I got back from Roskilde Festival sunday night. Monday was for catching up on stuff and today I feel like creative writing. It’s fantastic, because it’s one of the things I love the most, the total flow of needing to get things down on “paper” and shared away for inspiration.

These days I feel like im in some sort of vacuum waiting to burst out. It was the same when I released “return on involvement” in Danish last year. And with the english book “return on involvement” coming out + my new e-book (working title “social media value chain”, which I still need to find out if I can publish calling it a value chain without getting myself in trouble).

Another things that’s on my mind is the process of moving. We are (still) selling our gorgeous apartment and we’re moving back to my childhood home in Elsinore (about 50 km around from where we live now). Talking to the bank and facing the “when will your apartment be sold” question or “how many has been out to see it” makes me tired.

But – I turn to writing and researching for clients and myself. Now, one of the things that popped up in my curly head today, was a fun trick that I think will help you gather acknowledgement and fame (and make you into the rockstar that I KNOW you want to be).

One of the most important and interesting parts of my business is to figure out what people are saying about you. Both the lovers and the haters, the likers and ignorers (the people who ignore you for some apparent reason) and the rest who hasn’t had the chance to meet you yet. There’s a couple of things that always gets me going and makes me put myself on the spot all the time.

These things are the facts that:

- I believe that about 10% of all people in the world will be straight out negative about you. If you expect that, then the path to being your fullest self and daring to be different isn’t that hard. You will experience that some people thinks that what you’re most passionate about is the most stupid waste of time. Accept that these people are around and get going. Don’t focus on them. on the contrary I choose to believe a lot of people thinks that what I do kicks a**. I need to believe that – you do too.

- It takes quite a long time to get people to find out what you actually do – don’t worry they will come around if it’s for them.

- “They” will screw you over. it’s likely to happen so why not expect it?

- I will come out of every situation stronger.

- That you need to think about these things in a positive way, otherwise you wont publish your next piece of brilliant content, or the next – maybe it’s not exactly accurate, but it get’s your self-esteem up and makes you dare to be yourself. You’re on a special mission and nothing is going to stop you. You’re doing something that no one else has done before – because it has that magic touch of you on it.

But a way to direct this and to strategize around people, is to get aware of what it is that you want people to say about you. Put it down on paper.

So here’s the questions I asked myself (and my own answers below):
Why do you want the lovers to love your work ?

Because they think it rocks. Because it gives them value and that kind of “Henriette” insight and creativity that they didn’t know they where looking for. Because it’s made to inspire. Because it will make them more money and have their business running better… (and that’s also why I believe that Toothless Tiger (aka. my business) has been in business for 5 years, and is still going better than strong=)

Why should/would people hate you ?

If you think I’m an obnoxious woman, who likes to voice my opinion and whom you can’t stand. Don’t like me. Not even on facebook. Don’t retweet. Don’t sign up for my newsletter.  It’s ok. Question my authority. Tell your friends to hate me too. I’m fine without you. No worries. You will be fine without me as well.

Why do they like what you’re doing ?

Because they are inspired by me and my work. They think I am a creative individual who gives them value.

Why do they choose to ignore you ?

One of the things I continuously say in my head is that they deliberately ignore me because they are afraid of me – sometimes I even say it’s because they are jealous. I need to believe that  it’s because I am better, faster, smarter, sexier and more insightful than them

What do you want the in-betweeners to say after the first time the read/hear/see you ?

That I gave them insights they haven’t thought about. That my ideas where genuine. That they would love to work with me at some point.

This is a giving exercise to do. It helps you position yourself. Now look at the answers to your questions and figure out: how will you make it happen ?

There’s a lot of talk about insecurity and lack of self-confidence all around these days. Here’s my creative advise for you on how to boost your self-confidence while being yourself and a “personal brand” which in my case means – erhm : Henriette Weber.

1. be thankful for who you are
2. ignore everybody
3. believe that you’re NOT misunderstood
4. if you don’t feel like a princess, a style icon, a glamazon – it’s OK I don’t either – I feel like me.
5. don’t listen to what other people say
6. start creating – be active and proactive
7. do epic shit
8. state stuff. Maybe even do a personal manifesto
9. get going everyday – don’t do too much
10. don’t believe that you have to be perfect
11. live in the now
12. don’t focus on the negative – focus on the support from people who love what you’re doing
13. Creativity is the way to differentiate
14. look gorgeous no matter what size you are
15. embrace your faults
16. interview people and ask them for your opinion on you
17. if you did something that sucked (hey it happens sometime) don’t linger – get back up on your horse
18. find out how you should start selling – what fits your personality and go after it
19. Get THOSE shoes – they’re probably worth every penny they boost your self-confidence
20. don’t hide behind social media – participate
21. be thankful for the challenges you get
22. stand out
23. if you see something and think it’s cool – it really is
24. keep writing/going
25. follow-up
26. network strategically
27. Love
28. And (- I’ll personally get really upset if you don’t do this one =) rock on.

(please add more in the comments=)

What really is key is creativity. A word that’s really diffuse and has so many different meanings depending on in which context you are talking about it. To me,  in a context of a people-driven economy it means that you  need to do something different than other people are doing. Or other companies are doing.

I am actually writing this blogpost to revolt against the time and time again that I have sat at a table and talked about rockbands and great content and proactivity and all these wonderful things I have connected with dots inside my head that I truely believe my clients can become or rock. And how it sometimes seem like they aren’t ready for it. Sometimes I leave projects because the identity and what the company is bringing to the table is not a great vision, is not creative, but ends up as a competition, a bunch of celebrity endorsements or worst case scenario a textpage in addition to a facebook page – that you get to visit first. It represents the brand and tells you to sign up at the newsletter or visit a website. it’s the same old thing in a new social context and it doesn’t work. Not for me at least. It stops me from sleeping at night.

Is this the creative promise-land ? is this why I have kept teaching companies about the social web ? So that we can give people competition, celebs and textpages to reel them in as fish to our websites. NO. I have kept teaching it because i truely believe that getting creative and grasping the people driven economy will make you better as a company. It will make you happy. because you will learn how to relate to other people, and you will learn how to be authentic and cool.

Creativity to me is to turn things upside down and do stuff that matters to you. It’s business unusual . it’s involvement  – and it’s dead important to me, and it’s a good idea to make it important to you as well =)

Yes – I am finally one of those cool ladies who has been to a Geek Girl Meetup. I even have an official sticker saying it.  I have been dying to be a part of that gang since I heard Heidi and Paula talk about it in Stockholm about a year ago. Saturday was my big first-time-at-a-geek-girl-meetup. For me it was a fantastic experience and I used it for inspiration for the danish geek girl meetup events that we have been planning and I even gave a speak about action on the social web (im up at 23 minuttes in the video).

I was so impressed by these ladies, first up the venue was mindblowing. The people who spoke where amazing. The food and the sponsors rocked! The team behind the meetup really did an fantastic job putting it all together – for all your hard work – thank you !

But most of all I cherished the conversation with the leading geek  ladies of the Skåne region. So many things are being done over there, so many ideas and dreams, and so many successes!. I felt like staying there forever in this creative mindspace that we all participated in – awesomeness.

My favorite quote from the day is the one you see on the picture on top “passion is more contagious than expertise”. And it sums up the day so well for me. I think it’s brilliant that we can meet cross-industry/media/countries around a given subject that we are all passionate about : geek and share our point of views and how we look at the world.

What I took away from Geek Girl Meetup in Helsingborg was that we are shaping the world by these meetups, impressions and sharing our ideas. I still feel so inspired and have added a ton of stuff to my lists of things I need to do and research on to become better. Better at business but also let go of more stuff that I am dealing with, maybe do something completely different?I found out if I was supposed to do something else than being a creative web person I would become a veterinarian with 4 kids – it has always been a dream of mine. It’s not something I am considering (especially since I have this thing that I faint everytime i see (or sometimes even think of blood)

So thank you for letting me take part in your mind on a sunny saturday in Helsingborg. I am a fan =)

Oh and the creative mindspace of the event made me and Karin promise that we will set up a geek girl meetup in Copenhagen soon. stay tuned for more =)

how are you doin ?

ps. a test project, let’s see if I can get people around the internets to record 20 secs of happyness and post it somewhere on the net tagged “happynessoutburstday09″…

So go to that financial conference. Take a trip to a place you never thought about going. The diversity is creativity in it’s essence.

Be inspired.

Kim Bach told me on jaiku this morning that he missed my blogging. I must admit that I have turned into an “infrequent blogger” lately. There’s just so many other things on my mind these days.
I have found out what I like to do when I take time off. Off the internet, off work and just being me, so these days I am doing a lot of painting, a lot of guitarplaying a lot of remodifying ( t-shirts, furniture, you name it) and a lot of cleaning up on every level of my life. Sounds deep ? well it kinda is. It needs to be if Im gonna keep my calm these days and not getting stressed out.

so what do YOU love to do ? and are you doing it when you are taking time off ?

This weekend I took my favorite man and went on a mental training workshop by Susan Ekberg. It was a real mental kick and I got so much out of it. Among other things she talked about the pulsefrequency of the brain which I want to share with ya’ll.

The pulsefrequency of the brain is how fast your neural network ( neurons in singular) is operating.

When you are awake and in “normal mode” (acting, talking, walking) your pulsefrequency is 21 hertz(beta mode).

when you are deep asleep you’re in deltamode and your pulsefrequency of the brain is about 3-4 hertz

when you are asleep but not deeply you are in tetra mode.

What you really want to achieve as much as possible for your creativity is alfa mode. Alfa mode is a pulsefrequency of 10 hertz. It is best described as being the mode when your body is relaxed to complete harmony, but your not asleep. It is often achieved through meditation. This is supposedly the optimal place to start incubation and creativity.

The nature swings with 10 hertz pulsefrequency – which is probably one of the reasons that one of the cures for stress is to send people tree hugging.

the alfa frequency is also the frequency that the collective intelligence is on.

On my alfa frequency these days I just let things come to me.. and it’s making me a better and more reflective/creative person.

If there’s anyone out there that knows about any books on this subject I would love to hear from you.

For a very long time I have been thinking about working my way through the process of idea creation to creativity and finally to action. In my world it’s a petty when a good idea goes to waste without getting to test a part of the actual idea out.

Now for a definition of action – as my good friend J.C. Fischer and I came up with for a 6 word story ” babysteps will get you there too”.

In this case it means that small actions inside yourself will lead to larger actions externally, if the larger actions feels right. So the scalability of actions are really important.
If we take the word ”act” it means that you are ”doing something” about a given idea. That something could be anything from reflection on an idea to bringing the idea to life by making it happen in real life.

This essay is used as mapping out a structure for a ”possible” book on the subject – so if you have any good input about what is missing – please let me know =)

So how do you generate ideas ?

Ideas has a touch of magic and dreams.

An idea to me is a magical feeling that you get when you think about something new. A good idea to a person, is an idea that you decide, you would like to act upon – because you think it’s a good idea. Still most of the good ideas stays at the good idea stage (and never makes it to action). So how do you spur your idea into action ?

Creativity

Creativity is a constant ”stepstone” in the action process – not just a tool to spur ideas into action. You need creativity to generate ideas. In the words of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: ”creativity is interaction”.

Most important to me is the interactions between the people you see, the culture you live in and your own creative vibe.

How can you create a better creative vibe within yourself ?

I have made a creativity 100 list a while back – which was a 100 point list to get more creative.

My favorites from that list are :

- Creativity means creative choices of inclusion and exclusion (Robert Mckee)
- Creative action speaks louder than creative words
- Be a firestarter a twisted firestarter
- Eliminate the word ”against” in your mind. Don’t be against smoking or against war – be FOR health and FOR peace.

Let’s say you’ve got the idea now, and you’ve got that creative vibe going – what’s next ?

You still have quite a way to go to get to action. All steps of ”z-a” is small actions themselves but the place we want to get at, is where people can see you are ”making” something – instead of ”just talking” about the idea.

Talk and listen… ( trust me you need your community =)

So when you have the idea and you are ”flowing” it – start talking and introducing it to various people to get feedback. Don’t think about action just yet – just listen to what people are telling you.

Listening is just as important as talking in action-hunting.

When people are saying the same over and over again and marking out the same assets and faults of your idea – it’s time to springle the idea with a little action.

an Idea description

Change the thing about the idea that people say ( and you feel) is broken, and use the assets to make an idea description – you’re probably going to change the idea description a thousand times during the idea stage but that’s quite okay.
Things I normal put into my idea descriptions are :
- what’s the point of this idea?
- Why is it going to save a tiny part of the world
- How can I make people like it ?
- Who will like it the most (aka. Who is the primary target group)
- What is stopping you from going into action ?
- What are the next steps to be taken.

Review and rewrite the description everytime you idea ”get stuck” and is more likely to go down the drain then to action =)

Remarkability ( be different)…

For this to work – you don’t have to think in ways that other people hasn’t done before. But you have to be damn good at creative puzzles. Creative puzzles is the way you mix and match tendencies, functioning ideas, money-earning ideas into your own. Take your inspiration from places you had no intention of going.

So when you think of being remarkable – you don’t really have to go all the way and reinvent the deep dish again – you can settle for a creative puzzle – which is just as unique. Remarkability can also be a unique way of putting together puzzles.

Turn everything …

Ask questions upside down, inside out.

How would a teapot see your living room ? – what would a cat do in this and this situation.

Find the coolest people as muses and ask yourself questions like ”how would Elvis Presley write this book” – or ” how would the queen of Saba sing ” anarchy in the U.K) – quite amusing and a grand way to put yourself in new shoes.

This essay is not ending.

I will continously add to it. But this is all I’ve got for now, from my balcony in surburbia Denmark =)

creative sources for this post:

James Wood Young: ” technique for getting ideas”

crossposted on tensoriana.org and toothlesstiger.net

Asked in the same way that children asks “where does babies come from?”. that has been on my mind lately. Maybe because i feel more inspired that I have done for ages.

I don’t know if I am in particularly good at it, but lately I have started to pay attention to a lot of things/people that I want and I dont want in my life.

my family inspire me and old ancient stories. People are inspiring me in ways they haven’t before mainly because of the impulsiveness of microblogging communities.
I am documenting and researching a lot more than I used to. mostly in transitional web apps and social networks.

After becoming a mother I have increasingly found inspiration in being grateful. Everything from the outside world is reflected as ” what if it happened to me ?” and more importantly ” what if it happened to my daughter?” and even though i have a lot of concerns about the future – gratefulness is giving in so many other ways.

Inspiration comes from impressions. Inspiration comes from “love” and “new”. from seeing yourself from other sides than you normally do. from appreciation, from daring to state your good at something.

hope I didn’t ramble too much *s*