A Love Letter To People Who Believe in People

Tina on the transformative power of enthusiasm

When I was eight, I made a big, hand-drawn poster that said, “Do you want to join my fan club?” and put it up in the small Swiss town where I grew up.

Neighbors would ask me, “What are we going to be fans of?” and I’d say, “It doesn’t matter—it’s just about being excited.” Eight year old Tina.

Decades later, I’m still convinced that being a fan is a state of mind.

Being a fan is all about bringing the enthusiasm. It’s being a champion of possibility. It’s believing in someone. And it’s contagious. When you’re around someone who is super excited about something, it washes over you. It feels good. You can’t help but want to bring the enthusiasm, too.

This, to me, is the real transformation. Confidence is impressive, but enthusiasm can change people’s lives.

If I trace all the defining moments of my life back to their beginnings, I can always find a person with this fan state of mind: someone who believed in me, opened a door, or illuminated a new path just by being who they are.

This is a love letter to all the people who believe in us and nudge us in new directions with their enthusiasm.

To the person who showed me you can live life your way—my beloved, eccentric Aunt Hugi

She was the most creative, unique, stubborn, wild Swiss woman I have ever known. I grew up in the Swiss countryside and visiting Hugi in Zurich was always an adventure. She was a fashion designer, artist, and a true original. As I got older, I really started to appreciate how she didn’t care what people thought. She lived a courageous, creative life and inspired me to be bold, forge my own path, and break rules.

To the person who opened up a different future—my first boss, Matthew Waldman

After I earned my graphic design degree, I convinced my parents that I wanted to go to New York to find a three-month internship. I arrived on a Monday night and had an interview lined up the next morning with Matthew Waldman—the CEO of a small, now defunct design studio. Within five minutes of talking to me, he offered me a job and predicted that I would never leave New York.

Not only was he right, but his instant belief in me taught me that your boss can be enthusiastic, kind, and caring. This set the tone going forward—I would not accept anything other than a loving work environment.

To the person who nudged me to ask myself, “What am I waiting for?”—my daughter Ella

While working as a Design Director at a digital agency and pregnant with my daughter Ella, I found myself inspired to think bigger. I always wanted to run my own design studio and an urgency suddenly hit me—I was making a human, and I wanted to be a role model to them, so what was I waiting for? I started my own design studio the day she was born.

To the person who helped me realise “I can do this too”—the inspiring Jim Coudal

My blog swissmiss became quite popular, but when I had other ideas, I’d second-guess them. I’d think, Who am I to do this thing? A real epiphany came when I was watching Jim Coudal at SXSW. As he was describing his fun side projects, including The Deck Network, Layer Tennis, and Field Notes, I realized I could put my ideas into the world, too. Seeing someone create the things they want to create can give us permission to do the same.

So I did it. I knew intuitively that the people you surround yourself with change what you dream about, which led me to start the coworking space Studiomates (now known as Friends Work Here). It has been magical to see what unfolds when you gather creative, kind, driven humans in a physical space. We often find ourselves in deep, engaging conversations over coffee or lunch, which in turn has led to the founding of multiple companies, magazines and conferences. We believe in each other, and we make each other brave.

To the person who encouraged the momentum of CreativeMornings—co-founder of Mailchimp, Ben Chestnut

After experiencing the power of my coworking community, I felt inspired to share the magic. I was in a city of eight million people, but the creative communities felt fragmented and disconnected. I knew there had to be more heart-centered, creative people looking to connect. So, I decided to invite people to the space for a free breakfast and a talk. I vividly remember being made fun of for inviting people to an event at 8:30 a.m., and assuming no one would show up. I am proud to say we had 50 attendees at the first ever CreativeMornings in October of 2008.

Just four months and four events later, I received an email from Ben Chestnut, co-founder of Mailchimp, saying he and his team were big fans and he wondered if they could sponsor future events. I had never dealt with sponsors before and clumsily invited them to pay for breakfast, which turned into the most supportive and encouraging 15-year corporate partnership and friendship.

Mailchimp consistently reminded us to focus on what we do best: serving and growing our community. Having more people say, “We just want to make sure you can do your magic,” is what the world needs.

To the person who helped CreativeMornings think bigger and bolder—Ruth Ann Harnisch

When I first met Ruth Ann, a former journalist and the visionary philanthropist leading the Harnisch Foundation, she told me she believed in CreativeMornings’ potential to change the world, one friendship at a time. In an act of radical generosity, she pledged $1 million and became our first ever patron—the ultimate fan!

Her support isn’t just financial—it’s a reflection of her deep belief in people and their potential.

With her donation, we’ve been able to pilot Clubs: intimate, community-led gatherings built around a shared passion. In just one year, NYC Clubs brought together 6,000 attendees, further propelling the CreativeMornings friendship-engine.

To all the people who transform our lives

Every time I meet someone with a fan state of mind, I am transformed—my limiting beliefs are challenged, and possibilities are expanded.

If one person can change the trajectory of my own life, imagine what entire communities can do?

I believe heart-centered communities can create a cultural shift towards generosity, kindness, and curiosity.

A central agreement for CreativeMornings is: “I believe in you, you believe in me.” We celebrate with each other. That kind of mutual uplift changes you—it helps you step into your potential and work towards a better future.

And that’s the power of enthusiasm. In a world that sometimes feels like it’s waiting to discourage you, we need to find and become uplifting, optimistic, heart-forward people more than ever. People who ask, “What if it turned out better than you ever imagined?”

This is a love letter to the people who inspire us to be bolder and braver, but also an invitation to show an unwavering belief in someone else.

People show us what’s possible every day—and each of us, in our own way, can be those very people. To be a fan is to open your heart, stand courageously in your enthusiasm, and help transform the world.

So be the eccentric Aunt Hugi to someone.

Share your ideas with the world to inspire others.

Contribute to the things you love and would miss if they were gone.

Believe in people. Be a fan.

This blog series is our love letter to everyone who’s ever been part of a CreativeMornings gathering. Since our start in 2008, our remarkable volunteers have hosted over 15,000 events across the globe. As a community, we have become experts in what it means to create spaces that allow for deep, loving, human connection in an increasingly disconnected world. With this series, we’re sharing what we’ve learned hoping it will encourage you to join in or create your own meaningful spaces. The future is not lonely. It’s communal and hyperlocal.

Always Go To The Funeral

“Always go to the funeral” means that I have to do the right thing when I really, really don’t feel like it. I have to remind myself of it when I could make some small gesture, but I don’t really have to and I definitely don’t want to. I’m talking about those things that represent only inconvenience to me, but the world to the other guy. You know, the painfully under-attended birthday party. The hospital visit during happy hour. The Shiva call for one of my ex’s uncles. In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn’t been good versus evil. It’s hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing.”

A beautiful read: Always Go To The Funeral, by Deirdre Sullivan

We Need To Rewild The Internet

“Rewilding the internet is more than a metaphor. It’s a framework and plan. It gives us fresh eyes for the wicked problem of extraction and control, and new means and allies to fix it. It recognizes that ending internet monopolies isn’t just an intellectual problem. It’s an emotional one. It answers questions like: How do we keep going when the monopolies have more money and power? How do we act collectively when they suborn our community spaces, funding and networks? And how do we communicate to our allies what fixing it will look and feel like?

Rewilding is a positive vision for the networks we want to live inside, and a shared story for how we get there. It grafts a new tree onto technology’s tired old stock.”

We Need To Rewild The Internet, by Maria Farrell and Robin Berjon

(Thank you Brendan)

Article on Friendship

“Friendship insecurity remains a final hurdle in how I interact in the world, but I’m realizing that if I want close, family-level friendships, I need to act as if I am already in them. Even if it brings me discomfort to text my friend an unprompted update about my life so they will feel more inclined to text me about one of theirs in the future. While most of my friends’ behaviors haven’t drastically changed overnight in response, I remain hopeful that I am slowly moving toward tighter bonds. And my growing friendship with my neighbor is shifting into the type of dynamic I’ve been so hungry for — much to my delight.”
– By Allison Raskin

Lovely read about Adult Friendship. Stumbled upon thanks to this thoughtful TikTok.

The Third Thing

“What we did: love. We did not spend our days gazing into each other’s eyes. We did that gazing when we made love or when one of us was in trouble, but most of the time our gazes met and entwined as they looked at a third thing. Third things are essential to marriages, objects or practices or habits or arts or institutions or games or human beings that provide a site of joint rapture or contentment. Each member of a couple is separate; the two come together in double attention.”

– The Third Thing by Donald Hall

Missing From Your Job Description

– Add energy to every conversation
– Ask why
– Find obsolete things on your task list and remove them
– Treat customers better than they expect
– Offer to help co-workers before they ask
– Feed the plants
– Leave things more organized than you found them
– Invent a moment of silliness
– Highlight good work from your peers
– Find other great employees to join the team
– Cut costs
– Help invent a new product or service that people really want
– Get smarter at your job through training or books
– Encourage curiosity
– Surface and highlight difficult decisions
– Figure out what didn’t work
– Organize the bookshelf
– Start a club
– Tell a joke at no one’s expense
– Smile a lot.

I stumbled upon this post again from Seth. Not new. But oh so good.

50 Short Rules for a Better Life (From the Stoics)

Focus on what you can control.
You control how you respond to things.
Ask yourself, “Is this essential?”
Meditate on your mortality every day.
Value time more than money/possessions.
You are the product of your habits.
Remember you have the power to have no opinion.
Own the morning.
Put yourself up for review (Interrogate yourself).
Don’t suffer imagined troubles.
Try to see the good in people.
Never be overheard complaining…even to yourself.
Two ears, one mouth…for a reason (Zeno)
There is always something you can do.
Don’t compare yourself to others.
Live as if you’ve died and come back (every minute is bonus time).
“The best revenge is not to be like that.” Marcus Aurelius
Be strict with yourself and tolerant with others.
Put every impression, emotion, to the test before acting on it.
Learn something from everyone.
Focus on process, not outcomes.
Define what success means to you.
Find a way to love everything that happens (Amor fati).
Seek out challenges.
Don’t follow the mob.
Grab the “smooth handle.”
Every person is an opportunity for kindness (Seneca)
Say no (a lot).
Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Find one thing that makes you wiser every day.
What’s bad for the hive is bad for the bee (Marcus Aurelius)
Don’t judge other people.
Study the lives of the greats.
Forgive, forgive, forgive.
Make a little progress each day.
Journal.
Prepare for life’s inevitable setbacks (premeditatio malorum)
Look for the poetry in ordinary things.
To do wrong to one, is to do wrong to yourself. (sympatheia)
Always choose “Alive Time.”
Associate only with people that make you better.
If someone offends you, realize you are complicit in taking offense.
Fate behaves as she pleases…do not forget this.
Possessions are yours only in trust.
Don’t make your problems worse by bemoaning them.
Accept success without arrogance, handle failure with indifference.
Courage. Temperance. Justice. Wisdom. (Always).
The obstacle is the way.
Ego is the enemy.
Stillness is the key.

Found here.

A Universal “Data-base” of Positive Intentions

“Around the world, people create amazing experiences and opportunities. When they do, energetically, it becomes available to everyone. Think of it as a universal database of Creative Consciousness. One that we are all uploading our divine talents to. Therefore, we make them vibrationally accessible to kindred spirits across the globe.”
What is Creative Consciousness?

A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden

A garden is a collection of evolving ideas that aren’t strictly organised by their publication date. They’re inherently exploratory – notes are linked through contextual associations. They aren’t refined or complete – notes are published as half-finished thoughts that will grow and evolve over time. They’re less rigid, less performative, and less perfect than the personal websites we’re used to seeing.

Great read: A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden

Digital Gardens

“…as I wander the internet, I wonder where the digital gardens are that will connect me to fellow gardeners more deeply. More often than not, the digital gardens of today are botanic—privately owned online spaces made for visitors to fawn over while a “do not touch” sign looms in view. These private gardens are generative for our personal learning, but they are far from the communal gardens I grew up in that valued collective work and knowledge. Where are the digital gardens that lead us towards collective learning, play, and dreaming?”

On Digital Gardens: Tending to Our Collective Multiplicity by Annika Hansteen-Izora

(Thank you Annie)

The Cozy Web


Thank you David Spinks for sharing this graphic and introducing me to the term “The Cozy Web”. He got it from this article: The Dark Forest and the Cozy Web

Slow Learning

Tom Hodgkinson and a group of around 15 authors, artists, and teachers came up with a “Manifesto for Slow Learning,” which includes a “Bill of Rights” for the slow learner. (Start each of these with the phrase, “You have the right to…”)

1. Focus on direction, not destination
Immerse yourself completely in the journey and you will reach your final goal gradually.

2. Raise your hand
Asking questions is a fundamental human right.

3. Learn at your own pace
Find your rhythm, find your flow. Don’t compare yourself to others.

4. Unplug
You have the right to disconnect and move your attention towards what’s essential. Learn unplugged, far away from digital distractions.

5. Change your learning path (and mind)
Don’t get too comfortable in the habit zone and start with changing the aversion to change. Think differently and learn new things.

6. Take a break
Micro-breaks, lunch breaks, and longer breaks will all improve your learning performance. You have the right to rest.

7. Make mistakes
Don’t fall into despair but Fail Forward.

8. Leave it unfinished
We live in a super busy, multi-tasking, results-oriented society. Step away from your long to-do list and enjoy once in a while the beauty of an unstructured day.

9. Unlearn and forget
Harness the power of unlearning. Reboot your mind, abandon old knowledge, actions and behaviours to create space.

10. Slow down
Sometimes slow and steady will win the learning race. Make haste slowly.

(via Austin Kleon)

Kindness Scales

“It scales better than competitiveness, frustration, pettiness, regret, revenge, merit (whatever that means) or apathy. Kindness ratchets up. It leads to more kindness. It can create trust and openness and truth and enthusiasm and patience and possibility.

Kindness, in one word, is a business model, an approach to strangers and a platform for growth.It might take more effort than you were hoping it would, but it’s worth it.”

– Seth Godin

Resurfacing this quote I posted in 2017. It’s so good.

Disembodied Communication

“The body is everywhere assaulted by all of our new media, a state which has resulted in deep disorientation of intellect and destabilization of culture throughout the world. In the age of disembodied communication, the meaning and significance and experience of the body is utterly transformed and distorted.”
Have I mentioned that I’ve been trying to figure out the Internet?”
– Eric McLuhan

Uranus, Eris, and the Riddle of the Internet, by Eric Francis Coppolino

(Thank you Tim)

I am, because we are

“The African view is that a person is a person through other persons. My humanity is caught up with your humanity, and when your humanity is enhanced — whether I like it or not — mine is enhanced as well. Likewise, when you are dehumanized, I am dehumanized as well.”
– Archbishop Desmond Tutu

The Bantu philosophy of “ubuntu” focuses on the power of community. Be famous within five miles.

The Nine Rules of Wile E. Coyote

“Chuck Jones, the brilliant animator who conceived of this most clever depiction of the banality and inevitability of repeated failure in the modern world, actually had “Rules” for the Coyote.”

The 1000 Deaths of Wile E. Coyote

Rebuilding Society on Meaning

Thank you Joe Edelman for sharing this thoughtful piece on rebuilding society on meaning! “If we want to make meaningful things, we have to measure meaning.”

Stock and Flow

…There are two kinds of quantities in the world. Stock is a static value: money in the bank or trees in the forest. Flow is a rate of change: fifteen dollars an hour or three thousand toothpicks a day. Easy. Too easy.

But I actually think stock and flow is a useful metaphor for media in the 21st century. Here’s what I mean:

Flow is the feed. It’s the posts and the tweets. It’s the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that reminds people you exist.

Stock is the durable stuff. It’s the content you produce that’s as interesting in two months (or two years) as it is today. It’s what people discover via search. It’s what spreads slowly but surely, building fans over time. …

Read the full article titled Stock and Flow

The Black Sheep of the Family

“The so-called black sheep of the family are, in fact, hunters born of paths of liberation into the family tree.

The members of a tree who do not conform to the norms or traditions of the family system, those who since childhood have constantly sought to revolutionise beliefs, going against the paths marked by family traditions, those criticised, judged and even rejected, these are usually called to free the tree of repetitive stories that frustrate entire generations.

The black sheep, those who do not adapt, those who cry rebelliously, play a basic role within each family system, they repair, pick up and create new and unfold branches in the family tree.”

– Bert Hellinger

Full text here.

Critical Introductory Reading to Art + AI

Interesting article recommendations in this thread.

22 Nuggets of Wisdom from Cory Muscara

1. Finding your true self is an act of love. Expressing it is an act of rebellion.

2. A sign of growth is having more tolerance for discomfort. But it’s also having less tolerance for bullshit.

3. Who you are is not your fault, but it is your responsibility.

4. Desires that rise in agitation are more aligned with your ego. Desires that arise in stillness are more aligned with your soul.

5. Procrastination is the refusal or inability to be with difficult emotions.

6. The moment before letting to is often when we grip the hardest.

7. You don’t find your ground by looking for stability. You find your ground by relaxing into stability.

8. What you hate most in others is usually what you hate most in yourself.

9. The biggest life hack is becoming your own best friend. Everything is easier when you do.

10. The more comfortable you become in your own skin, the less you need to manufacture the world around you for comfort.

11. An interesting thing happens when you start to like yourself. You no longer need all the things you thought you need to be happy.

12. If you don’t train your mind to appreciate what is good, you’ll continue to look for something better in the future, even when things are great.

13. The belief that there is some future moment more worth our presence than the one we’re in right now is why we miss our lives.

14. There is no set of conditions that leads to lasting happiness. Lasting happiness doesn’t come from conditions, but from learning to flow with conditions.

15. We often need to get out of alignment with the rest of the world to get back into alignment with ourselves.

16. Real confidence looks like humility. You no longer need to advertise your value because it comes from a place that does not require the validation of others.

17. Negative thoughts will not manifest a negative life. But unconscious negative thoughts will.

18. Bullying yourself into enlightenment does not work. You must befriend yourself to transcend yourself.

19. There are 3 layers to a moment: Your experience, your awareness of the experience and your story about the experience. Be mindful of the story.

20. Your mind doesn’t wander. It moves toward what it finds most interesting. To improve focus, become curious about what’s in front of you.

21. Life continues whether you pay attention to it or not. I think it’s why the passage of time is so scary.

22. High pain tolerance is a double-edged sword. It’s key for self-control but can cause us to override the pain of being out of alignment.

Read Cory Muscara’s original post.

Staying soft vs Tightening

“Tightness erodes clarity. Tightness reduces expansion. Tightness broadens fear, scarcity, and the feeling of being powerless. Tightness keeps me wound in my own Small Self, forgetting entirely about everything that exists beyond the tightness. Tightness looks like turning away from reality. It looks like worst-case-scenario, all-or-nothing thinking. It looks like ‘What if this doesn’t go the way I want it to?’ and ‘I don’t think I can handle this’ — like worry embodied. It looks like self-doubt and rumination, catastrophizing and smallness. It looks like forgetting about my body and only listening to my brain.”
– Stay Soft, Lisa Oliver

(via Jocelyn)

Patience

“Patience, I believe, is a core competency of a healthy civilization.”
– Stewart Brand

Connection on A Global Scale

Deeply moved by this thorough and generous article on the magic of CreativeMornings, my biggest labor of love.

In case you’re not familiar with CreativeMornings: It’s the world’s largest face-to-face creative community. You can attend events in 225 cities every month or tune into our free digital FieldTrips (aka workshops) online.