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A few months back I read a book titled ‘The Practice’ by Seth Godin. I loved it a lot and made some notes from it. They are some profound lines from the book which spoke to me. The first set of these lines are here.
Here is second set:
Your contribution—the one that you want to make, the one you were born to make—that’s what we’re waiting for, that’s what we need.
Selling can feel selfish. We want to avoid hustling people, and so it’s easy to hold back in fear of manipulating someone. Here’s an easy test for manipulation: if the people you’re interacting with discover what you already know, will they be glad that they did what you asked them to?
When we mimic talking points or work hard to echo what the others have said, we’re hiding.
Artists actively work to create a sense of discomfort in their audience. Discomfort engages people, keeps them on their toes, makes them curious. Discomfort is the feeling we all get just before change happens
First, you can embrace the fact that you can, in fact, trust the process and repeat the practice often enough to get unstuck. Second, you can focus on the few, not everyone. And third, you can bring intention to your work, making every step along the way count.
In order to say no with consistency and generosity, we need to have something to say “yes” to. Our commitment to the practice is the source of that yes.
We focus on the fish, not the casting.
Reassurance is helpful for people who seek out certainty, but successful artists realize that certainty isn’t required
The practice is a choice. With discipline, it’s something we can always choose. The practice is there for us, whether or not we feel confident. Especially when we don’t feel confident.
Generosity is the most direct way to find the practice. Generosity subverts resistance by focusing the work on someone else. Generosity means that we don’t have to seek reassurance for the self, but can instead concentrate on serving others. It activates a different part of our brain and gives us a more meaningful way forward.
Our work exists to change the recipient for the better. That’s at the core of the practice.
When you’re doing the work for someone else, to make things better, suddenly, the work isn’t about you. Jump in the water, save that kid.
You can produce more than you know if you are intent on doing it for someone else
We have to be able to say “it’s not for you” and mean it.
It’s not helpful to only make things for yourself, unless you’re fortunate enough that what you want is precisely what your audience wants.
And so, there’s the challenge of embracing the gulf between what you see or want or believe and what those you’re serving see, want, or believe. Because they’re never the same. And the only way to engage with this gap is to go where they are, because those you serve are unlikely to care enough to come to you.
“It’s not for you” is the unspoken possible companion to “Here, I made this.”
It’s worth pausing for a moment to see the fork in the road again. It’s honorable for your art to be just for you. For you to choose to create for an audience of one. But that’s not professional work, because you’re not on the hook. There’s no one to serve but you and the idea in your head.
Pursuing either is fine. Pursuing both is a recipe for unhappiness, because what you’re actually doing is insisting that other people want what you want and see what you see.
We must sell ourselves on it first, before we can sell it to anyone else.
Our desire to please the masses interferes with our need to make something that matters.
When we get really attached to how others will react to our work, we stop focusing on our work and begin to focus on controlling the outcome instead.
When we do the work for the audience, we open the door to giving up our attachment to how the audience will receive the work.
Believing that we’re owed something is a form of attachment.
That’s because working in anticipation of what we’ll get in return takes us out of the world of self-trust and back into the never-ending search for reassurance and the perfect outcome. We believe that we need a guarantee, and that the only way to get that guarantee is with external feedback and results. It draws our eye to the mirror instead of the work.
We can begin with this: If we failed, would it be worth the journey? Do you trust yourself enough to commit to engaging with a project regardless of the chances of success?
The practice requires you to seek out this experience of uncertainty, to place yourself in the room where you will create discomfort.
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