An alternative to believing in yourself Of course, self-belief is more than just common advice. It’s at the heart of selling, of creating, of shipping, of leadership... Telling someone, “believe in yourself,” is often worthless, though, because it’s easier said than done. Perhaps the alternative is: “Do work you can believe in.” Not trust, verification. Not believing that one day you’ll do worthwhile work. Instead, do worthwhile work, look at it, then believe that you can do it again. Step by step, small to large, easy to difficult. Do work you can believe in. --Seth Godin The philosopher king of flowers was flown in from Delft to engage, encourage, and amaze the audience of the Texas Florist Expo as a guest of the Texas State Floral Association held at the Marriot in Sugarland this summer. Pim Van den Akker led Socratic questions to his point that the most important thing about flowers is YOU. With the wisdom of belief in the individual’s creative center he encouraged all to make mistakes, declaring mistakes to be his proudest moment because that is where learning is. Proposing that there is no right or wrong, only ways to do it differently. His philosophy is: everything I think of I can create. Of course, he admits, it can be difficult with organizing time, money and knowledge but all of those things can be worked around. The real problem is fear of making mistakes—and mistakes that you need to make it order to learn more, be more creative and clear and purposeful. For me, he says, making mistakes is growing. He has built his life on this philosophy. He loves and encourages all to find the feeling that brings us to the power of ourselves in working from one’s creative center. “You have it in you to amaze yourself—that’s growing” Being a great storyteller he drove home the truth of his experience by sharing a story that
rings in every florist’s heart. He was creating to please someone else and he ended up making an arrangement that he himself not only didn’t believe in, he hated. The guy he made it for loved it and took it to his girlfriend and she loved it and then came back for another. It meant that he as the artist was stuck in a cycle of doing work he hated and it left him feeling bad, very bad. To make the powerful choice to please yourself means that you trust that you know more about what you are doing than anyone, you’ve done it longer and better than those who are coming to you and your responsibility to yourself and to life itself is to elevate others to your level of knowledge and creativity, not be brought down to their level of ignorance. He admits that being dyslexic has given him challenges but he appreciates how being both visually and auditory dyslexic and by the way --a bit color blind, he says with a chuckle, he has to look at things differently. He believes that whatever you do-- politics, poetry, or science the most important is to create and do it with passion. Enjoy it- if you’re not enjoying it you’re doing it wrong, if you’re not enjoying it there is no growth. He works with a great sense of openness and playfulness, he dances with materials
PUBLIC NEWS
JULY 23 - AUGUST 5, 2015
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