Life as a Creative Process Rather than an Objective

When I focus on creating myself, my quality of life improves.

When I approach my life as a creative process, I tend to be more productive, tolerant and confident. For me, a creative life process is one in which, as a practical matter, I assume that I am only able to control my own actions, that other people can only control their actions and that the world cannot act at all. Actions, in general, are not means to ends but means to create other means.

From that perspective, I free myself from the persistent feeling that I need to control the world and the people in it before they control me, presumably in a manner that hurts me and benefits them.

I alone control my actions, so I alone create my personal image — one which changes as my needs change.

Since I cannot control the actions of others (or of worldly situations), I use creative instruments — rhetoric, art, body language, persuasive actions — to advance my objectives through influence, not force.

The idea that I can force someone to do what I think they should do is foolish, and the idea that other people owe it to me, somehow, to act as I think they should is naive. Both of these ideas are…