Your imprint on the world – what you create is a reflection of yourself

Something which I have believed for some time, and which has only ever become a more solidified belief in my mind, is that your produce is a reflection of yourself. That is to say, the things which you create in the world can be looked at as representations of a part of you, and in some cases a representation of your entirety.

 

There’s a saying with professional guitarists which Tim Ferris recently highlighted on his blog that “your tone is in your fingers”. What this means is that although a good expensive guitar rig will certainly make things sound better, ultimately the sound you produce which still be you – it will still be your fingers. Hook up the ghost of Hendrix with a “my first guitar” and $10 speakers and you’ll still be able to hear Hendrix, and most likely it’ll still sound interesting and probably good.

 

This is probably how things like handwriting analysis and such like came about. That’s an area I don’t dive into much because it’s difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff without knowing someone personally, but I have no doubt that somewhere in the world there’s at least one hand-writing analyser who’s really damn good at getting a feel for people just by examining their writing.

 

When you create something – a letter, a song, a sculpture, a meal, etc… that thing contains, for want of a better way of putting it, a kind of imprint of your soul at the time when you made it.

 

 

What this primarily means is that by examining your work and your creations you can identify areas of yourself which you may need to do some work on.

 

Is your produce rushed, does it contain over-looked mistakes? Then maybe you need to slow down and pay more attention to detail.

 

Is your produce a little grey, lacking a little flair? Then perhaps you need to brighten up your surroundings and liven up your life.

 

Whether you like it or not, every bit of everything you put into the world is sending a message to reality. It’s saying, this is me – I made this. If you’re putting a lot of junk out there, that’s what you are in the world, a junk person. If you produce a lot of junk, you’re a junk producer, and that’s how your reality will shape around you.

 

On the other hand if everything you make is vivid, potent, and of high quality – then you are a highly valued producer of quality. See the trick is, as much as the produce is a reflection of you, you are also a reflection of your produce.

 

Some people think they can slack off in their hated day-job, but as soon as the time comes to own their own business and tear it up that they will suddenly switch up 7 gears and go into over-drive.

 

It doesn’t work like that.

 

You need to be with one thing how you will be with everything. You can’t expect to change the way you imprint the world over-night. If you’re chucking out junk now, then you’re, at least partly, a junk-person. You need to start making the shift in your produce asap – get into the habits of making quality things, be a quality person.

 

Of course it’s mood dependent. In a good mood we can create great things, in a bad mood we have to struggle through. But that aside, what we’re really talking about here is the creation of high-quality habits. Do you have the habits of paying attention to small details, do you have the habits of taking care over your life and work, do you have the habit of making the things around you as high-quality as you can?