Talent: “This is all I can do, no matter what you say.”
Passion and purpose: “Who knows what I could do if I practiced every day?”
Focusing on talent keeps your potential at bay.
Focusing on passion, purpose, and the practice turn every day into play.
This is the way.
Who is the person who has already done (or is already doing) what you want to do?
What does their life look like?
Where are they?
What do they say, think feel?
What do they focus on?
Who did they have to become?
What would life be like if YOU have already done (or are already doing) what you want to do?
It’s hard to achieve change if you’re stuck in your current identity (where you haven’t achieved that change yet).
Using your imagination to reverse the causal arrow can help you get out of that rut.
First imagine what it feels like to have already achieved (or to be already doing) something.
Then choose your present actions according to that feeling and identity.
Let every action you take help you become more of who you want to be.
Once upon a time, I consciously chose to brush my teeth every day, until brushing my teeth became my new default. Now the conscious choice I have to make is NOT brushing my teeth.
Once upon a time, during a pandemic, we consciously chose to wear face masks, until wearing face masks became the new default. Then the conscious choice we had to make was NOT wearing the face mask anymore.
Once upon a time, I consciously chose to write every day, until writing became my new default. Now the conscious choice I have to make is NOT writing.
Where else could I use a new default?
Choice inflection.
Most of your daily actions are guided by unconscious patterns and habits. But since actions overrule thoughts, even unconscious actions contribute to how you see yourself.
The more conscious actions you take, the more of a say you get in who you are (or want to be).
I choose to do ………… because I choose to be someone who …………
I choose not to do ………… because I choose to perpetuate my identity of ………….
Performance gap: the frustrating gap between the way you know something should be done in an ideal world and the way you currently do it.
I know I should write daily blog posts in advance so I have a buffer in case something comes up and I don’t get to write. Yet here I am, writing this daily insight hours before the publication date.
I know what the perfect downward-facing dog pose in yoga looks like. Yet when I perform it myself, I am far off from that ideal pose.
I know all the ingredients that make up a solid, convincing speech. Yet when I write one myself, I am only able to incorporate a few of those ingredients.
Learning, then, is closing the gap between your intellectual understanding of an ideal product, action, or skill, and your current rendition of it.
Don’t be so hard on yourself for your current performance.
You can’t expect to turn intellectual understanding into mastery and internalized knowledge right away.
You don’t have to master this today.
I’ve tirelessly written at least 300 journal entries on the same topic in the belief that in the 301st, I’ll strike gold and find the exact words I’m looking for.
And it took me a while to accept that that’s an illusion.
Maybe every attempt is really just the same struggle to find the right words for ideas, thoughts, insights that were never meant to be captured into words in the first place?
And yet I bend, I twist, I turn, I squirm,
I write, re-write
and never am I satisfied.I get closer, or so I think
And then the next day, I jump back in
and instantly sink.I need answers…
Even though deep down I know,
the only certainty is that I’ll never get them.Yet, I have to try.
Because while every day of writing is a struggle, the true value lies in the daily struggle of writing.
Although it might look like I’m not making progress, writing and creativity is just not a linear process.
In reality, as long as a I write every day, I’m focusing my mind on what I’m trying to say. I’m sculpting away, and someway, somehow the essence will emerge from my 300 journal entries and reveal itself.
How? I don’t know.
When? I don’t know.
Probably not while I’m writing (read why here)… even though the writing is what makes it possible.
Anyway.
Now I know day 1, 11, 50, 299, 300, 301, 3001 are all equally important…
I’m finally ready to accept the struggle
and write in peace.
Whether you believe you can write today or not, remember: there’s no physical law, not even a mental barrier stopping you from putting pen to paper or opening your phone or laptop and writing.
Start like this: “I am writing.”
Do it now.
Then keep going.
See?
Believe whatever you want. Change your beliefs however often you want. Your innate ability to write is steady.
And if you know that, why wouldn’t you align your beliefs with your innate ability?
