Life Is A Great Big Canvas, Throw All The Paint You Can At It!
Here’s another personal development look at one of my quote images, and it could get messy…
Of course, ‘getting messy’ is the point! I love that quote from Danny Kaye when I first came across it. Lauded as one of the classic entertainers, song and dance man, comic, music hall, film star type, I only recently came across the quote.
In fact as I researched the quote further to check whether it was accurate or not, I found so many slight variations, that it’s hard to pin it down *precisely*, but this version is a close as any!
I chose to put the quote over the top of a photo of one of my blank canvasses, and some acrylic paints, something I keep meaning to get round to doing more of!
It’s a great quote isn’t it! It’s a very clear way of illustrating something that most of us feel, which is that there should be ‘more’ in life…
More of what?
Well, the specifics depend on the individual, but I’d have a stab at it by saying more passion, more joy, more fun, more love, more dream chasing, more fun.
That’s a whole *lot* more – and that’s kind of the point.
The reason we feel like there should be more of those things, is because we have a nagging sense that we don’t have enough of it in our life. More than that, we know that others do seem to have more of it, and that time is ticking for *us*, that the future looks as though it’s going to be pretty much the same as the present.
That means a continuing life with not enough of these things in it, a space that could be filled by ‘more’, but won’t be.
The truth of the matter is that the future will indeed be the same as what we have now, unless we do something different, and *this* is where Danny Kaye’s quote, the paint, and the mess comes in..!
If we want our life to look like we’ve had a fun time, that we’ve tried different things, then we need to start doing the fun things, we need to start trying different things!
It can lead to some amazing adventures, but if that’s the case, then why do the vast majority of us choose to not do it?
Fear.
Fear of failure, and the cost of that failure.
I’ve written about this before, and undoubtedly will do again, because it’s a barrier that stops us dead in our tracks, and leaves us ploughing the same life path that we’re on the one without the ‘more‘, the one that leaves us yearning for the ‘more’.
Well, the fear is a mindset issue, combined with practical life issues, and they can all be dealt with. If we look at the paint and canvas angle, then the practical issues might be as simple as where to buy a canvas, what are the best types of paint to use, etc.
The thing is, with *actual* painting, when starting out, you need to make a mess. You need to find out which medium works best for you – oils, watercolours, crayons?
You need to find out which style works best for you, and it’s pretty likely that you’ll get paint all over your clothes! Something else that’s also true, is that you can start again if you don’t like it!
You can start with a blank canvas, open up some paints, splash them about, and if you don’t like it, you can paint over it all with white and start again! Or, you can simply get another canvas and, yep, start again!
In life, if we try new things, if we go for more of our passions, if we follow our dreams, if we don’t like how it’s going, we can change direction again!
Who says it has to be an all or nothing commitment all the time? It’s simply not the case, and once we get past that particular mindset barrier, we really *can* start getting stuck in!
Will it always go right..?
Well, no, it won’t always go right. Sometimes it might go wrong, and you might find yourself on some very odd roads, going in very odd directions.
That’s part of life, and to be honest, it’s something that we can find happens even if we think we are choosing the ‘safe’ path. Life has a habit of throwing curve balls at us. That’s just the way it is, and to say otherwise would be silly.
You might make mistakes, you might trip up, you might find you get yourself in situations that need a lot of getting out of, maybe even that you wish you had never started in the first place.
You might, yes, but you might not, and think about what happens in the ‘might not go wrong’ version!
So these are *not* reasons, in my view, not to try new things, not to splash the paint about and see what happens, taking an attitude of smiling as we do it.
Then, when we look back, we won’t see our life as a row of unopened paints sitting neatly on a blank canvas. We’ll see a load of opened paints, with colour splashed everywhere, and a result that will us smiling, and others looking and thinking ‘wow, there’s been some ‘life’ going on there!’
So, look to your own life, your own passions, your own goals. Then remember Danny Kaye’s quote, and get those paints open! It can change your life dramatically, it can *transform* it!
Ok, I’d love to hear what you think – do leave a comment!
‘Til Next Time,
Health & Happiness,
Gordon
P.S. Don’t forget, if you do want to try different things, but don’t know how, then why not grab my free 8 step goal achievement formula! It’s worked for me many times, and it will work for you too!
