happiness is...

I've been really enjoying catching up on some of the Creative Mornings Melbourne video series, so I thought I'd mention another recent one that provided me with quite a bit of food for thought. Designer/Illustrator and 'multi-disciplinary' maestro, Beci Orpin, spoke about happiness and creativity in this lovely video.

Beci speaks with lots of examples from her life about what keeps her happy, and links this all very closely to her ability to maintain a work life driven by design. She mentions the following happiness points important to her:

+ her sketchbooks
+ making mistakes
+ riding her bike
+ breaking the rules
+ having her cats around
+ diversity
+ finding inspiration
+ community
+ running your own race

Two things I found quite wonderful to hear her speak about were 1. making mistakes, and 2. running your own race. Beci shares a very honest tale of what she feels was probably a business 'mistake' earlier on in her designer career. I found it refreshing to hear how she viewed this and the learning she drew from it. It would be easy to write something like this off as a failure and dwell on it unproductively for ages. Instead, she used the experience to figure out what she is better at and used this to propel her forward into other design adventures.

The second point, about running your own race, was communicated simply, but holds a powerful message. Beci talks about not getting caught up in what your creative peers are doing and measuring your progress against this. Feeling envious, jaded or ripped off 'is a really big waste of energy', she says. Which is so true when you think about it. And turning your thinking around to see it like this totally changes your perspective from being a negative one to being positive. So run your own race is her main message here.

What brings you happiness in your creative world? Enjoy the video!