I can't do this
View this email in your browser (|ARCHIVE|) Hey, |NAME|: the important takeaway in this issue of CreativeBoost hinges on two little stories that involve Apple and Rick Rubin: the world’s biggest brand and the most successful record producer out there today.
I’ll get to those.
But first, I need to get a big ugly thing out of the way.
There are four words that form the biggest lie you tell yourself: I can’t do this.
I often need to remind myself of this, |NAME|, because just like you, the lies I tell myself are the ones that are the most seductive and the most harmful.
I can’t do this: buy into that and you confuse belief for fact.
It commits you to a path where the future seems knowable only in terms of what you’ve decided is no longer open to you (http://ctt.ec/41ka7) .
That is a mistake.
You have no idea what the future has in store for you. None of us do.
When I quit my safe, salaried, fully pensioned job 14 years ago, I thought I had a pretty good idea what I was doing and where I was going.
Even so, I was scared out of my mind: so much so that I was throwing up nearly every day from the anxiety while I agonized over the decision that I thought was changing the course of my life.
My thinking was wrong on both counts.
My first mistake: thinking I knew what to be afraid of.
Here are the things I feared the most back then: I am going to fail, I am going to run out of money, people will laugh at me, I’ll be found out as a fraud, I will have to get a real job again.
Notice what they all have in common?
Each pretends to be a fact when it’s really just a feeling.
Each is framed to define the future with zero regard for the present.
None of the things I feared coming to pass ever ended up happening.
My business flourished. Not at all in the way that I had originally planned (http://thinkitcreative.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/my_really_old_website.jpg) . Today, when I read over the business plan that I prepared back in 2000, I barely recognize the company I thought I was building or the person who was doing all the planning.
Still, things worked out.
I ended up meeting some great people, started helping solve really interesting business problems that others have. For the first time in my professional life I started having fun in my work. I also made every mistake possible, but I learned from each one (stories for another time).
Ridiculously funny things happened, too. Just one year into my business, I somehow stumbled into starring in a TV and magazine ad for a scrappy little company called Apple (https://www.facebook.com/patrick.gant.965/posts/10153257687546208?notif_t=like) .
How that happened (http://thinkitcreative.com/blog/remembering-steve/) is also a story for another time. Point is: there’s no way I could have predicted that happening before it did.
There’s also no way it would have happened if I’d bought into my own lie.
My second mistake: thinking I knew what was at stake.
Back in 2001, when I was sick with anxiety over whether to quit my job (and I’ll be honest, I was just as much a mess inside in the early aftermath), I’d tell myself “this is my most important decision because it’s going to change the course of my life.”
Such arrogance. I didn’t know what I was talking about. Yes, it was a significant decision. Yes, it precipitated major changes for me.
But it was not the most important one.
The most important decision of my life was the one I had really no idea I was making at the time. I needed to grow to understand it.
I had to decide to stop being so afraid.
Within that choice, the stakes changed. I was no longer prisoner to circumstance where the options were framed around what will keep me the most safe or do me the least amount of harm? Instead of buying into my I-can’t-do-this lie, decisions became framed around what can I do right now to go from here to there?
That takes me to my second little story. This one’s about record producer Rick Rubin. He’s been been behind some of the better (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_(The_Cult_album)) records (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Globe_Sessions) of the last (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_(Adele_album)) three (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_in_Blood) decades (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Wheels_on_a_Gravel_Road) (ok, he’s also responsible for a few (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Hot_Minute) that I really don’t care for (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Californication_(album)) ). But I digress.
The story I want to share with you here is about how he lost over 130 pounds and got his health back.
It was a slow, difficult process for him. At one point he wanted to add new exercises to his workout. But there was one routine that was really hard.
“I can’t do this,” he said to his trainer.
“Never say that,” said the trainer. “Instead say I haven’t tried this yet.”
They broke the exercise into three parts and worked daily on just one little segment of each one. And then they connected the pieces together. Eventually, Rick had mastered this seemingly impossible exercise.
Everything broken.
That’s how we overcome most things, |NAME|.
We accomplish only what’s solvable today.
If we think of our problems are like having to rebuild a LEGO model, we’re smart if we smash that sucker into little pieces. We pick up one piece. We click it to the next one we pick up.
With problems, there is always something there for you do today. And almost always, what that entails is a small step.
And yes, there are things you actually can’t do.
You can’t lose 30 pounds (or 130 pounds, like Rick). Not overnight. But you can lose half a pound over a relatively short period of time. And repeat. And repeat.
You can’t create a cake. Not out of nothing. You buy and combine the ingredients. You observe the results. You try again if it comes out flat.
You can’t write a book. Not today. But you can write a sentence today. And then connect it to another one tomorrow. And so on.
Nothing comes to us finished. Everything is best when broken.
That’s how we are able to ply our most human of skills: combinatorial play. We put things together (or back together) piece by piece, often in ways that surprise even ourselves.
You are the sum of the choices you make today. That’s it, |NAME|. You are held back only by a choice to reject yourself–to buy into your big lie: I can’t do this.
So don’t do that.
You deserve better.
– Patrick
P.S. Not gonna lie: I first tried to write this one in a way that avoided being so blunt and personal. But a difficult kind of honesty overruled me. Dig what I’m saying? Hit the reply button. Or tweet about it (http://ctt.ec/j49Oa) .
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