This post is for a friend whom I know has great stuff to share and just needs to write it all down. I hope it helps. Get your book out already, dude!
1. The Ultimate Secret to Writing
The ultimate secret to writing is the one that most people don’t seem to want to hear. And it’s simply this: keep working your ass off.
Are there freak geniuses that wake up in the morning, eyes blazing with divine inspiration who knock out thousands of pages before breakfast? Maybe, but I’m not one of them. I have to sit my ass down and sweat words before they even look halfway decent, writing even when I don’t feel like writing and churning paragraphs of rubbish. It’s hard.
But then, some days it isn’t hard. It’s graceful pirouettes all the way instead of thundering tumbles. Them’s the crazy breaks of the creative life. But you have to work regardless, whether it’s beautiful ballerina day or clumsy hippo night. Just sit yourself down, and keep typing, keep typing, keep typing.
2. Be Okay with Sucking Horrendously
You are not the lovechild of Shakespeare, Einstein and Amelia Earhart. Do not expect your first draft to be anything but shit. The good news is that gorgeous isn’t what you’re aiming for when you’re doing the first draft, the first draft is what you’re aiming for when you’re doing the first draft. Read More →
You know you’re in trouble when the life coaching you went to get over your issues and get things done only uncovers more issues, which unfortunately, requires even more life coaching sessions, but damn, lucky for you, there’s an upgrade package which will help you shave hundreds off the thousands of dollars extra you now need to cough up.
You know, so you can go get things done.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you What The Fuck Life Coaching™, a revolutionary breakthrough in recursive navel-gazing and vertical up-selling.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m good for meditative retreats, contemplative afternoons and friends telling me when I’m being a dumb-ass. (Did I say good? I navel-gazed for 10 days in meditative silence!)
But hey, if you’re spending more time in that life coaching office than actually out there doing the stuff you wanted to get done, you are so fucked up the vertical up-sell my friend. A good coach is like a good doctor, the less time you spend in that office, the better off you are. Wasn’t getting a life the reason you went in the first place?
Here’s a suggestion: Stop digging for and releasing every little issue you think you might have before you think you’ll be able to go do stuff. Then go and do some shit. And then you might find some ways to spend those thousands of dollars that are more fun than spending hours in an office figuring out why you’re so fucked up. Cue The Pavlina money quote: Read More →
Inner game is what enables you to act. Nothing less, nothing more.
The Longer Answer
Timothy Gallwey first coined the term ‘inner game’ in his book The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance. He wrote that “every game is composed of two parts, an outer game and an inner game”; where the outer game is fought against another opponent and the inner game is fought against your own inner doubts and fears.
As an ex-personal development coach, I met people who wanted to improve their inner game so they could finally get what they wanted in life. Problem was these people became so obsessed with getting their inner game tight, they believed that they had to get it perfect before they could get anything done. And so they got nothing done, all the while working hard on their ‘inner game’. Did I say I met? Heck, I was one of these people!
So. I don’t care what it is, an obscure ancient method of goal-setting, changing beliefs while tapping your head and rubbing your stomach, or visualizing with mystic shamans from the tenth dimension, if it doesn’t enable you to act, make something, get stuff done, forget it. It’s not inner game, it’s inner masturbation.
Inner game is what enables you to act. Nothing less, nothing more.
I pushed myself to take better photos while I was in Tokyo recently; shooting in the rain while my friends were enjoying hot coffee indoors, bruising my feet walking round the streets and overcoming my fears to shoot complete strangers. I wanted to do better than I did in 2008, where I shot mostly buildings on a Tadao Ando pilgrimage. I wanted to capture a sense of life in Tokyo, and infuse my photos with a sense of story. I’m not sure if I succeeded, but I learned a few lessons from the experience. So if you will, here are lessons learned from the adventures of a hobbyist photographer.
1. Wear Comfortable Shoes
Sounds almost too obvious to be ridiculous, but I paid for this lesson dearly with bruised feet that hurt for days after I returned home. See, I like to pack light, and I had to dress for a formal occasion during the work/pleasure trip, so smart me decided to pack a single pair of dress shoes and walk up and down Tokyo in it. Not only did it make walking hell after a couple of days, it impeded my movement and my ability to shoot, and I had to rest more as well. Never again!
2. Be Brave/Shameless
Tokyo was the first time I tried street photography, and it was hard for me to overcome the fear/shyness barrier to shooting complete strangers, unasked, on the streets. A photographer I spoke to told me I just had to get over it, and this is something I still need to work on. Read More →
2009 was interesting.
Got to know 2 large German Shepards up close and personal. Very protective, vicious to strangers, but loving and lovable to family. Flew up and down in a speed-boat in the open sea early in the morning, slept too little the night before but wide awake with adrenalin in the moment. Got to shoot more, and with more cameras. Shot real handguns for the first time, didn’t aim as well as I’d imagined. Donned full body armor and went at it full speed, full force with a resisting opponent, threw out most of my ideas about martial arts training. Wrote thousands of words, sitting at a desk, sometimes bored to death, sometimes jazzed beyond words. Certified first aider, at least on paper. Joined Crossfit Singapore for a few sessions and never moved so hard in my entire life. Cooked a few new dishes. Ate more organic food than ever before. Shot over 6000 photos during 6 days in Tokyo, autumn. Drank coffee in the afternoon sun at the edge of a Japanese cemetery. Made beautiful things. Did yoga by the sea in the late evening and watched two shooting stars go by. Grew and deepened a relationship, the best gift in my year and life. Incredibly, incredibly grateful.
Looking forward to doing better in 2010.