#515 No more, you said, no more of this
“No more,” you said.
“No more of this.”
And that’s when that what you really wanted finally became possible.
“No more,” you said.
“No more of this.”
And that’s when that what you really wanted finally became possible.
What would you finally dare to do today
if you knew whatever you try will never be perfect anyway?
Publish a story with typos and awkward sentences?
Run a marathon without finishing it?
Play a guitar piece and trip up five times?
Sing in front of other people and miss a note?
Try a new yoga pose in class and fall over?
Nothing will be perfect today.
Nothing will be perfect tomorrow.
But if you take imperfect action
and dare to publish imperfect work
everything you do will have the perfect taste of progress and consistency.
And that’s all that counts anyway.
I am tired today.
But I’ll write you something either way, my friend.
Maybe not a full essay.
Maybe just a little wordplay.
But I’ll write you either way.
Why, you say?
Simple.
Because I want this, I want us to be one of those habits that are here to stay.
What are you doing either way because you want it to be one of those habits that are here to stay?
You know you’re a writer when you stop worrying about whether you’ll write or not.
Self-trust always comes first.
Learning a foreign language is both a frustrating and liberating experience.
We can focus on the frustration of not understanding the words the way we understand our mother tongue. Or we can realize that without the words, we are free to fall back on other ways of capturing and understanding meaning.
A crying baby can be soothed by words it does not yet understand, because she senses what’s behind the sounds, lets the meaningless melody cradle her to sleep…
Similarly, we don’t always have to know what’s behind the words, as long as we make an effort to understand the meaning behind the sounds.
Hearing a foreign language brings us back to that wordless world the way we experienced it as a newborn, before we tried so hard to put everything within and around us into language.
It makes us remember, there’s more to life than our words will ever allow us to express. And somehow, that’s a soothing thought.
Choosing perfection over consistency, you’ll turn dreams into paralysis. And paralysis leads to failure.
Choosing consistency over perfection, you’ll turn dreams into small actions. And consistent small actions lead to the realization of dreams.
Learning a skill isn’t so much about getting better – that’s just a side effect.
It’s about discovering new ways of doing the same thing – just because you can, and just because you’re curious.
Doing the same thing, this time precisely – then doing it again, not precisely at all.
Doing the same thing, this time deliberately, carefully thinking about every step – then doing it again, not thinking about any steps at all.
When you stay curious, you learn to discover nuances you couldn’t perceive before.
When you stay curious, you learn to be deliberate until you can be intuitive.
When you stay curious, you learn to become less blind to what’s already here.
And when you stay curious, you realize there’s not much more to a fulfilling life than sculpting away, day by day – and anything can be a fulfilling skill.