I Feel the need – the need for a creed!

I used to have a Personal Mission Statement.  As much as I love the word Mission, in a hardcore fighter pilot kind of way, turns out in reality I am a little bit softer.  On a scale of 1 to 10, Top Gun being the most hardcore and Dirty Dancing being the least, I’m probably a 4.  It’s a really nice scale to be on anyway, I recommend it.  And having a Creed, rather than having PMS, seems to be a nice way to slide along that scale.  Let’s go sliding.

creed |kriːd|
noun
a faith: a set of beliefs or aims which guide someone’s actions.

To read this definition through Cassette eyes: a creed is like a classy usher, guiding you to your own internal stage show of Dirty Dancing the musical. Follow the creed. He is wearing such a nice suit, and steers you with manly elegance up gently sloping carpeted stairs.  How very pleasant.

I wrote my creed, then found out how to spell it. I read it every day to stay on track.  The “life’s work” bit is where Dance, Creativity, Teaching and The Cassettes fit in.  I’m sharing my creed now, knowing that you reading this, may help me to follow through.  Thanks for helping me out!  For helping me to “lovingly, boldly take ownership of my reality”, and go wherever the alluringly broad-shouldered usher guides.

Do you feel the need – the need to write your creed?

1. Find a nice quiet place, such as the beach at dusk, or a park bench, and write your draft creed.
2. Pop your draft next to your bed for one week, with a pen nearby. Read it every morning, and add or remove bits that don’t ring true.  Tweak it till it feels complete.
3. Write it out neatly with a pencil, then write over the top with a favourite pen. Maybe a glitter pen.
4. Decorate your creed as you see fit: geometric shape border, stuck on sequins, star stickers…
5. Grab a gob of blu tak and stick that baby up.

Remember, a creed is a reminder of what matters to you, not a list of goals that make your head hurt. Ground it in reality, and at the same time let it guide you like that classy usher, over to Seat A, Row 22, ready to enjoy Patrick inside you, singing She’s Like the Wind.

Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.

– Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

I love this!