How our perspective, our intent, and the outcome we ultimately produce is impacted by our inner drive to either consume or create.
Future Guardian,
Live to Learn. Give to Earn.
This foundational "motto" of The Guardian Academy has deep layers of self reflection, self understanding, and power of giving and Creation built into it.
Creation.
There's a power there.
A power which taps into the formless void of existence within which life as we know it, time, energy, joy, sadness, have all emerged.
What does it mean to really create? I don't just mean to make something.
And how do we know when we are CREATING and "giving to earn" vs CONSUMING and contributing little to that power of giving?
I have found two opposing internal drives. I want to talk about them as Creation and Consumption.
Because how you perceive yourself and your motivations on this spectrum ultimately dictates how you impact others and 'Give to Earn' in this life.
What is Creation?
What do you think of when you think of Creation?
Do you think of making things?
Is building a house Creation?
Let's talk Lego for a moment.
Lego makes for an excellent example of how I think of Creation.
Just putting Lego pieces together is not Creation.
Putting a set of Lego together to make the thing on the box is not Creation.
Creation is about ... well ... creating something that was not there before.
And the something I'm talking about almost always goes beyond the physical form.
The Lego pieces were already there. You just put them in a particular order. You didn't make something new, you reordered that which was already made.
So putting the Lego pieces together is NOT Creation.
I would argue the same about building a house.
Building a house is not Creation.
You are just reordering materials that were already created.
It's not the thing itself that is the Creation.
(I think this is one of the things I find so bothersome about gurus and charlatans. Often all they are doing is reordering that which already exists, slapping a new label on it, and then saying "look what I created." But more on that in a minute)
But,
What happens when you reorder Lego pieces to "make" a starship, and then that starship is piloted by The Last Starfighter In the Galaxy, who sets out on a lonely mission to defeat the enemy that lives in Planet Laundry.
THAT's Creation.
The Creation of a world, of a story, of an experience.
As I wrote that, I imagined a child finishing the last piece on the Lego set and then suddenly transforming the entire thing into this imaginary world, buzzing around the house between laundry baskets.
That is Creation ... pulling from that which already exists something which could never otherwise exist without the input of the creator ... and that Creation impacts other things in the world.
This might be semantically confusing because we can argue ultimately that everything in existence is reformed matter, but I'm talking about the meaningful essence of things. (You might even call Creation an emergent property of our reality, but that's a conversation for another time)
Let's explore deeper.
Creation births NEW
Creation is about the birth of something new.
The new house itself being built is not Creation, but the life that is able to happen within, the home that is able to be made by the people who go live in the house, THAT is the Creation.
We identify the physical form as Creation so often because we visually SEE something that wasn't there before, but we often fail to recognize that the stuff the new thing was made out of already was created.
Water is created from the combination of Hydrogen and Oxygen, but rather than being a construct it is a Creation because it's something new, and itself makes possible that which could not otherwise exist (life as we know it).
The house is built ultimately from trees which were themselves created.
Creation Gives
Creation is a POWER that gives.
Creation is what happens when something new is brought into the world which gives to us that which we could not otherwise experience, have, or benefit from.
Take the Lego example. Creation with Lego is the world which gives the child joy, imagination, and growth.
Lego can create growth and worlds in children, but it is not the CONSTRUCT of the Lego pieces themselves which is the Creation, rather that which the construct can itself create from the heart of the child.
Creation is Infinite
Creation is an act that continues. When you create something new, that Creation continues on the chain of creative power.
Creation births something new that would otherwise not exist. It gives life, it gives power, it gives new Creation.
So the Creation itself is infinite.
What is Consumption?
Consumption Takes
Consumption is a taking force.
Consumption is what happens when you use material without creating anything.
Building a house is Consumption. It's the Consumption of natural materials in the world. Of trees, of metals, etc.
That Consumption leads to Creation IF the house creates a home and a life for people.
But the act of building the structure itself is a consumptive act.
Consumption Minimizes
Consumption often minimizes. It pulls in. It takes materials, ideas, people and reduces them for the purpose of taking the element that is desired.
Consumptive business pulls people into buy and then discards those people, or never treats them as people to begin with, being only interested in harvesting the money from them.
Those people might then create something from that experience, but the business itself and the people running it are not creating, they are consuming.
We know they are consuming because their act minimizes people and takes from them.
Consumption is Temporary
Consumption is a force that requires constant input. Consumption will not naturally happen, EXCEPT in the case where that Consumption is a part of a process of Creation.
Creation is POWER. Consumption is FORCE. Creation is INFINITE. Consumption is FINITE.
Creation draws life toward it naturally. And in that natural world, processes of Creation do use Consumption. But Consumption is always temporary, either falling away into nothing when the external force enacting the Consumption disappears, or transitioning into Creation and becoming something else entirely.
Where this Idea Originated
I realized this dynamic thinking through a particular situation I often see in business (and gurus and charlatans).
That is, work for the purpose of making a sale.
I see it all the time.
Entrepreneur comes up with an idea which they think will sell and make them money.
They put together a product or an offer around this motivation.
They sell it.
Then what?
What's really being created here?
I don't think there's anything inherently wrong in selling. In creating offers.
But let's revisit DALA.
If your intent is to create ... are you really creating ... if your drive in making an offer and a sale is to take money.
I think that these scenarios where work is done for the purpose of making a sale ... this is actually Consumption. Not Creation.
I used to have a client. They were a marketing agency. They got the clients, and paid me to execute on the work they ordered.
I was bothered by the work though.
Because most of the time, the work was a façade.
There was a core of work which was indeed necessary for producing a result for the client ... but there was quite a lot about the rest of the work, and how all the work was presented, which was about the appearance of value.
My client, the agency, sold to their clients an appearance of success.
Most of the time they got results, because they chose clients who benefitted from an infinite change. Going from 0 to 1. When you have no way to capture email leads, create an ongoing email conversation, and turn those email leads into customers, someone coming in with an email lead to customer package, no matter how basic that package is, will produce an infinite change in your business.
But I was bothered by the work.
Because we weren't really creating anything.
We were just an engine of Consumption.
This was most obvious in the work that I was hired to make which was entirely done in order to justify the expense to the client.
This was Consumption because the thing we made was finite. The thing we made was NOT powerful. The thing we made only served to justify the expense of making it.
You Might Argue
You might argue the semantics of this, after all we usually helped business owners "get results" (even if they were not everlasting results)
But the heart of the process was not Creation.
The offers, the presentation, the stuff being done, was all mostly being done to make money for the agency, and not to create something new and impactful. Rather than the agency existing to create new real impact and change for other businesses, the agency existed to *use* other businesses in order to make money for the people in the agency.
"BUT MAKING MONEY IS THE POINT OF BUSINESS" you might be shouting at your screen
Yes and no.
To ME, making money is not the point of business.
And that is my point in all of this.
Making money is a necessary component of the system of business, and the point of that system to ME is to create something new and meaningful.
"Semantics" you say
Well, let's find out …
Creation is a New Bridge
Much of my work in marketing and business, as I approach it, is creating bridges.
This is because I lean into Creation.
My heart is about Creation.
I can't stand Consumption when it involves consuming others.
It feels dirty to me to create work and "business" which only exists for the purpose of Consumption.
I lean into this with email marketing by focusing on systems that GIVE. Systems that create enviable and enjoyable experiences. Systems that don't ask from you, but instead when the time is right, give you opportunities that you hope to find.
A lot of this is about bridges.
Bridges of understanding.
There's a neat little concept I learned in a video called Liminal Thinking. {link}
The essence is that we all live our lives standing on pyramids of reality perception. Everything about how we perceive reality is based on the pyramid of belief and understanding we have built beneath us throughout our lives.
And we're each here, on our own pyramids. Some are easier to step between than others.
But much of the time, when you go to interact with someone else and share a new idea or understanding, that step is too wide, too great.
In order to create understanding (and therefore something new, changing behavior), you have to build a bridge between the pyramids.
Ever have an epiphany?
A new idea or concept is presented to you in such a way that you go "WOW, yea duh, that's so clear, I never thought of that."
And from that point on, you can't see the world in a different way. Fundamental shifts in perspective and understanding.
DALA is like that.1
Open Loops are like that.2
The Rocky Road is like that.3
Let's take The Rocky Road for example.
The story of this concept revolves around tapping out songs.
This comes from a dissertation by Stanford Student, Elizabeth Louise Newton in 1990 - called "The Rocky Road from Action to Intention." In the study, the author had two people sit at a table. One person would tap out a song on the table with their finger, the other would guess what the song is.
The author had individuals guess beforehand how often the other person would guess the song accurately. The estimates were 40%-50%. After running the test, having one person tap a song and the other guess what it was, the guessers were accurate less than 2% of the time.
This is because when we tap out a song, we have many accompaniments to that tapping in our head. We can hear the song, because we can hear the rest of the music. But the other person can't hear what is in our head. They just hear the finger tapping and fill it in with whatever accompaniments they imagine to try to make a song in their head.
And this is what communication with others is like. You often have accompaniments in your head which the other person cannot hear/see/know.
That is the essence of "The Rocky Road."
Most people who hear that concept the first time, have a head smack of realization. Of COURSE communicating is challenging, we all have these unique accompaniments in our head that make OUR perspective make sense to us.
The effect, the epiphany, is to forever alter your perception, your belief, and your pyramid.
THAT is Creation.
Creation of a bridge of understanding, of a new perspective, of a new reality.
THAT is infinite.
Once you have this new understanding it will forever inform your growth as a person.
That is forever giving and good.
Give to Earn.
When does the sale make sense for Creation?
It makes sense when the sale CREATES SOMETHING NEW with infinite power.
Making work which includes a sale (or more) as part of the process, because the sale is needed to keep breath in the system … THAT is Creation.
We sell in a business because money is the lifeblood of the business. That's just reality.
But if we are Creation forward and focused, the sale can itself be a part of Creation, by making it possible to continue the work of Creation and evolution that you set out to do with that business.
TGA for example.
We have a paid level of the TGA Substack. Not because we want to make a buck off your desire to learn and grow, but because that money makes it possible to keep CREATING the change and impact for you that we want to create.
That line IS the difference.
The difference between the motivation to sell and make money because you want to take money and the selling and making money because you want to create that POWER to keep creating something new.
This line is much more defined than you think.
Because I do believe that Creation and Consumption are not possible to exist at the same time.
Consumption can lead to Creation, but they ultimately exist within the same space of our intention and action, and therefore cannot exist at the same time.
Leaning into Creation naturally takes you away from Consumption, and leaning into Consumption naturally takes you away from Creation.
I also find that Creation lends itself more naturally toward longer term business thinking, and Consumption toward shorter term business thinking. Similar to the perspective of Finite vs Infinite games of business (and life).
If your goal is to play an Infinite game in business or in life, then in my opinion the only way to do this well is to lead into the natural power of cCreation. If you attempt to play an Infinite game through Consumption, you will eventually lose because you cannot infinitely apply the necessary force (and you'll run out of things to consume anyway, without Creation).
Bringing it All Together
Let's revisit now that idea from the beginning - how our perspective, our intent, and the outcome we ultimately produce is impacted by our inner drive to either consume or create.
I believe if your inner desire and motivation is to create then you will likely align with what I am saying.
There is absolutely, I believe, a distinction between people who build business and move through life with an inner drive of Creation vs those whose inner drive is Consumption.
The drive of Creation leads to constructing business in a much different way. It leads to making your life in a much different way.
I’ve used business as an example in this, but the concept applies to all of life.
Give to Earn is powered by Creation.
I am not motivated by the making of money outside of executing on the purpose of the business or project I'm embarking upon.
Yes this is made messy by the actual literal technical need to make money in order to survive.
But this is why figuring out who you are, figuring out what you do best, figuring out what you want in life, and aligning all of these is such a powerful and important move.
Because you CAN have a situation where you lean into Creation while fulfilling your own needs without sacrificing anything. And if you are Creation motivated then in order to survive you MUST find that alignment.
And look, we are all subject to the need to survive. It will be necessary at times to consume in order to do so. That is human.
There are also people who will read this and get angry. They'll think "hey I love to create, I'm not Consumption driven!" While feeling like what I'm saying about Consumption aligns with their perspective and actions in business.
To all of you I say ...
This is all just A Mirror. 4
DALA.
Remember there is no judgment here. And you should not judge yourself either. Just use this as a mirror to gain greater understanding of yourself and then use THAT to change how you move closer to what you want.
Do you have a heart of Creation? Lean into that infinite power.
Do you find you are currently driven by Consumption? Well, maybe question that. Dig into yourself and see where your power of Creation is lying.
I believe we all have the power of Creation in our heart ... we just may need a little help in finding the truth of that power in ourselves.
I love this refreshing take on creativity. This is some serious noodle candy. Thank you!
🔥