Margaret Thatcher

"Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the highroad to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction."

— Margaret Thatcher

British Prime Minister

1925 -

Self-discipline is the key to success in anything one attempts.  As creative leaders we need to nurture and practice self-discipline.  Self-discipline requires sacrifice in the short-term in order to achieve long-term goals.  Yet many do not have the patience to wait.  They want it all and they want it now.

I watched the movie, The Iron Lady, about the life of Margaret Thatcher this past weekend.  Whether or not you are a fan of Thatcher and her politics, this is a movie that you need to see.  It tells the story of Thatcher's rise to power from a grocer's daughter to a powerful world leader.  She lived a life of self-discipline and personal sacrifice that allowed her to accomplish many things on the world stage.

Meryl Streep, who won an Oscar for best actress in this movie, does a fantastic job in playing Margaret Thatcher.  Thatcher like President Reagan before her suffers  from dementia.  The story is told through flashbacks between present day and the past.  Watch the movie trailer.

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Frederick Franck

"Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly rediscover the world."

— Frederick Franck

1909 - 2006

Dutch Artist & Writer

Are you rediscovering the world?  Is your art teaching you to see the world in new ways?  Creativity is a tool to help us better understand the world in which we live.  Through our creativity we are able to explore and find new answers to old problems.  Creativity is a discipline that changes the way we see.  Are you practicing the discipline of creativity?

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Romare Bearden

"Painting and art cannot be taught.  You can save time if someone tells you to put blue and yellow together to make green, but the essence of painting is a self-disciplined activity that you have to learn by yourself."

— Romare Bearden

American Artist

1911 - 1978

The Train
Collage (1974)

People often say that painting and writing cannot be taught by others.  The best way to learn to write and paint is through painting and writing.  We discover who we are as creative leaders   by doing.  And while there is a lot of truth to this, I believe one can learn from others.  Not that one needs formal training, but rather the observation and interaction with others.  Those who have been painting or writing for years have much to teach the young if they are willing to listen.  But when the teaching is over, the student must still paint or write what is in his heart. He must create what his heart sees.

See some more art work by Romare Bearden.

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Jim Rohn

"Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment."

— Jim Rohn

American Author, Motivational Speaker

1930 - 2009

We all have dreams and goals but many of us never achieve them because we have not mastered the art of self-discipline.  I define self-discipline as sacrificing short-term pleasure for the achievement of long-term goals.  If you want to be a novelist but you never seem to find the time to write, you will never write your novel.  If you want to be a painter but spend your time partying with friends and not painting, you may never produce any great paintings.  The arts require a lot of self-discipline.  We need to be able to sacrifice the pleasure of the moment for the achievement of long-term success.

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Lisa Alther

"It had been fourteen years and I hadn't had anything published.  I had 250 rejection slips.  I got my first novel published and it was called Kinflicks.  It turned out to be a best seller."

— Lisa Alther

American Novelist

1944 -

The creative arts are not for the weak of will.  The creative arts require commitment, persistence and self-discipline in the face of cold-hearted rejection.  Do you have the self-discipline to stay focused when the world is screaming that you should quit and find a normal line of work?  Do you have the strength to keep going when you have received 250 rejection letters?  How long are you willing to wait for success?  Two years?  Five years?  Ten?  Twenty?

Listen to Lisa talk about the gravel road that eventually led to her success.

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George Sand

"The ease (of writing) increases with age, and thus I do not allow myself to work at this more than two or three months of each year. . . . Indeed I only write two or three hours per day, and the interior work is done while I scribble away at my watercolors."

— George Sand

French Novelist

1804 - 1876

Some writers struggle to write after early success.  The second and third novel are difficult to write.  Other writers are prolific.  They adopt a pseudonym so they can publish more.  Some writers face writer's block and struggle to write.

Like Sand, I have found it easier to write the older I become.  When I was young, everything had to be perfect.  So I struggled to find the right word, the right metaphor.  Perfection is not my goal today.  I just want to get the story down on paper.  I can sit anywhere and I write — even in a noisy mall or a quiet art museum.

What about you?  Is writing easy?  Or do you struggle to put words on paper?  Do artists struggle to paint?  I have come to art later in life so I am not trying for the perfect painting.  I enjoy the process of creating a painting or a sculpture.  And I don't worry about others because I am not looking to sell the piece.  I am painting to relax my spirit — to make me feel good.

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Frederick Franck

"I have learned that what I have not drawn, I have not really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle."

— Frederick Franck

Dutch Painter, Sculptor, Author

1909 - 2006

What we know of the world we know through our senses.  Yet, we often spend so much time in our head with our thoughts that we don't experience the world around us.  Have you ever walked past a flower, a tree or a stream a hundred times and yet know nothing of the stream, or tree or flower.  What have you missed in the world around you because you are so busy thinking about your life, your problems or your family?  When you begin to see the tree as it is, will you paint it in a different way.  Franck also said, "Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly rediscover the world."  Are you rediscovering the world around you through your drawing?

Do you hear the conversations of your friends and family members or are you so busy thinking about what you are going to say that you fail to listen to them.  A writer of dialogue must listen to the language used by the people around him.  Do you see how the people around you dress?  The way they carry themselves?  How they move about the room?  It is through the behavior we see that we find the clues to who the person is.  And it is through the behavior we describe that our readers know our characters.

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Robert Bly

"When anyone seriously pursues an art — painting, poetry, sculpture, composing — over twenty or thirty years, the sustained discipline carries the artist down to the countryside of grief, and that descent, resisted so long proves invigorating. . . . As I've gotten older, I find I am able to be nourished more by sorrow and to distinguish it from depression."

— Robert Bly

American Poet

1926 - 

I first heard Robert Bly read poetry in 1969 while I was in college and I still own a copy of his very first book of poetry, Silence in the Snowy Fields, which I bought when he was in town and is autographed by him.  He was majestic, expansive and seemed to blow the roof off the auditorium.  I fell in love with the poetry I read in that small sixty-page book, published by Wesleyan University Press, full of images of the midwest where I was born and raised.  Years later I had another opportunity to hear Bly read and I bought a collection of his prose poems, Morning Glory.  I own a number of his poetry books and his books of translated poems.  I even bought the book that made him rich and famous, Iron John, a non-fiction book I have never been able to finish reading.  

Here is a short poem that I love.  The last two lines have the feel of Japanese haiku.

Watering the Horse

How strange to think of giving up all ambition!

Suddenly I see with such clear eyes

The white flake of snow

That has just fallen in the horse's mane!

Here is another favorite poem of mine from his first collection.  This poem evokes the feeling of the rural countryside in which I grew up.  Anyone who grew up in the rural midwest will immediately feel at home.

Three Kinds of Pleasure

        

                   I

Sometimes, riding in a car, in Wisconsin

Or Illinois, you notice those dark telephone poles

One by one lift themselves out of the fence line

And slowly leap on the gray sky —

And past them, the snowy fields.

                   II

The darkness drifts down like snow on the picked cornfields

In Wisconsin:  and on these black trees

Scattered, one by one,

Through the winter fields —

We see stiff weeds and brownish stubble,

And white snow left now only in the wheeltracks of the combine.

                  III

It is a pleasure, also, to be driving

Toward Chicago, near dark,

And see the lights in the barns.

The bare trees more dignified than ever,

Like a fierce man on his deathbed,

And the ditches along the road half full of a private snow.

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