I very much loved… the feeling of bringing… totally unrelated… areas of my life together as one can in fiction.
-John Cheever
There are many creative connections between seemingly disparate professional areas and interests. Recently, I was a guest on Jim Beach’s award winning radio show: SCHOOL FOR STARTUPS RADIO. Jim is a best-selling author, serial entrepreneur, international speaker and teacher. The conversation was stimulating, serendipitous and wide-reaching, important because few professional careers can be single-tracked today. Most of us will have multiple careers and we might well connect together many different areas in which we have worked – or in which we had hoped to work – or never even thought of entering. We will recreate ourselves in many ways throughout our lives. It is important to be open to the new and learn from each other. In Jim Beach’s radio interview of me, we covered the role of creative thinking in many areas of life including running:
Because I had explored the similarities between creativity and running a 56-mile ultra-marathon in my latest book, KOPTOE, TRANSCENDING BOUNDARIES: THE COMRADES MARATHON, Jim asked me how running connected to business-entrepreneurship. There are similarities such as being self-challenging, goal-oriented, being prepared to commit to the grueling practice required to finish what you had set out to do. It’s about not giving up. Simon, one of the runners in KOPTOE, who transcended enormously difficult political and social boundaries, is an example of this kind of grit. So is Sammy (Sam Harris) one of the youngest Holocaust survivors, a subject of Eric Cosh and my documentary movie SAMMY THE JOURNEY, as well as my two companion books: IF YOU CAN MAKE IT, MR. HARRIS…SO CAN I. Each is a case study of an individual with an extraordinary creative spirit – both recreated their own lives, transcending enormous hardships and yet, still thriving.
The creative spirit is apparent in similar and different ways in many areas of our lives. “We need to perceive the similarities among things and the differences, and know that if something is similar, it does not necessarily mean it is identical…our creative ability will connect things easily and rapidly and the connections will make sense, for if they do not, they will be hastily eliminated and other connections will be tried. Our hunches will tell us which combinations are appropriate and which are not.” (HAVE YOU EVER HAD A HUNCH: The Importance of Creative Thinking)
Listening to more about these creative connections on Jim Beach’s award winning radio show: SCHOOL FOR STARTUPS RADIO!