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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, second and third sets of these lines are here, here and here.
Here is the fourth and final set:
This desire for external approval and authority directly undermines your ability to trust yourself, because you’ve handed this trust over to an institution instead.
Certainty, then, must be elusive, because we can’t know for sure. The elusiveness isn’t a problem, it’s not a bug, it’s not something to be eliminated. The uncertainty is the point.
The practice seeks to make change, but the process demands originality. The practice is consistent, but only in intention, not in execution.
The infinite game is the game we play to play, not to win.
Play to keep playing.
Everyone who creates feels resistance. Everyone who is seriously engaged in the deep effort of inventing and shipping original work feels the fear. That’s not the question. The question is: where do you put the fear?
I stopped reading my Amazon reviews seven years ago. Partly because I have never once met an author who said, “I read all of my one-star reviews and now my work is much better.”
When you’re consistent in who it’s for and what it’s for, you can claim the high ground and clearly say, “It’s not for you.”
True fans require idiosyncrasy. True fans are looking for something peculiar, because if all they wanted was the Top 40 or the regular kind, they could find it far more easily from someone who isn’t you.
You are not your work. Your work is a series of choices made with generous intent to cause something to happen. We can always learn to make better choices.
We don’t write because we feel like it. We feel like it because we write.
Creators flee the bogeyman every day. They invent new powers for him, imagining his ability to destroy the work and derail a career. The more power you give him, the more power he has. But only if you’re afraid to look at him. As soon as you look him in the eye, he vanishes.
External success only exists to fuel our ability to do the work again.
Flow is the result of effort. The muse shows up when we do the work. Not the other way around.
We have unlimited reasons to hide our work and only one reason to share it: to be of service.
Don’t worry about changing the world. First, focus on making something worth sharing. How small can you make it and still do something you’re proud of?
It might be a trap to ask someone else (or yourself) if your work is any good.
Good needs to be defined before you begin. What’s it for and who’s it for? If it achieves its mission, then it’s good.
Genre is a box, a set of boundaries, something the creative person can leverage against. The limits of the genre are the place where you can do your idiosyncratic work.
Transformation begins with leverage. And you get leverage by beginning with genre.
Begin with genre. Understand it. Master it. Then change it.
There’s plenty of time to make it better later. Right now, your job is to make it.
The challenge, then, is to have one superpower. All out of balance to the rest of your being. If, over time, you develop a few more, that’s fine. Begin with one.
Because if you’re anyone, it’s worth mentioning that a search engine is happy to point people to plenty of other people who are as anyone as you are.
When we think of an artist we admire, we’re naming someone who stands for something. And to stand for something is to commit.
Choose the skill we’re going to assert to the outside world.
To be the best in the world means that someone with options and information will choose you.
Ultimately, the goal is to become the best in the world at being you. To bring useful idiosyncrasy to the people you seek to change, and to earn a reputation for what you do and how you do it. The peculiar version of you, your assertions, your art. To announce and earn a superpower, one that’s worth waiting for, seeking out, and yes, paying for. You’ll need to trust that this process makes it possible, and trust that you’re the one to do it.
Creativity doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. It’s not duplicative or repetitive. But it rhymes. Just about every frame shows the fingerprints (and idiosyncrasy) of its creators.
Finding the constraints and embracing them is a common thread in successful creative work.
When we trust ourselves, we’re focused on the process, not the outcome. The process of doing our work and paying attention to the outcome without requiring it to happen. The process of preparation and revision. And the process of caring enough to contribute.
We don’t do it to win, we do it to contribute. Because it’s an act of generosity, not selfishness, we can do it for all the best reasons.
Trusting yourself comes from a desire to make a difference, to do something that matters.
Where is the fuel to keep us going? Anger gets you only so far, and then it destroys you. Jealousy might get you started, but it will fade. Greed seems like a good idea until you discover that it eliminates all of your joy. The path forward is about curiosity, generosity, and connection. These are the three foundations of art. Art is a tool that gives us the ability to make things better and to create something new on behalf of those who will use it to create the next thing.
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