That’s silly.
We’re not here to push a rock up the hill.
The goal is to finish this.
To ship.
Not to polish.
Not to call another meeting to talk about our fears.
You’ve got art to make.
Go.
It turns out that magic lamps and genies are not real. Nor is the Tooth Fairy.
The good news is that the Boogie Man and the Fraud Police are not real either.
You’re not going to be drafted by the NBA. The New York Times isn’t putting your book on their list of bestsellers. And someone isn’t around the corner waiting for your next mistake.
So, go. Do good work anyway. Knowing that the stress isn’t there of having to manage a life gone viral. Knowing that there is still room to make a difference to someone. Even if that someone isn’t everyone.
When is the last time you talked to someone that wasn’t informed?
Of course, it’s now easier than ever to be informed. But I think it is also true that the internet has made us believe that we are more informed than we actually are.
We can sound like we know what we are talking about by reading a couple of headlines.
Increasingly, we put more trust that someone else did their homework. What it really comes down to then is, are my resources reliable? Or perhaps, this is my narrative of the world and my trusted resources support it.
Bingo.
There is too much information for any one person to process. So, we aggregate. We lump large sums of information, label it and use it as a shortcut to see the world.
As a result, we begin to see things in a hierarchical sense. The pursuit of more money, more artifacts, more titles, more status…more, more, more. As one metric grows, we begin to look down at the body of work of accumulation. And because things like promotions offer instant feedback, we believe we might be doing something right.
The reason why we work so hard to accumulate more stuff, at least that we tell ourselves and those around us, is that someday I’ll give more. Whether it’s to a charity or to our children. We have natural instincts to want to make the lives of those around us better. But you can’t give what you don’t have. Money doesn’t make your children or your spouse or the people you seek to serve better.
The truth is, that deep down, we are afraid to give ourselves to another human being.
When do we do if we give our hearts and soul but are rejected? What does that say about me as a person? Am I really good enough for someone to see me for what I truly am?
That terrifies us.
The key to unlocking the love begins by loving ourselves. Not in a “Treat Yourself” kind of way either. I mean fully embracing vulnerability. Sharing ourselves to another person despite the blemishes.
This is true acceptance.
Accepting someone with their faults. Accepting ourselves with our faults.
We spend so much time hiding and polishing our lives so that no one ever sees us. And if we are never seen, then we are truly miserable. To give is to accept ourselves (and others) as humans.
All we do is think.
Constantly.
Incessantly.
Everyone has a million ideas.
So, how do we know which idea to choose? Which one to pick and pursue?
Pick the idea that scares you the most.
The next time around won’t be as bad as your first.
What does Pablo Picasso, Bob Dylan and Shepard Fairey have in common?
Nothing really, except the fact they are known for creating art.
It turns out that genius is not something you are born with. Genius crosses social-economic lines and appears in many different forms including speeches or music or painting.
But it can also appear while driving down the freeway.
That person was being a genius. You can be too if you are willing to go on a limb.
Here’s the interesting thing about failures these days, they don’t cost that much.
Think about it. You can start a design line on Etsy, write and publish an Ebook, start a cooking master class on YouTube, open your photography business with an Instagram account and a WordPress site.
Your list of ideas that you can try is literally endless. And if fail it doesn’t cost you a thing (aside from time and a few bucks).
Your resume can be chocked full of failures and it won’t hurt you. Because you only need one success to build a whole career on. Just one.
The worst choice we can make is to do nothing. Avoid being seen or heard, avoid criticism long enough, no will ever care about the work you do.
“This time will be different.”
It’s part of the story we tell ourselves. And it’s also why most of us turn off when we hear about a friend who wants to stop smoking or to lose weight.
Because results don’t change until we work to change the environment around us. The marshmallow is too seductive otherwise.
In the words of Ernest Hemingway:
“How did you go bankrupt?”
“Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
Everyone can recognize rock bottom once they get there. We just have a difficult time seeing the journey and decisions that led to that moment.
It’s never too late to turn around. “I’m going to try again.” Better words to live by.
You can’t escape habits.
Good ones, bad ones—doesn’t matter. You are a creature of habit.
Instead of fighting to stop a bad habit, it’s possible to design behaviors in a way that replace bad habits with, well, good ones.
For example:
If you are to say, “I can’t eat marshmallows.” The “I can’t” isn’t an empowering behavior.
By contrast, you could say, “I don’t eat marshmallows.” That’s a choice. One you can make each time.
That simple switch is effective enough to make change happen. Telling a better story can make all the difference.
[Of course, this isn’t really about marshmallows.]
Once upon a time, there were these two young goldfish swimming along until one day they happen to come across an older goldfish swimming in the opposite direction.
The older goldfish as he passes nods and says, “Goodmorning, how’s the water?”
The young fish occupied kept swimming along until finally one of them turns to the other and asks, “What is water?”
It’s difficult to see what’s all around us without the lights flipped on. And I think too many of us operate without this awareness of what we are even swimming in.
This is water.
And because there is so much information to process, so much we can’t see; we create shortcuts to make sense of the world. As a result, we create biases, prejudices because we think we know what others are going through.
This is water.
And the way that our brain works, we are constantly afraid. Afraid of being seen, afraid of being judged. We are afraid that sabertooth tigers are going to attack us. Of course, there are no longer sabertooth tigers anymore so we substitute and equate the same risk when the teacher calls our name or when our boss sends us a text to call them back.
This is water.
The water is our default setting. And without awareness, we would know no better. Because that is what the culture and the status quo pushes us towards.
This is water.
HT David Foster
