Three big lies
View this email in your browser (|ARCHIVE|) Steven Pressfield calls it Resistance (http://www.stevenpressfield.com/the-war-of-art/) .
Others call it making excuses or even just good old fashioned procrastination.
Name it whatever you like: there’s a force that holds you back from doing your best creative work.
It’s powered by three big lies that we each tell ourselves.
- “I can’t do this.”
This is the worst lie.
It saps our energy and robs us of our potential even before we try. It sells us a bill of goods without ever providing a shred of proof, all because it’s so easy to believe it. It tricks us into asking: how can I possibly create anything out of nothing? The proposition sounds almost too ridiculous to be true. And yet it is precisely what we are capable of in any creative endeavor.
All it requires is applying ass to chair. That’s the part that we really fooled ourselves into believing: giving in without a fight.
- “I don’t have any good ideas right now.”
Good ideas don’t just happen. They seldom just arrive in your head, intact and ready to do business.
They are the outcome of a process: one that works best when you let it flow without a fixed outcome in mind, such as “this has to be great otherwise it’s a waste of time.”
I like what musician Brian Eno has to say (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0826427863/) about that:
“Everyone thinks that Beethoven had his string quartets completely in his head—they somehow appeared there and formed in his head—and all he had to do was write them down and they would be manifest to the world. But what I think is so interesting, and would really be a lesson that everybody should learn, is that things come out of nothing. Things evolve out of nothing. You know, the tiniest seed in the right situation turns into the most beautiful forest.”
- “I am on my own.”
Stop being so precious. There is no such thing as a struggle in life that hasn’t been tackled and solved by somebody before. Libraries are filled with books that are each their own little operating system that we can apply to our problems, but only if we’re willing to try.
If reading isn’t your thing (and I’d urge you to reconsider that position), recognize the power that other people have in helping to lift you up. Consider the insights of Vincent Tinto—noted scholar and expert in the field of student retention. His study, Dimensions of Institutional Action, applies as much to our creative work as it does to postsecondary student enrollment.
He found that the best predictor of whether someone perseveres is whether they have a social circle with whom they can commiserate. Find people who are like you, who work in your industry. Talk to them about your work. Not the work you are thinking of doing: the work that you are doing.
You are capable of doing this.
Very best, Patrick
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