"Eighty percent of success is showing up" -Woody Allen
My motto in life is “Just show up”.
As a recovering perfectionist, my
biggest struggle in life is terror of creating something that won't
meet my ideal standards.
The paradox is that in order to create
high quality stuff, you have to go through long periods of crappy
quality creating.
This blog will attest to that. I will
rarely write something that I am super proud of (like my piece on
“Wishing things were different” or “Motivation Re-Defined” or
“Authentic Communication”). I rarely feel like writing when I sit down in front of the computer. Before writing this I sat in front of a blank screen wondering what to write.
But every day I open up the computer screen because I:
But that's a sexy idea to think about. Results are sexy. The process of getting there? Not quite.
The reason so few people can reach that "mastery level" of creation is because it's not sexy to do something day in and day out without clearly getting better. It feels like banging your head on a wall expecting it to eventually bust through.
The better metaphor for the situation is Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption escaping prison by chipping away at tiny pieces of rock EVERY SINGLE NIGHT in his jail cell for years.
It is not an appealing prospect to think of achieving success like this but it's simply the reality I see played back to me over and over again.
So if I am going to show up every day and write, I have to accept that some days I will write some shitty content. It means I show up regardless of how I feel. Because if I show up only when I feel like, I rarely will. That means I will show up and give half-ass efforts at times, but I'll do it because preservation of the habit is supreme to everything else.
I think having high standards is an honorable choice to make, but in reality, I see it holding people back. It's important to strive to be great and to push ourselves to be as awesome as we can be, but the bottom line, in my opinion, is that showing up is fundamental.
Not being perfect sounds like a good excuse. Actually, I'd say it is a great excuse. But excuses are always just really clever rationalizations for avoiding doing something. In the end our brains are really lazy and can come up with any reason not to do something.
Instead, I think it's better to accept being imperfect and just go on with striving to be a high quality creator in whatever form it is.
People will tell you that you aren't good enough or aren't talented enough but following the motto of just showing up will shut up these critics.....over time.
So either this will be a weird cryptic prediction of the future of my writing (and a great example of how to create high quality content) or it will be an epic display of failure on my part and how I am wrong wrong wrong.
Either way it should be interesting.
:-)
[Feel free to leave a comment! It's open to anyone and no registration is required!]
But every day I open up the computer screen because I:
- Know I could potentially create something amazing
- Will continue to improve if I just write something, anything
- Will, by the end of the 30 minutes of writing, be completely engrossed in what I'm doing
- Will be content when I finish because I followed through on my commitment
But that's a sexy idea to think about. Results are sexy. The process of getting there? Not quite.
The reason so few people can reach that "mastery level" of creation is because it's not sexy to do something day in and day out without clearly getting better. It feels like banging your head on a wall expecting it to eventually bust through.
The better metaphor for the situation is Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption escaping prison by chipping away at tiny pieces of rock EVERY SINGLE NIGHT in his jail cell for years.
It is not an appealing prospect to think of achieving success like this but it's simply the reality I see played back to me over and over again.
So if I am going to show up every day and write, I have to accept that some days I will write some shitty content. It means I show up regardless of how I feel. Because if I show up only when I feel like, I rarely will. That means I will show up and give half-ass efforts at times, but I'll do it because preservation of the habit is supreme to everything else.
I think having high standards is an honorable choice to make, but in reality, I see it holding people back. It's important to strive to be great and to push ourselves to be as awesome as we can be, but the bottom line, in my opinion, is that showing up is fundamental.
Not being perfect sounds like a good excuse. Actually, I'd say it is a great excuse. But excuses are always just really clever rationalizations for avoiding doing something. In the end our brains are really lazy and can come up with any reason not to do something.
Instead, I think it's better to accept being imperfect and just go on with striving to be a high quality creator in whatever form it is.
So either this will be a weird cryptic prediction of the future of my writing (and a great example of how to create high quality content) or it will be an epic display of failure on my part and how I am wrong wrong wrong.
Either way it should be interesting.
:-)
[Feel free to leave a comment! It's open to anyone and no registration is required!]
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