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Thanksgiving, Sharing, And Healthy Screen Time

I love thanksgiving, it’s a holiday that has it all. Great food, family, friends, football, sharing, giving, and thankfulness.

This thanksgiving I’m focused on the sharing thing. Giving what I have to others. I’ve been sharing blog posts every day since mid September (2019), sharing this much content has been surprisingly easy and is extremely helpful to me.

The older I get the more I want to be around people. In the past I didn’t care much about this. My personality is introvert meaning I feel energized by being alone.

But there are things in life that go beyond personalities.

Not sharing is toxic, healthy water flows. It takes two pieces of iron to sharpen a blade. “Iron sharpens iron”, each gives up some metal to make the blade sharp.

Sharing what you have is important. Consuming-only, causes disease and toxicity. If it’s social media consuming it is well documented to cause anxiety and depression.

Many only think of money when it comes to giving and sharing. But if we don’t have extra money we can still be givers and sharers.

Without money we can give our time.

Without money we can share humor and a laugh.

Without money we can share teachings.

Without money we can share insight and wisdom.

Without money we can share compliments and appreciation.

“But Peter said, “I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!”” – Acts‬ ‭3:6‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Social media, like all other things in life needs to be a two-way flow. We give out and we also consume. If we only consume and scroll all day, everyday it becomes a bad thing in our lives. A destructive force for anger, covetousness and even depression.

It becomes a thing that we should not pay the internet company to continue.

But it doesn’t have to be that way, we can make screen time a good thing by sharing often.

Jesus once said to his followers “let your light shine before others so that they might see your good works…”

Here are 3 personal rules I suggest for social media use to begin today.

1) For every two posts that you scroll/consume share a post of your own. This takes a lot of effort at first but it gets much easier. But it will make you more helpful and it will redirect your mind to creativity rather than to anxiety-provoking scrolling and comparing. If you can’t think of things to share then get off! Quit scrolling!

2) Find a niche that you can uniquely be helpful to others. Experiences you can share, insights, struggles you’ve overcome and share on that.

3) Expand your sharing and make your social media use a tool for your own channel or site or blog.

“Give and it will be given to you.” Take only and what you have may be taken from you. We were not made to only be consumers.

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My 3 Hours in the Mountain

Three Hours in Mount Columbia

In early May I traveled to Buena Vista, Colorado staying in a cabin at the base of Mount Columbia. I was there with my wife and 5 children on vacation at about 9000 feet in elevation thanks to the generosity of Ken and Diane Davis. One Sunday that we were there we stayed in the cabin after a very dangerous day of hail and blizzard conditions near Colorado Springs. As terrifying that 4-hour ride home was last night (should have been 2), Sunday was as good. Days like that are what vacations are all about for me. A time to write, to pray and a time to reflect about the path we are on.

I spent about hours in the mountain, it felt like those 3 hours exploring and praying negated a year of life-stress for me. I hiked up 3 Elks Stream Trail up to the base of Mount Columbia, it was calling me. The temperature was 45 and sunny and the 6″ of snow from last night was quickly melting away in the sun. It was dropping from the trees, filling up the stream for me to drink. I walked about a mile up the trail.

Colorado Wildlife

I saw many signs of Rocky Mountain life including a large coyote print in the snow, the paw was shockingly large, larger than what we see in NY. I also saw a large dropping from an elk and his hoof prints. As I wrote this I heard maybe the same coyote calling near where I was sitting taking photos earlier.

As I walked back to the cabin I heard an Elk calling from about 200 yards down in another raveen so I decided to walk down in pursuit. This raveen then brought me to another part of the mountain where it is too steep to walk.  I walked up as far as I could then sat down and took pictures of the breath-taking view. In one photo I saw a hawk soaring …below me. I sitting on a very steep area from where the hawk was soaring with the mountains in the background on the other side.

above a soaring hawk

above a soaring hawk

Book Ideas

I also started writing a book on this trip. Its a book about how creativity is the result of the communion and love between God and man. Some chapters of this book is already written. After seeing another corner of God’s creation (Rocky Mountains) and reading the creation story in Genesis and John, I realized that the entire creation. The universe itself, all of humanity is a result from the mutual love and communion between the Father and Son. The Greek word for this love and communion is koinonia.

The premise of the book explores the fact that all of creation is a result of their unmatched love and shared life.  This is the reason for life, this is the purpose of the creation. The mutual communion between people and God and then people with other people is the key driver of human creativity. I see many of examples of this.

Rocky Mountain Coyote Track

Rocky Mountain Coyote Track

Thanks for reading.

 

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Three Traits of Creative People

I’ve observed in successful scientists, in myself and in highly productive authors, I’m talking about the type of authors who have consistently produced high quality books for years. Anyone can become more creative by making sure they possess the following three traits.

    1. A master of knowledge, in general the more knowledge the better. It is easier to be creative, to invent and to build processes around subjects we have a lot of knowledge in, knowledge; whether gained by experience or by formal education can be a tremendous boost to human creativity. This mastery of knowledge makes humans unique, the ability to store and re-use knowledge gives us the unique ability to be creative and I belive is a clue as to the meaning of human life
    2. Humility is often in opposition to the mastery of knowledge in most people and therefore is difficult to maintain. Those who lack humility often allow their intelligence to take them into a very pessimistic place. They assume they know more than they do and overtime this is a major creativity destroyer. I’ve seen this in action with dozens of brilliant scientists and academics.       Our lack of humility makes our great intelligence almost useless, this is seen in refusing to collaborate and making bad assumptions about what we think we know.
    1. An optimistic mindset is seen in trying new things and in acknowledging we don’t know everything. Learning can happen by experience faster and often more thoroughly then by theorizing. Optimism creates the environment for the mastery of more learning, more knowledge and therefore more creativity.

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If you want to be more creative or make the teams you manage more creative start first with these three traits. Here is a great example of scientist and engineer creativity and innovation at Corning Inc.

What other traits have you observed in highly creative people?

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