Arête or The Pursuit of Excellence

Pursuing Excellence Create Art Podcast Style In the pursuit of excellence, I am pushing myself to higher and more transparent levels. My wife gave me a box of cards for the holidays in 2022. I was puzzled because they were creativity cards and I thought, what the heck is this, I don't need creativity cards. Well, folks, I was wrong and I will be attempting to do a card a week and record an episode each week about how I am utilizing the card I draw every week. If you decide to pick up a deck and do these let me know. Excellent Links Mentioned In The Show Podfest Indie Pod Con Super Joe Pardo Show Kickstart Creativity What is Arête or The Pursuit of Excellence? From Wikipedia In its earliest appearance in Greek, this general notion of excellence was ultimately bound up with the notion of the fulfillment of purpose or function: the act of living up to one's full potential. A person of arete is of the highest effectiveness; they use all of their faculties—strength, bravery, and wit—to achieve real results. In the Homeric world, arete involves all of the abilities and potentialities available to humans. Though particularly associated with 'manly' qualities,[1] the Homeric usage of the term was not necessarily gender specific, as Homer applied the term to both the Greek and Trojan heroes as well as major female figures, such as Penelope, the wife of the Greek hero Odysseus. In the Homeric poems, arete is frequently associated with bravery, but more often with effectiveness. Excellent Ways to Reach Out To The Podcast To reach out to me, email [email protected] I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and let's start that conversation. Email: [email protected] YouTube Channel: Create Art Podcast YT Channel IG: @createartpodcast Twitter: @createartpod   Special Message If you have found value in this podcast please feel free to share it with a friend as that is the best way to find new podcasts. I want this to be a 5-star podcast in your eyes so let me know what you would like to see. Speaking about sharing with a friend, check out my other podcast Find A Podcast About where I help you outsmart the algorithm and find your next binge-worthy podcast. You can find that podcast at findapodcastabout.xyz. Transcript [00:00:18] Hello friends. This is Timothy Kim O'Brien, your head instigator for Create Art Podcast, where I take my over 20 years in arts and education and help you. Tame your inner critic and create more than you consume. So at the time of this recording, it's 2023 and I gotta say my wife got me a great Christmas gift last year in 2022. [00:00:48] She got me this deck of cards and it's not a normal deck of cards. It's called Kickstart Creativity. 50 prompted cards to Spark Inspiration, and it's by Bonnie Smith White House. And I'm sure we'll have links to this where you can get it in the show notes. So with Kickstart Creativity cards, there are the action cards. [00:01:17] Which offers an opportunity to experiment or play with a surprising joy-inducing method? Sure. To stretch your creative muscles, each card suggests and briefly describes a specific action. There are also perspective cards, which are green, and they reveal a fresh mindset, a different lens, or an illuminating way of viewing one's work of the work you have before you. [00:01:45] Creative spirits, past and present will often be invoked on perspective, pers perspective cards. And then intention cards invoke a deeper service value, significance, or meaning to which you and your work can aspire. . Now you can, you know, draw one card at a time and if you do that, just, you know, draw any card as a daily or a weekly practice or, you know, draw one when you need a quick hit of inspiration. [00:02:24] You could draw two cards. Draw paired juxtapositions. . And how they do it is, you know, like a red and blue card or a blue and green card or however. And that I actually know you have to draw an action card in one intention card and it could help you or your collaborators imagine how a project could aspire to serve your community or world on a deeper level. [00:02:52] Or you can draw three cards. And you divide the deck into action, perspective, and intention. You draw one from each pile and you construct a narrative action, perspective, and intention for the work you are doing or for the path ahead. . So what am I gonna do with this? Well, I'm gonna try to do it once a week and I'm going to, I'm gonna read off the card to you, see what it's all about, and then I'll do my commentary on it and let you know what I think about it. [00:03:26] So here is today's card. All right, so today's card is an intention card. So it's a blue card, and the word for today is, and I'm probably gonna mispronounce it, but it's a harita a r e with a little thing up top, t e. And that is, it's an ancient Greek ideal of pursuing excellence. And what the cart says is when a person or a thing embodies its full potential, that is arte, but excellence. [00:04:06] Should not be confused with perfection. Excellence is the commitment to strive to be diligent and undeterred. Furthermore, we are called not only to recognize the potential for excellence in thems in ourselves but to look for this potential in others as well. Now, there are three things with this. The first thing is to construct a list of people who seem to. [00:04:36] Striving towards excellence. Make a note of why each person inspires you. [00:04:46] So that's what I want to do here. First is a list of people that inspire me and why each of them inspires me. So with this whole pursuit of excellence, the first one that comes to mind is actually Chris Chris demos of the pod fest conference down in Orlando, Florida. And why am I picking him? [00:05:15] Well, here's the thing. He has a certain way about it. And well, long story short is, well, it's gonna be a long story [00:05:32] this certain way about him. I met him, and gosh, it was like 2017. Yes, it was 2017 at DC Pod Fest, and I had just two weeks prior, previously getting neck surgery. And my throat was just torn up from the floor up and my voice was horrible. And he was doing a. he was promoting his conference at the conference, but I, I walked up to him and I talked to him as best I could and, you know, kind of told him, you know, Hey, I'm a newbie kind of podcaster and I'm a new person and you know, da da da, da da. [00:06:16] And he, he sat there and he talked with me as best as I could talk. And then the next time I saw him was at At Map Con that next year in 2018 September, I believe, 2018. And he remembered me and he remembered, you know, I talked to him about my kids and what I was doing and asked about my neck and then he when the pandemic hit, he took his conference online. [00:06:47] He wasn't the first one to do that. Joe Paro was, and I'll talk about him in a second, but he was, you know one of the biggies that, hi, his conference was the last one, the last big one before the pandemic hit. And he took it. And he's got this whole team behind him. Now, I've never been to Pod Fest, pod fest in person at the time of this recording, and I'm recording it in January of 20 23. [00:07:20] So he, he took it online, and from what I understand, the feeling from the in-person was the feeling that he got online and his warmth and personality really came out. And, you know, he would message me you know, kind of in the background and go, Hey, how are you doing? And, and I'm sitting there going, there's. [00:07:45] Literally 5,000 people here, and you remember me there, 5,300, however many it was. And yeah you know, he, he remembered me and I was blown away by that. So I had gone to a, a few of his online things online conferences and you know, I hope by the time that that. that you hear this it'll be, you know, wow. [00:08:10] Probably's not gonna be till 2024. When I will go to his conference, I'm working towards that goal. But one of the things he did was you know, do a book called Start Ugly. And now I'd already been podcasting. For a long time before that book came out, but I got the book, I bought the book and it really, I wanna say I got really interested in podcasting about 20 16, 20 17. [00:08:45] I got really serious about it and then when I read that book, I got really serious about podcasting on a bigger. And so I started ugly with one company and I moved to another company and started ugly there too. And you know, it, it worked and it led to some really great things. So, you know, I, I try to, I am myself. [00:09:17] I am who I am. Sometimes I'm a mean angry bear. Sometimes I am an extrovert that just hates people. But I try to embody his warmth, his personality, and his presence to be there...