Talking TEDx

“Are you nervous?”

A friend asked me that yesterday about today’s TEDx talk I’m presenting.

“Not really.” I said with a shrug. I’ve given hundreds of speeches and they all have led up to this moment. Giving a TEDx talk is bucket list stuff for me.

My bucket list has had a good week.

I thought about what topic I’d present and decided creativity was one I was qualified to talk about — and resilience. I’ve done both the past few years. In my career, I’ve drawn over 7,000 cartoons. That’s a lot of ink and ideas. I’ve been a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize a couple of times and seen my cartoons on refrigerators around town. I’ve also written and illustrated several books. But I think the biggest change — and the one I’m going to talk about — is how to supercharge your creativity in response to this 24/7 Social Media driven world.

In the old days (AKA, before the Internet), I just had to come into the office, read the paper and wait for my muse to show up. I’d then draw the cartoon that would show up on your driveway the next morning. Now, everything is nearly instantaneous. I have to be able to punch through the wall of resistance and pull back in an idea on demand. I’m constantly writing, preparing for radio and TV, updating social media, working on illustration projects and of course, drawing cartoons. My brain is going all the time.

And it has to be.

The secret to Social Media is to be practically instantaneous with your ideas. That means you have to constantly do your homework and have your brain trained to be able to produce at the drop of a hat.

I’ll touch on that today.

But I will also talk about overcoming fear. Fear is the devil walking the earth. It and long-term stress are salt on creativity’s slug. You have to get past them. I do it through H.O.P.E. (Humor, Opportunity to Serve, Physical Fitness and Education). I overcome long-term stress by scheduling my day, not creating to-do lists. I’ve struggled with the fear of my work not being good enough. Some career setbacks unleashed that monster. But hard work and persistence helped me slay it.

Failure is only failure if you don’t get back up and learn from it.

At 4:15, I will be standing in a big red dot and living my dream. I have 18 minutes to make my mark in the world. I will take out a pen and scratch off one more thing on my life’s bucket list.

And no, I’m not nervous. I’m excited beyond words.