Author Archives: thevsstudioblog

“If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich.” –Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tzu (Stephen Mitchell translation) The Rolling Stones are right…You can’t always get what you want. But. You can always want what you have. And. When it comes to making your art, you’ve got what you need. Try sometime. Go makeContinue reading “Want. Have. Need.”

“The impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way.” -Marcus Aurelius “I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat.” -Sylvester Stallone “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. OnContinue reading “The Rejection Is The Way”

“The great thing about the band was that whoever had the best idea (it didn’t matter who), that would be the one we’d use. No one was standing on their ego, saying, ‘Well it’s mine,’ and getting possessive. Always, the best was used. That’s why the standard of the songs remained high” -Ringo Starr “MyContinue reading “Peak Artistic Collaboration”

“The ultimate end of human acts is eudaimonia, happiness in the sense of living well, which all men desire; all acts are but different means chosen to arrive at it.” -Hannah Arendt “Among life’s cruelest truths is this one: wonderful things are especially wonderful the first time they happen, but their wonderfulness wanes with repetition.”Continue reading “Eudaimonia”

What if Peter Gibbons really was right? That all you need to be happy is to just stop doing all the things you hate doing. Especially those things you think you need to do. When you really don’t. P.S. – This scene.

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” -James Clear Talking about your big dreams and plans over a hot cup of coffee with a close friend who patiently listens and encourages you is awesome. You’ll leave the conversation feeling amazing. Lit up. Ready toContinue reading “Coffee Talk”

“They’re stuck in a job they don’t like. They’re stuck working for a boss they don’t like. They’re stuck on a team they don’t like…I just tell them, ‘Be great.’ The reality of life is that you can’t just always quit your job. You can’t just always go to your boss and say, ‘Give meContinue reading “How To Get Unstuck”

Under-promising and over-delivering is a great strategy. For a while. Just make sure you’re not continually doing it to let yourself off the hook. Or to hide. To achieve your full potential, it might be time to make some promises you’re not entirely sure you can fulfill. To over-promise. Or to quote the great IrishContinue reading “Time To Over-Promise?”

“Most letters from a parent contain a parent’s own lost dreams disguised as good advice. My good advice to you is to pay somebody to teach you to speak some foreign language, to meet with you two or three times a week and talk. Also: get somebody to teach you to play a musical instrument.Continue reading “Never Too Late”

“You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.” -Eleanor Roosevelt “My former colleague, the poet Michael Burkard, used to talk about “back-door ego.” This is the habit of self-abasement we all have, in which “I suck” is just another way of saying “I am vastlyContinue reading “Pride In Reverse”