How do you identify it?
Seth Godin asked the question, “Where are the spots [in your personal/professional/creative life] in which you are most afraid?”
Find the places and things you are afraid of, and determine why you are afraid of them. Then you can identify what you need to go work on.
“Begin with the thing that scares you.”
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Instrument – noun
The purpose of an instrument is to accomplish a goal. Play a song; perform surgery; type a book; draw a sketch.
Why, then, do we spend so much time focused on learning the tool, the means to the end, rather than pursuing the end itself?
How ridiculous would it be for a surgeon to spend four years of her education learning how to use a scalpel? His end goal is to perform surgery, and the scalpel is simply a tool to help her achieve that goal. So she focuses on what he is trying to accomplish, rather than on the scalpel, and learns to use the scalpel to achieve the goal – helping the patient lying in front of her.
A drum set, trumpet, guitar, or violin is a tool used to create music. And yet, in conversations I’ve had with other musicians and from my own personal experience, an inordinate amount of time in the education of a musician is spent on technical exercises or non-musical experiences.
I am not diminishing the importance of mastering every facet of one’s tool – a surgeon must be a master with a scalpel; a musician must be in total control of her instrument. But to focus on technique, on the instrument only, while ignoring the purpose for which it was created, is to learn only half of a craft.
How different would an artist’s life be if every exercise or technical study was drawn from a major work in her field? What if, in learning a song, one created one’s own technical exercises that enabled mastery of the music being played, rather than technique for technique’s sake?
Learn medicine, not scalpel technique.
Learn to create art, not how to use a pencil.
Lean to play music, not an instrument.
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Show up.
Every single day.
Just do it. (Sorry Nike).
This may sound like I’m trying to get you to go crush it at the gym, but I am not.
Whatever you feel called to do, however you feel called to do it, it will not happen unless you show up and do the work.
That may mean writing blog posts every single day whether or not the muse speaks to you. It may mean coaching an employee even if it isn’t a requirement of your job. It might mean practicing your instrument or drawing a quick sketch, even if you don’t feel inspired or if you’ve drawn something like it ten times before.
Showing up, getting your idea out into the world, helping just one other person simply by being there…it isn’t just good for you – it’s the right thing to do.
You never know when your work will get noticed; you just have to keep producing.
Show up. Because it is right.
It’s never too early to declare to the world who you are.
If you are writing and want to be a writer, go tell people you are a writer. Put it in your bio; put it in your social media description. The same goes if you play music and want to be a musician, or if you draw and want to be an artist.
“What we believe about ourselves has a way of coming true…”
Jeff Goins, Real Artists Don’t Starve
The narrative that we tell ourselves, if said often enough and with enough emphasis, is more likely to become true. In Jeff Goins’ book, he retells a conversation that he had with author Steven Pressfield. He asked Pressfield, “When does a writer get to call himself a writer?” Pressfield answered, “You are [a writer] when you say you are.”
Tell yourself what you want to be. Then go tell others.
Decide.
Then, if you later find that you no longer want to be what you say you are, decide to be something else.
After that, declare it to the world.
It’s never too early to tell the world who you are.
Do it.
The thing you want to learn how to do? Start doing it.
Start writing. Start playing the drums. Start drawing. Start reading the classics. Start creating a podcast.
How do you learn how to speak another language? Any teacher worth her salt will tell you that you have to immerse yourself in the language and start speaking it. All the books and college courses in the world won’t help you if you don’t do it.
This is scary, isn’t it? The resistance in your head is telling you that you don’t know where to start or that you can’t possibly learn how to do this or that without a rigorous amount of study. If you don’t know where to start, then yes – go and pick up a book. Watch a YouTube video or download an app. Hire a teacher. But all the reading about it, watching videos about it, being lectured to about it – that won’t get you anywhere until you take action. Once you have a grip on the basics, you just have to start doing.
Learning is easy once you start doing it. Taking action is what’s difficult.
I led a photo walk yesterday, and my group had a blast. They took some absolutely incredible photos. I wanted to show off their talent. Their results are below:
Nathan's Blog 