#554 How to make your ideas succeed
The thing about ideas
Is that they tend to fade
Unless you give them space
to adapt to the pace
of the physical world
Unless you give ideas
space to breathe
they won’t succeed
The thing about ideas
Is that they tend to fade
Unless you give them space
to adapt to the pace
of the physical world
Unless you give ideas
space to breathe
they won’t succeed
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.
Good habits need to be practiced – and so does taking time off.
Because the more you practice rebounding back to good habits after taking time off, the easier it becomes to take time off without guilt and fear.
And the more you can take time off without guilt fear, the easier it becomes to enjoy your life.
So practice the habits. Practice the time off. Practice the rebounds. It’s all part of habit-building.
5 dead-simple steps to start writing – even if you’ve tried everything:
Good luck!
You usually make a plan in a moment of motivation and clear thinking, where everything seems possible.
But you’ll have to execute the plan in a variety of situations, including harsh conditions.
Remember this: difficult moments pass, just like easy moments.
Every moment passes, but your plans and dreams will still be there.
Don’t negotiate yourself out of your dreams based on a difficult moment.
A compelling vision of who I want to be doesn’t just guide my present actions and brings me toward a fulfilling future.
It also helps me deal with the suffering that’s part of living in a complex physical body with a complex mind in a complex society in a complex, uncontrollable world.
Because no matter how strong my vision or purpose is, and no matter what I do or say, inevitable hardship will happen anyway.
So if I know why I’m doing what I do, why I’m going where I go, and why I’m becoming who I want to be, then hopefully, when life gets rough, I’ll react in a better way.
I’ll trust myself to handle the unavoidable suffering.
I’ll trust myself to minimize how much I add to the suffering.
And that makes the future just a little bit brighter for me, everyone, and everything around me.
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.