Just Begin, and Nothing is Impossible

You’ve probably heard them all: “Boldly ventured is half won.” “Well begun is half done,” and a common one, “He who has begun, has half done.” —Horace’s. These are proverbs about the importance of taking action or pursuing your calling now, sayings that were probably mouthed by your past professors in the battle against procrastination. And they’re all true—whether you are bogged down by mundane paperwork in a cubicle, or by a hesitance towards your lofty dreams, action is the only way forward.

Millions of people conjecture and analyze, but how many people put their thoughts into concrete action? Everyday, you probably witness this phenomenon: people thinking vs people doing. Perhaps, you can categorize your friends or family into one or the other. The truth is, the doer often intrigues and excites.

Remember Steve Jobs?

This is because we are judged by what we accomplish, not by what we plan to accomplish, or would like to accomplish. The moments in which we ponder or articulate ideas are typically moments of dreamy eyes and attentive ears – cheap moments. Conversely, simply starting or acting on whatever it is we want to do is high-priced and traditionally difficult, not just on a personal and local level, but also on a global, historical level.

For instance, the space exploration community is enthused at the prospect of life on Mars.  Experts and media speculators alike predict that by the year 2020, humans will begin to set up a base on the planet. Yet, how much of this talk will actually result in concrete action?  What nation, what organization, what individual will take the necessary steps towards legitimately colonizing Mars, rather than merely analyzing how it can be done?

A mission as such takes years and years of planning, to be sure. However, NASA or a competing organization could very well choose to today take that first crucial step towards a successful mission; perhaps it already has.

Hopefully, because this will need a lot of work…

The great news for you is, by adhering to a strict philosophy of beginning your project, or taking the first step towards your lofty aspirations, you can literally achieve anything. With this attitude and initiative, what appeared to be impossible will soon appear very much possible.

Speaking of space travel, who would have assumed in the first half of the 20^th century (and for all time before) that man would set foot on the moon? Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong symbolically and literally took that first step, a step that represented, for the men themselves, a culmination of a career.

Undoubtedly, somewhere along their journey, Aldrin and Armstrong each took their own “first step” towards becoming world-class astronauts. This process involved initial research, networking, schooling, intense study, concentrated training and lifestyle adjustment and, of course, eventual experience with NASA.

Whatever your dreams are, you can begin to pursue those dreams today by boldly taking that first step. But courage is not the only ingredient here; intelligence and awareness are important. You need to know which organizations or individuals to contact and how to contact them; you need to know which skills to acquire and how to acquire them; you need to assemble a plan for all of this, as well as a budget that will be useful in reaching your goal. Fortunately, you don’t have to do this alone because in the modern digital age, help is always available.

We call them Giggrabbers

Giggrabbers was founded on this premise: that skilled and talented people who can help make your dreams a reality should be readily available. Giggrabbers is an interactive project and gig space that allows users to introduce their ideas or projects and hire individuals that can help achieve them.

You can create your own “dream team” for your own mission to Mars (or to anywhere else) and you can compensate your team members safely and securely through Giggrabbers’ platform. You will also have easy communication with your team through Giggrabbers’ exclusive “gig room” along with payment tools to safely reward your new partners.

If you are on the fence about moving forward with this type of format to achieve your project’s goals or accomplish your dreams, be careful not to give up before taking that first step! Just begin, and nothing is impossible.

 

By Colin Keane

 

 

The Pursuit of Happiness

In 1943, the noted behavioral psychologist Abraham Maslow released a paper in Psychological Review detailing the things which everyone needs in life to achieve happiness and fulfillment. This framework is known as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

According to Maslow, there are 5 levels of need. Each individual requires certain basic needs like food and clothing to be met before they can begin to focus on the next rung in the hierarchy, safety. Once an individual has achieved some level of safety and security he can begin to spend more time focusing on less tangible needs like social acceptance and the need for love. Those who succeed in fulfilling their social and emotional needs will in turn strive to fulfill the need for self-esteem or respect in their chosen career or life path. Only after the fulfillment of each of these needs will the individual be in the position to reach for the ultimate human need, self-actualization.

While the levels of need near the bottom of the pyramid may be interchangeable at times (as evidenced by anyone who’s ever thrown caution to the wind and jeopardized their own safety in a bid for acceptance), each of these needs must be met before a person can aspire to self-actualization.

What is self-actualization? One who is self-actualized has discovered her/his purpose in society and the world and follows that path without fear or regret. A person who is self-actualized has a bird’s eye view of the world’s events and the events in her/his own life and understands their place and significance within the bigger picture. A person who is self-actualized accepts constructive criticism with grace and curiosity as opposed to fear and defensiveness. Those who have attained self-actualization exude confidence and calm. They also understand that failure doesn’t exist; each perceived failure is an opportunity to learn, as well as a potentially important chapter in a grand story. To the complete human, the world isn’t a scary place at all. Every day is an adventure full of things to learn and solutions to uncover. Put simply, one who is self-actualized has achieved HAPPINESS.

If you’re happy and you know it, slow down bullets!

If you’re reading this on a computer screen from the comfort of your living room, chances are your physiological needs and need for safety are being met to a practical extent. For our purposes, we’ll assume that your social needs are being met as well. You have a place to live, you have ample food and clothing, and you have close friends and family who love you and would love to see you succeed. You have all of these things, yet… something is missing.

Perhaps there’s a dream sleeping inside of you that you’ve neglected for too long. Why has it been neglected?  Maybe you have a “good job.” Maybe pursuing your passion in earnest would mean relocating to a different city, but you’re loathe to move. Why chase an impractical dream now that you have so much to lose? Well, the short answer is: your life-long happiness depends on it.

The poet Langston Hughes explored this dilemma to great effect when he asked, “What happens to a dream deferred?” In the poem, Hughes illustrates perfectly the urgency and the need for us to do everything in our power to make our dreams reality. A dream deferred is akin to a cancer of the soul, destined to shrivel up or explode chaotically with the desire to be. Dreams that emerge from confinement in this way are gnarled and twisted and often bear little resemblance to the bright dreams of youth. These dreams turned nightmares emerge ugly, angry and full of resentment.

Very much like this gentleman…

So, there is a clear connection between the pursuit of one’s dream and the pursuit of happiness. Some might even say they are identical. It is telling that in one of our nation’s bedrock documents, The Declaration of Independence, an implicit distinction is made between “happiness” and “the pursuit of happiness.” Should we be striving for a stagnant, impotent happiness or a happiness that is constantly shifting and changing, evolving, and discovering new things about itself?  We need a happiness that is alive and growing, the antithesis of stagnation. In this light, happiness is not an end in and of itself but rather a life-long journey to be entered upon joyously, without fear. And what better road to travel down in this timeless pursuit than the road that only your dreams can plow? Our dreams are not secret diadems glistening far off in the future. They are vehicles that exist here and now, just waiting for us to drive them off into the never-ending horizon of self-actualization.

Sounds easy, right?

The truth is, following your dream is never easy. Many people seem to think that happiness and hard work are mutually exclusive. In fact, the opposite is true. Your dream will sit and gather dust and rust until the moment you get back behind the wheel and drive it into the future; but whenever that moment arrives, it will be a joyous one.

Whether you want to renovate the home of your dreams, open a record store, or make a movie, the first step to making your big dream a reality is the realization that you will probably need help. The beautiful thing is that there are talented and highly-skilled people all around you who are traveling on their own path to self-actualization. They are production designers, programmers, hair stylists, personal assistants, and writers, all looking for the opportunity to realize their dreams, and in the process, help to realize yours. Giggrabbers is a free, interactive online platform that helps bring your dreams to a reality. You tell the platform what you need, along with a budget that works for you, find and hire the right people you need to get things moving, and pay them securely all on one user-friendly platform. It’s the only platform that provides this much creative space under one roof, specifically with the success of your dream in mind. We can’t let our big ideas whither on the vine. No, we owe it to our family, ourselves, and the world to make them a reality.

Join Giggrabbers today to take one step closer to self-actualization or to help someone else get there. It’s free.

By Michael Koene

A Brief History of Creativity (And What You Can Do About It)

The creative process has always been an act of community. Nothing is created in a vacuum. We built language and culture together. We sang while we did our daily tasks, and later, we gathered and listened to the stories of our elders.

The things that our ancient communities produced were, while often beautiful, largely utilitarian. This was the dawn of technology, when each day brought a new advance, a better tool, a more efficient method or a more clever game. These creative leaps were often born of the collective creative effort of the communities in which they arose, and each advance in science or art was necessarily directly beneficial to those communities.

Music, art, cuisine and technology functioned not so much as the individualistic statements of a lone creator but as a cooperative cultural journey, a collective effort that allowed its members to recreate their worlds in their own image. This conception of work and creativity as cultural dialogue is found in the call and response found in blues and gospel music or the cultural allusions and musical interplay of jazz. We controlled our own means of production, and distribution was largely an organic process, shaped by culture and geography.  The faces reflected in our art and shared cultural experience were our own.

Not a re-enactment.

That all started to change when the politics of power began to play out on a large scale worldwide. As tribes became nations and the balance of power began to shift to a small ruling elite, their tastes and motivations began dictating what art was to be produced. While the wholly synthetic set of creative parameters which arose during this period ended up producing some indisputably great art (creativity tends to find a way out under any circumstances), the reality is that a large swath of the works we routinely and ritually enshrine as monuments to the highest ideals in culture, were actually only mirroring the values of those it was produced for, the ruling class, at the expense of everything else.

Still pretty cool.

By taking the engine of culture away from the people and attempting to commodify creativity, the role of art and creativity shifted from that of a cultural centerpiece and a shared interactive language to a mere status-symbol, or worse, a tool of propaganda, produced and enjoyed by the few. In recent memory, the situation had degraded to the point that what we termed “culture” was often really “product”, churned out on an assembly line. Why else would every song on the radio sound the same? The whims of “the market” had effectively supplanted the needs of the people.

A tool of propaganda.

It wasn’t until the advent of the internet that the balance of power began to shift. We didn’t know it yet in the mid 90’s, but the means to regain our freedom of expression and build a global culture had been born. Suddenly, we could communicate with people around the world with ease, exchanging music, films, worldviews and ideas at the speed of sound. It was like we were suddenly back in our old village, only now it was vastly larger. The world had become a village and the computer screen was our campfire.

Yeah, just like that.

Well, almost. Because with so many different ideas, personalities, options, opinions and opportunities available in all of their unregulated, uncensored and non-standardized glory, it’s become almost impossible to separate truth from fiction. While there are services that claim to connect those that wish to launch a business, or make a movie, or build a rocket ship with the service providers that will help make their dream a reality, these services fail to provide much support beyond the initial introduction. The overwhelming impression one gets when visiting these sites is a lot more like No Man’s Land or the Wild West, than they are a place where people can exchange ideas creatively.

“I’m here for guitar lessons.”

Giggrabbers is a free, interactive online gig and project management platform that connects you to service providers. Its primary goal is to facilitate the connection between a project provider and a giggrabber, in a seamless and secured way. In other words, when you’re looking for the right person or team of people to bring your next big idea or project to life, Giggrabbers provides a platform where you can post your gig or project, receive proposals and budget estimates, find Ms. or Mr. Right for the job, manage your project and transfer funds securely on one user-friendly platform.

Filmmakers, event coordinators, builders, inventors, entrepreneurs and anyone who has a vision to realize or a story to tell: We have the tools we need to make our dreams a reality. Don’t wait for permission. It’s time to reclaim creativity and culture, and begin to tell our own stories again. Finally, the people have the power! Let’s use it wisely.

Post your project today. It’s free.

By: Michael Keone, a Giggrabber

Posted in jobsTagged bring idea to life, business, entrepreneurs, find freelancers, giggrabbers, hire a freelancer, hire freelancers, post a job online free, small businessLeave a comment

Bringing Projects to Life: Connecting You to What You Need

Giggrabbers, a free online gig management platform,  brings projects to fruition by connecting you to a diverse group of service providers who can help with your ideas. Clients are always looking for a service, be it the services of a musician, web designer, photographer, or house-sitter. The big question today is: which platform best allows for a project to pinnacle? Is it Giggrabbers? No, not by a long shot, but Giggrabbers aims to do just that, and its platform exists for that purpose. For for those that further inquire: “Well, there are many platforms that do that. What’s makes Giggrabbers a better option?” As far as we know, there isn’t a platform that connects you to musicians, legal freelancers, web designers, photographers, DJs, and/or plumbers all in one place; Giggrabbers does precisely that (we hope you click the link this time). If there is another platform, let us know and we’ll investigate; but Giggrabbers connects you to tutors in New York to web designers in California, or India if Cali isn’t far enough. We love doing it, and as a result, will work hard to make sure it works right for all parties. So for example, we don’t allow you and freelancers to set up hourly gigs; instead, we ask that you work with a fixed price, calculating the time it takes to provide a service by their hourly rate. (Don’t worry, we’re working on the hourly issue).

Check out our platform, post your project, and watch your ideas come to life.

Warm regards,

Alex