What I learned at the World Domination Summit
During the first week of July 2012, I headed to Portland, Oregon for something called the World Domination Summit. If you just made a face, rolled your eyes, or muttered some version of “what the…?” under your breath, you are not alone.
I hesitated telling friends, or posting status updates on Facebook, for fear of reactions to the title. But the domination in the name is about your inner world, dominating your own fears, and living a life that you love.
Passion
Scott Dinsmore from Live Your Legend did a great job of summarizing some of the highlights of the conference. I read Scott’s blog on a regular basis and met him at the conference, and can attest that he’s the real deal. His site is all about finding your passion and living it, which, in a way sort of sums up the conference too. The people I met are in various places on their journey but they all had that one thing in common – passion!
Here are a few examples of people I met or saw and what they are doing:
- I met Marthe Hagen from Norway who courageously wrote about her own personal struggles and in doing so is helping others
- I met Benny Lewis who travels the world, learning languages and teaching others how to do it too.
- I met Jess Green who helps people find a creative course, I’ve registered my workshops on her site, Seek Your Course
- I met Stacey and Craig who help dance studio owners build websites
- I met numerous writers (Cynthia Morris), literary agents, artists (Lisa Call), and artist coaches (Alyson Stanfield whose book I’d Rather Be in the Studio I have in my library – and Anita Horton) all involved in creative endeavors
- I saw amazing keynote speakers including Scott Harrison whose small goal is to help provide clean water to 100,000,000 (that’s a hundred million!) people by the end of the decade, that don’t currently have access. The group he founded, Charity: water has already provided water to 2.5 million and I believe he’ll make his goal.
- I met people that live abroad and travel year-round, or whenever they want and have businesses to support that type of lifestyle
- I met three amazing women (that’s us in the photo to the right) who were also my roommates. We had never met before but hooked up on Facebook to share hotel costs. We now plan to keep in touch monthly and help each other stay on track with our goals. We arrived as strangers but left as friends. (Left to right: Jen Vertanen, me, Louise Wo, Sarah O’Leary)
UPDATE June 10th, 2022: I credit attending this conference for being able to travel and live abroad myself many times. I was inspired to create a business that was location independent which I could do from anywhere in the world. It also inspired me to create photography tours – which were really successful pre-covid.
The common thread – passion!
Are you getting the idea?! 1000 attendees and speakers, each with a great story and living an extraordinary life of passion, on their terms. So how you dominate the world will be different for you. It could simply mean dominating your own world, and killing it, as the best ever at what you do: mom, teacher, coach, blogger, travel writer, artist, executive assistant, lawyer, etc.
This was all started by a guy named Chris Guillebeau with his site and book of the same name – The Art of Non-Conformity. He’s a humble guy from Portland, who’s created a huge following of people that related to his message – life on your own terms. He did something extraordinary at the end of the summit. I’m not going to tell you what it is, if you want to know head over to his site and read, “The $100 Investment”, there’s a video as well.
Oh, and it was also a lot of fun! There was a karaoke party, a Bollywood dance party in an old-style dance hall, and many other official and unofficial events.
I even created and led a photowalk and 40 people showed up. Having never been to Portland before, that was a bit challenging. But I took it on nonetheless, and people seemed to really enjoy themselves.
Unused creativity is not benign
I experienced a huge “aha” during the opening keynote speaker, Dr. Brené Brown when she said,
“Unused creativity is not benign and doesn’t just disappear. It lives within us until it’s expressed, neglected to death, or suffocated by resentment and fear.”.
Brené Brown
WOW!!
That hit me like a ton of bricks right in the face!
She talked about how as small children we are encouraged to express our creativity in every way – draw, sing, dance! But as we get older, suddenly there’s a standard we have to measure up to and many kids end up getting stifled and their creativity is silenced.
Can you relate? Were you ever told you drew a horse incorrectly? Or your dance moves weren’t up to snuff or were weird? Imagine what that does to a child and how that plays in the rest of your life.
How I was affected by this creativity standard as a child . . .
I remember being about 10 when I was told in music class that my singing voice “sounded funny” (by a classmate or teacher, I don’t honestly remember). So from that moment on, I never sang again. I only ever just moved my lips and pretended to sing.
That continued long into adulthood, until after many personal growth courses and self-help books, into my late 30s. How can this one thing affect us so greatly, and for so long?! Some never overcome this creativity squashing.
Now, I’m happy to go to karaoke and actually participate and sing for real. My roomie Louise sang lead for R-E-S-P-E-C-T and I was one of her backup singers at the karaoke party. I can’t tell you how many people came up to me over the weekend and told me how great we were, and how much they loved it. I’m sure I don’t need to explain to you how great that feels, overcoming that old fear.
“Every child is an artist, the problem is staying an artist when you grow up.”
Pablo Picasso
So how does that relate to you?
You may be asking yourself that question now, why am I rambling on about this? Because I feel that a good percentage of our society has had a similar incident, or been told that something they created wasn’t good enough and it had dire consequences.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What part of your creativity have you shelved for fear of not being good enough for someone else’s standard?
- What do you want to create but haven’t? Why?
- What is stopping you from expressing your creativity?
- What is your story?
You are probably here because of an interest in photography. Luckily this part of me was encouraged in my teens (by supportive parents and a mentor teacher – thanks Mr. Gainer wherever you are) and it became a career.
Many others are not so lucky.
Do you relate to any or all of these?
- Stuck in a job – perhaps you feel stuck in a boring job you hate but can’t quit, or don’t want to leave but you feel the need to do something, anything!
- Afraid – maybe you dream of doing photography as a hobby or a part-time business, but are afraid of what people will think.
- Doubt – maybe you doubt that you have what it takes. Do the not-good-enough fairies dance in your head a little too often?
- Lack an outlet – maybe you simply just need some outlet for this creativity that’s been bottled up for so long and you picked up a camera – so here we are!
Help is here!!!
The good news is – you’re in the right place, help is here! Sometimes I feel like what I do isn’t really that important in the grand scheme of things. I can’t do brain surgery and save someone’s life. I haven’t raised 2.5 million dollars for charity.
But what I can do IS important and I came to realize that in a big way after that summit.
Expression of creativity is key to living a happy, passionate, fulfilled life. You don’t have to be a professional artist, hell you don’t even have to be good at it. The biggest key is to just do it!
Do something creative in your own way. Suck at it even, who cares! But enjoy it, love it, and have fun with it.
Take action now!
So what do you do now?
- Start by getting out there and surrounding yourself with other passionate people.
- Find groups to meet with that like doing what you do (join the DPM group on Facebook)
- Take some classes.
- Meet some strangers at a workshop, photowalk, or rally and make new friends.
- Do something that you think is unusual, daring or downright scares your socks off
- Do something that the people around you think is a little bit weird like going to some conference called the World Domination Summit.
My challenge to you
PART ONE: I want to know your story. Answer the questions (above) in the comments, and tell me your story (if you feel brave – Brené Brown also has thoughts on vulnerability as well). Tell me your fears. Tell me what you plan to do about it! Tell me how I can help.
PART TWO: What are you going to do to express your creativity? What new thing will you try?
For me I want to learn to speak a bit of Cree (local Indigenous language), and how to do beadwork. I even sewed my own ribbon skirt, which I wear to rallies and Indigenous events that I photograph.
For further discussion on this topic of losing our creativity, watch this TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson.
Photo credits: all the photos from the conference (except the photowalk group) were taken by Armosa Studios. The group photo is by James Clear.
Cheers,
