize.  Are you letting your to-do list be your excuse?  Whether it’s deadlines at work or personal projects, not giving yourself permission to move forward is not only silly, but it makes you feel so uninspired that you probably won’t actually get all those tasks done anyway.  You eat a pie one bite at a time.  At the beginning of each day, look at what parts of your life goals you can accomplish on that day.  It may be a single task and that’s fine because it advanced your agenda.  Contract, distill and excel.  When you say no to the expansive opportunities before you in order to scratch off some (insignificant in a global view) task, you are really saying no to your own expansion.

Locked into Entitlement
Do you brood about what’s not right or not fair in your career?  The client who treated you poorly, the promotion you didn’t get?  Do you beat yourself up over every real or imagined misstep?  The root of those feelings is an unyielding and harsh view of yourself as all or nothing.  Like a teenager, you believe that you deserve certain things and that life is lived at the extremes of always and never.  As your mother probably told you then, “life’s not fair.”  She was right.  Life’s not just about you.  The people you interact with have their own motives- you are far better served when you focus on understanding them because what really matters is the result and how you respond to a situation, not all the things that happened along the way to cause it.

Energetically in Isolation
You might think you took the high road by not telling your boss off, or giving that unappreciative client a lecture on the value of your service.  But you are still holding on to the resentment and it colors all of your future interactions not only with the individual in question but with others in your professional and private life as well.  Realize that by being non-confrontational, you are choosing to make yourself invisible- no wonder you aren’t on these people’s A-List.  Think about your passion for what you do as a ball of energy that lives at your core.  The more expansive the energy, the further out the glow extends.  Other people are attracted to that glow and want to work with you.  The greatest architects have such expansive energy that people will crowd into lecture halls to hear what they have to say, buy their monographs and wish they could work for or with them.  When you can’t let go of all of your resentments or regrets, you diminish your energy.  Think about that glass-half empty colleague or friend  How drawn to that person do you (or clients) feel?  Then realize that, at times, we are all that person.  Choose to be aware of when you are letting your anger, doubts and fears diminish your energy.  Then take steps to let go.  Stop suppressing your emotions and instead think about whether you actually made your point of view heard.   Calmly and with an open mind approach the person and ask them to recount their decision/actions from their point of view.  You may be surprised at what you learn.

On the chain gang of Trying Too Hard
Are you trying to make your clients like you more by practically wiping their noses for them?   Score points with your boss by being a workaholic?  Being a doormat diminishes your expertise and loses any respect people will have for you.  A project is a partnership and all involved have to understand their roles and responsibilities.  Decisions and directives (or lack of them) have consequences.  Don’t try to sweep client driven issues or office problems under the rug and cheerfully try to compensate by doing others work for them.  So often, we try to just make our situation work and do it all. You never want to put yourself in a position of being held accountable for an outcome in an areas where you have no responsibility. Your boss and your client’s main objective is to have a successful project.  If they aren’t giving you what you need to accomplish this, the greatest service you can provide is one of coaching them on how they can help make the outcome a success. 

Rotting in the dungeon of the Status Quo
What’s good for General Bullmoose is not necessarily what’s good for you.  If you are trying to live up to the expectations of your family, co-workers, society, you are engaged in conformance.  Conformity erodes creativity.  I am not suggesting that you have to be an angry, angry artist who rejects the world in order to be successful.  I am telling you that you need to know yourself and make decisions because they are right for you.  Unfortunately, we’re all likely to hit cruise control when we feel that our lives are basically going in a good direction.  It usually takes some disruptive event to create a breakthrough.  Why?  Because being shaken out of your status quo stupor makes you refocus on what really matters to you.  In the disruptive state, you reject limits and question rules.  Make bold, purposeful moves in your life and you will fail, but you will also succeed beyond your wildest dreams.    When you take actions with purpose, not just because you can or should, miracles can happen.

Who caged your creativity? Who cares?  What’s important to remember is that you hold the key to your own creative freedom. Unlock your own liberation.

Superheroes of the Built World

Last week, I took trapeze lessons.  A group of co-workers have taken on a challenge to do extreme sports activities over the course of the year and sent an email inviting others to join.  I could not hit reply fast enough- what an adventure!  When I got up on that platform, my inner daredevil took over and it was beyond thrilling.  I only regret that I do not have the body of an acrobat, and thus could not do things like a catch and release (but I tried, I tried).  After I develop more core strength, I will go back again in the hopes of successfully completing this stunt.  My four year old self is begging for the opportunity. You see, this was a childhood fantasy come true; I loved going to the circus and, next to the clowns, the acrobats were my favorite. I wanted to be one when I grew up, causing my mother some bit of consternation. While I did pursue gymnastics lessons though high school, I never competed and by the time I was eight or so, I had abandoned my dream career in the circus for being an astrophysicist, then a teacher, then an artist, only finding my way to architecture late in high school. My time on the trapeze got me thinking about what our childhood fantasy careers are really trying to tell us about who we are.

One thing they don’t tell us is to play it safe

Children crave the action oriented, things that serve an obvious purpose with a touch of adventure thrown in. They don’t dream of hours spent in mind-numbing meetings, being heckled by a bullying boss or playing office politics.  They don’t fantasize about the drudgery of overtime because of over-promised deadlines.  They most certainly do not aspire to being awarded some silly title that will pigeon-hole them into a constrained set of roles.  In fact, if you were to present any of these dismal (but all too real) scenarios to a child, they would respond by proposing some bold brash action to put the perpetrator of such misery in his or her place.

This visceral response, commonly echoed in comics, and even some movies, allows the hero to stand up for him or herself, indulging in the supreme satisfaction of defeating evil, telling off an annoying person, double crossing a backstabber  or ceremoniously walking away from oppressive expectations like a toxic job or relationship.  Many times this is coupled with  a physical act- literally vanquishing life’s villain.  We can’t legally do many of these things in real life, so we bury our frustrations and resign ourselves to our fate.  Kapow!  That’s the sound of me smacking you upside the head (virtually of course).  When you feel the urge to be resigned is when you should resign - literally - from whatever is oppressing your ability to be great.  Reconnect with your childhood self and your innermost passions- in other words, look beyond the ordinary career path.

What would Wonder Woman do?
As a child, you truly believed you could change the world.  What you may not realize is that you still can.  You don’t have to accept less than your expectations.  In career paths laden with compromise and nuance, our purpose gets lost.  This is a creativity buzzkill to say the least.  Choose to embark on a more adventurous route:

Lead a double life
No, you don’t need to have a secret identity (unless you want to), but you do need to have more than one dimension.  You can deal with the sometimes mundane aspects involved in being Diana Prince when you know that as Wonder Woman, you are saving the world.  Many times when I talk to someone who is frustrated in their career, they usually work at their job and that’s about it.  They have become flattened, so the consequences of the day to day effort involved in a project or interpersonal business relationships become all consuming.  If you have lost perspective in this way, you need to look for opportunities to live your passion outside of your job.  Volunteer in the community, apply to be a member of a board or commission- do something else that matters to you to expand your network.  It might seem counter-intuitive, but when you expose yourself to fun and inspiring activities (like trapezing), you actually become better at solving workplace problems and making career choices.

Be a hero
You are an architect, so why isn’t your city better?  People on the street may not cry out for help like they do in comic books, but it’s not very heroic of you to keep ignoring obvious need.  Heroes don’t let a purse snatcher get away because they’d rather wait for their archenemy to launch some diabolical plot.  They help wherever they are needed.  So should you. Take initiative and work to make a change. 

Confront your nemesis
What’s holding you back?  What are you too afraid to even attempt?  If you take the time to really think about it, these root fears of inadequacy or failure are the excuse you use not to pursue things that really matter  to you.  They make you risk adverse and keep you stuck in that rut you always complain about being stuck in.  Challenge yourself and remember, those elaborate plots to eliminate the hero were always foiled in the end (mostly because they were way too elaborate).  Your nemesis is really just you over-thinking everything.

Over the next few weeks, I am launching my second Patron Saint of Architecture novena (click on the tab at the top of the page to read last year's Breaking Points and Turning Points novena).  Change the World (an experiment), will profile cities as seen through the lens of the real-life superheroes who weren’t afraid to step outside their comfort zone and champion a cause in the built environment.  What they did made a difference, and you will get to hear their stories so that you, too can be inspired to use your powers as an architect for the greater good.   Before you shut down this idea by automatically thinking that you can’t possibly pull off a stunt like this, I want to share the most profound thing I discovered at my trapeze lesson: falling is truly no big deal.  It’s how you get down when you are done with your act.

Feast Day 2012: Stay Inspired

Today, the Patron Saint of Architecture turns two!  When I made my first post on May 26, 2010, I never imagined that this blog would have touched so many lives.  I've met some wonderful architects from all over the world, had the opportunity to interview some amazing people on the subject of inspiration and creativity, taken a deep dive into the issues that hold us back as creatives in the Breaking Points and Turning Points novena, and gotten even more exposure for the blog through Wellness: The Series, my monthly article for Urban Times.  The past year has included expansion into new platforms- creating a Patron facebook page where I post daily doses of inspiration (so like it if you haven't already) as well as more interactive content like surveys and sharing by other sites like Healthcare Innovation by Design and Loth Furniture.  You can also visit the Enlighten Yourself link on the right column of this page to see my recommended reading for you in the categories of business, architecture and creative resources.  Just today, I created a Patron board on Pinterest, to allow creative images to be shared.  As I get this going, you will have the opportunity to post your ongoing work or favorite images to share with the group.  I am toying with the idea of a little You Tube streaming for the coming year as well! 

All of you devotees had an exciting year of opportunities to inspire you to be your best creative selves.  Please join in the litany of inspiration by sharing a quick story with all of us in the comments section.  As I learned last year, our greatest triumphs come from challenging ourselves.  When we know what we want and ask for it, it is surprising how easily we can get it.  For example, I never dreamed that author Robin Stern would agree to an interview about gaslighting, just because I looked her up and sent her an email, or well-known executive coach Lisa Petrilli would talk to me about leadership or Therapeutic Landscape expert Naomi Sachs would share her insights into biophilic design.  They all were so generous with their time and knowledge, and those interviews were some of the top posts of the past year - all it took was me truly pushing my introverted self to approach them.

Look for this year's novena, Change the World (An Experiment), an upcoming series that interviews changemakers in nine different cities about the role they played in turning their community around.  I hope that their inspirational stories will show you all the ways that you too can make a difference as an architect.

So, if you are sitting at your remarkably uninspiring desk feeling like all you do is churn out work to meet demands and deadlines, don't forget that inspiration is what you make of it- put on your party hat, grab a balloon and some cake and celebrate your creativity!  As a prize for all of you, please download the feast day icon - you didn't even have to play a festival game to win it!

Be your next restoration/preservation project

“Creativity is as much about restoration as challenging yourself,” I thought one Sunday morning while feeling utterly weighed down by a bunch of stuff I had to do.  The creative mind is just not built to slog, yet as creative individuals we often get ourselves dug in so deep with our big ideas or constant ideation that slog we do.  I posted my thought on the Patron facebook page  and twitter the following day and was a bit surprised by how much that statement resonated.  In an interesting bit of synchronicity, I also happened to read posts on three other blogs that I follow with a similar theme.  Apparently it’s been a long spring.  I know it has for me.  Since February, I have been so busy between work, blogging for both this site and Urban Times, getting feng shui certified, and general life management (taxes anyone) that I feel as though I can barely come up for air.  So in the interests of opening the collective windows of our minds to let a little sunshine in, I have listed my top six personal restoration projects:

Recognize the difference between struggle and effort
As architects, we're no stranger to long hours.  But there is a difference between the creative effort that flows from us and the stuff that feels way to much like work.  Working in "the zone" can be incredibly energizing.  Feeling oppressed by your to-do list is a depleting struggle.  When we are in struggle mode, we feel that we have to burn the candle at both ends just to keep on top of things. If you are struggling, you are working hard, not smart and you should stop that right now. 

Fun is inspirational
Sometimes your best idea for a project may come from observing a food vendor at a carnival.  Not only does having fun provide us with restoration, it also gets our brains channeled in a different way- which is the very essence of creativity.  Here's how it works:  When you are noodling a design problem, you never really stop thinking about it, it lives in the back of your mind.  When your thoughts stop flowing (struggle mode) and you try to force them, the brain gets locked into a nonproductive static loop.  When you go do something else, your mind is free to play and suddenly you find yourself seeing parallels between the problem you are trying to solve and all kinds of (seemingly) incongruous things.

Put yourself on the schedule
Haven't had a haircut in months, got a knot of tension in your neck that you've been downing Advils like candy to work around?  You are ignoring self care.  Just as a building needs to be maintained, so does your body, mind and spirit.  When we put ourselves last, we operate from a mindset of depletion.  This restricts access to our creative flow, impacting the way we relate to our clients coworkers, even friends and family.  Grumpy, energy-sapped you is not necessarily even going to want to attend that industry lunch, let alone be a networking superstar who walks away with a pocketful of business cards.  Some of your best contacts can be those casual ones, like the woman you see each week at yoga, the manager of your salon, your dentist, the mother of your kid's play date.  Seek out and frequent restorative care and activities of all stripes and take the time to invest in your relationships there.

Abolish prerequisites
Perhaps it was the experience of taking college courses that got us here.  We so often feel that we have to choose between the things we would like to do and all the required activities of life. Chores (both at work and at home) are NOT a prerequisite to any other activity.  When it comes to work/life balance it's not "either/or", but "both /and." I personally struggle a lot with this one.  I find that it helps to plan to reward myself with at least one thing a day in order to keep my energy levels up and to try and take a break and switch gears whenever I catch myself getting stuck in the struggle.    

Ditch the victim within
When you feel diminished and small, that telegraphs in your actions and interactions.  Being expansive allows you to have a positive outlook, and channel your creativity.  It also draws others to you like a magnet.  That interaction with others in turn leads to more creativity.  Walk away from Victimville, home of oppressive depleting tasks and unrecognized effort and choose to empower your efforts.  Get the help you need to slog through the tasks that deplete or depress you, be selective in your commitments, seek out and ask for what contributes to your life and career goals.  Are you doing the work of your draftsman?  Ask yourself why you feel you need to do this: lack of trust in their work (fire or train them better), perfectionism on your part (done is better than perfect), or a way to avoid your own fears or hesitations on taking on creative challenges (take the leap).  If you truly find yourself drawn to chores when faced with a big project or challenge, think about why you are subconsciously choosing to be a victim of busy work instead of giving yourself permission to shine.  Then go do something fun instead of scheduling those fixtures. 

Be outcome focused
In a perfect world, we'd all live with such clarity of purpose that every action we took would be advancing that purpose.  In real life, we get distracted.  It's a lot easier to put effort into an activity when we understand how completing it will contribute to achieving a long or short term goal. Staying result-focused helps us get through the tedious work, because we can see where it ends.  It also helps us to trim the unnecessary activities we often take on because we assume we have to, but haven't fully thought through why. When you are outcome focused, you honor your own effort and the efforts of others.

Just like a building, our figurative paint can peel, our mental light bulbs need to be changed and our air needs to be circulated to keep from breeding mold spores.  We can also find that upon closer inspection, we need a little remodel of our lives to keep on track with our higher purpose.  Take on your life as your next project without fear of bold moves- making space is what you do.