You don’t have to feel like a consistent writer to write every day.
You have to write every day to start feeling like a consistent writer.
You can only overcome your limiting beliefs by repeatedly proving to yourself that they’re not true.
Learning often implies discovering what you can’t do.
I can’t write and convey what I want to say. I can’t speak Spanish fluently. I can’t do this yoga pose.
For many people that’s also the final destination, when in fact, it’s only the start.
We’re missing a word: Learning is discovering what you can’t do yet.
Or, even better:
Learning is discovering what, through diligent practice, you’ll soon be able to do.
After all, actions overrule thoughts.
I can’t write and find the right words… yet. But with diligent practice, soon, I’ll be able to convey what I want to say.
I’m not able to do this yoga pose… yet. But with diligent practice, soon I will.
I can’t speak Spanish fluently… yet. But with diligent practice, soon I will.
That’s all there is to it.
Discover your current limit. Realize that through diligent practice, you’ll overcome it.
Then you’ll find a new limit. And through diligent practice, you’ll overcome it.
Until you find a new limit, which you’ll overcome… through diligent practice.
Where do you let the discovery of your current limit be your end station?
If you can’t fully focus
You’ll never be able to fully relax
And if you can’t fully turn it on
You’ll never be able to fully turn it off
It’s not a masterpiece.
It’s not a love song.
It’s not a poem.
Make it not about what you create but about the very fact that you’re creating.
Ugly, pretty, insightful, bland. It doesn’t matter. Just externalize your mind’s chatter.
All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone
Blaise Pascal, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/19682-all-of-humanity-s-problems-stem-from-man-s-inability-to-sit
We often equate sitting quietly in a room alone with loneliness: a word with a negative emotional charge.
But sitting quietly in a room can also bring solitude: the simple state of being by yourself, without any negative connotation.
Solitude can give relief of the pressure to be constantly “socializing” (through social media apps or in real life).
Relief of the pressure to socialize can make space.
Space you can use to hear the thoughts in your head and the feelings in your body.
Thoughts and feelings that can tell you what’s truly important to you.
And then you realize that what’s truly important to you is nothing new.
It’s something you already knew, before you learned not to listen.
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.
Creativity isn’t about inventing new concepts, thoughts, pieces of art or machines out of thin air.
It’s not even making new connections between unrelated concepts.
Creativity is exposing connections that have always been there but nobody has noticed before.
Again: the connections have always been there. The hard part is noticing them.
That requires presence. Slowing down. Taking a step back. Asking “Where have I seen this before?”. Trusting your mind for doing what it does best: recognizing patterns. Paying attention. Sometimes, paying no attention at all and letting the breakout principle work its magic.
This view of creativity can set you free from a lifetime of frustration
because once life becomes one big exploration
where every detour, every diversion, every event
no matter how unimportant or seemingly insignificant
holds the promise of a new insight
a new breakthrough, a connection to stumble upon…And once the crushing pressure – invent something you must
disappears, turns to dust
replaced by curiosity and wanderlust
then you can slow down, enjoy the present moment, and trust
that everything you ever wanted to know, feel, see, hear
every insight or desire you hold dear
has always been here
hidden in plain view, underneath the world’s veneer.
