Post Cannes: 5 takeaways from Cannes Lions 2017
If there is only one thought I have in mind after Cannes Lions is that strong ideas are born from simplicity. This festival gives you not only professional guideline but it can also be assimilated as a personal development training. By listening to people that make things move forward you see life from another angle and you feel changed and more powerful. Here are some highlights and takeaways from this year’s edition.
1. “Change assumptions. Change perceptions” – via Beau Lotto
Nothing is as it seems. It’s all about perception. What you see is determined by your biases. You can’t trust your perceptions because everything you do is a reflex based on memories and things that has been useful to you in the past. You can partly solve this problem by asking the right questions. True insight requires good questioning and the ability to deal with uncertainty, because creativity starts with humility, with not knowing. And humility means courage
2.“Nothing is impossible. The probability becomes 0 only when you give up.” – via Mike Massimino
There are things that seem impossible. But in reality nothing is impossible. Not even becoming an astronaut and not even after you received many letters of rejection. The most important thing is to fight for your dream, to believe in it. Most of the time what keeps you back is the voice in your minds that is keep telling you that you are going to fail. By not listening to it and persevering you can achieve your dreams.
3.“Honesty is the best policy” – via Sir Ian McKellen
People admire honesty on the whole. If you lie you can’t expect things to go well. People will feel it and in end you will have to lose the most. This is true both in professional and personal life. When you are true to yourself and you do only things you believe in and that are representing your true personality that’s the moment you can manifest your true potential.
4.“Imperfection is the new perfection.” – via Haruko Mingawa, Kazuaki Hashida, Takahiro Hosoda
In the age of information overload, imperfection is the solution. There are 5 ideas to keep in mind about creating a desire in the social era:
- Imperfect experience leads to perfect understanding
- Imperfect information perfects the imagination
- Imperfect environment creates an immersive effect
- Imperfect context piques curiosity
- Celebrating imperfection wins people’s sympathy.
5. “Boredom has power.” – via Yungsuk Nah
Even if most of the time we ignore things around us the boring things in our lives may have the practical solutions that we are looking for. So, the key to happiness is to find the little things in our life we often aren’t aware of. Things like eating, sleeping, exploring nature and doing nothing.
The best speakers were gathered at Cannes this year and if at the beginning of the festival you would have expected to see people with an attitude of superiority, a final lesson is that the ones who are the most influential are also the most humble.