Number 5 is short and sweet, like Five Golden Rings! 

Let’s practice what we preach.  Let’s approach our work with creativity, and with an appetite for risk.  Although my interpretation of his work may be over-simplified, Robert Persig, in his iconic work, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (and later in Lila), asserted that unless we are moving forward, unless we are dynamic in our approach to life, we are moving backward and declining, that there is no stasis, or even place. 

His philosophy speaks clearly to those of us in the arts.  If we are not exploring new ideas, stretching ourselves creatively and going out on limbs, we are not serving our art form, or ourselves well.  We are sitting on our hands, and as such, sliding backward.

This work task is accomplished by asking ourselves, every time we are in a decision-making situation, “am I looking at this through the eyes of an artist?”