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 am always amazed at the quality of thoughts that I have when taking a shower. Some of my most poignant ideas occur not long after I close the curtain. Solutions to problems, blog topics, business ideas – they all seem to happen while I am standing in the shower.
Why?
I am completely undistracted; there is no waterproof cell phone in there with me. My brain checks out of the actions of the moment as my body automatically goes through the routine, and the brain is allowed to work its magic. This was not always true, though, as I used to bring my cell phone into the bathroom and blast music or a podcast or an audiobook. These quirks may seem harmless, yes, but my daily shower is some of the only truly undistracted time I have.
Our access to technology has our brain so constantly distracted that it seems few of us are having the “a-HA” moments that we need to improve ourselves and the lives of others. This is not a rant against technology but simply a call to action for you to work a few moments of distraction-free thinking into your day.
You’ll need a few things:
Peace and quiet
A notebook and a pen or pencil
A timer (only if you truly need to keep track of your time, as I do when I am on a break at work)
Spend just a few minutes letting your mind wander; write down any thoughts you have which might seem significant to you. They may seem trivial, you may worry that other people think they are stupid or poor-quality (they aren’t), but write them down anyway. This is just for you.
I use my daily shower for this as well as my lunch break and the few breaks throughout my workday to just sit and think – no phone, no social media, no email, just my notebook, a pen, and my thoughts.
What do I write down?
Questions
Answers to questions
Business ideas
Problems
Solutions to problems I have at work and in my personal life
Observations of things I see around me (there is one entry in my journal about a very interesting bird…)
Drawings
Lists
Workouts
Music practice sessions
General randomness
Write whatever you want. Let your stream of consciousness take over for a few minutes. It is a wonderful feeling once you get used to doing it.
Everyone needs to carry a notebook with them at all times, something I learned from this amazing book (click here), and everyone needs to sit with their thoughts for a few minutes throughout the day. You will be amazed at how much better you will feel, how many good ideas you have, and how much more curious and excited about the world you will be. Try it out! Make it a habit for the next month to get 5 minutes a day of thinking time.
You don’t have to take your notebook in the shower – just leave it on the back of the toilet tank like I do.
One of the reasons learning a new language with Duolingo is so effective (in terms of practicing if not fluency) is the idea of streaks. The app creates a streak for you to link together, treating the learning as a game instead of a tedious task. The longer you continue the streak, the harder it will be for you to give up and break it.
Start a streak with your creativity. One of my friends is attempting to draw every single day; another is hoping to read a little every day. The key is to just do it, whether it’s five minutes of reading or doodling something in your notebook. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece or an entire novel – you get to make the rule of your game.
Find a way to start a streak in an area of your life you wish to improve and keep it going.
Get one. Seriously, everyone needs a hobby (and no, vegging out in front of the television after a long work day doesn’t count).
Learn a new language. Pick up a musical instrument you have always wanted to play. Start drawing or painting. Take one of the thousands of online courses in a subject that has always fascinated you (hard to go wrong with history).
Whether you are making a living as a creative or not, you need something creative and stimulating in your life that is purely for fun and pleasure. It’s just for you.
Find out what resources you need in order to get started. Write them down. Write down how the hobby will benefit you personally. Write down any obstacles in your way to making the hobby a reality, and if necessary, find a teacher.
Anyone looking to be great needs a hobby. Maybe it will make some money, too. Wouldn’t that be awesome?
Some people call it “The Grind.” Seth Godin calls it “The Dip.” There comes a time in just about every worthwhile endeavor when things get tough, or boring, or lose their original excitement. The words don’t come and the muse doesn’t speak. You get “writer’s block,” or your sound quality sucks, no matter how hard you practice your instrument. There is a secret to overcoming this:
Do it anyway.
If you are a writer, write something, no matter how short or how bad you think it is. Train the writing muscles.
If you are a musician, play something, even if only for five minutes. No matter how bad it sounds or how little progress you feel you are making, practice anyway. Train the music muscles.
If you are an artist, make something. It might be incredibly similar to something you’ve already done. You might hate it. Draw it or paint it anyway. Train the artistic muscles.
In this way you are also training your brain to get used to regularly producing in your field of endeavor. It’s mental exercise.
When Thomas Edison was very young, a teacher told his mother that he was “too stupid to learn anything.” By age 10, he had set up his own laboratory in his family’s home. He became a full-time inventor and set up his laboratory at Menlo Park at age 20. He wasn’t stupid; he was simply born into an industrial, standardized system which sought to stifle his creativity, to make him compliant to the system. The teacher was bad at teaching; the system didn’t know how to properly educate a child.
Our educational system frowns upon children who don’t sit still, who ask too many questions, who can’t regurgitate facts on standardized tests. We are taught to be children who sit still, shut up, and absorb the facts and figures being thrown at us, seldom ever learning how to do anything. Thomas Edison, one of the most influential inventors who ever lived, was one of these children. Each of us is one of these children.
“I have never let schooling interfere with my education.”
– Mark Twain
Edison was not only creative, he was also a failure. And that is something for which we should all strive.
Edison tried over 10,000 different ways of creating a light bulb before finally making the one for which he is famous. A reporter asked, “How did it feel to fail 10,000 times?”. Edison replied, “I didn’t fail 10,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 10,000 steps.”
Our educational system frowns upon failure, the greatest teacher of all. The lessons we learn from failure stick with us forever and tend to be much more valuable and useful in helping us make better decisions in the future. We are taught that failure, getting the wrong answer, or writing something poorly, is to be avoided at all costs. Yet the only way to get the right answer is to learn what the wrong one is; the only way to learn to write well is to start writing, most of which will be bad in the beginning.
So what?
Our children, our teens, and yes, us as adults as well, have to get used to the idea of trying new things, of failing. The failures of which I am speaking are not fatal – these are failures in creating something new, or trying out a new skill, or seeking a new way of doing things, of giving something to the world when it might not be accepted.
It might not work. So go fail over and over again until you succeed at something. Try new things, make something, start something, give something to the rest of the world. You might fail. And that failure will teach you a lesson. It will be one of the 10,000 steps in the right direction.
I have a mantra that I repeat to myself through out the day, especially when I start to get bored or frustrated with something.
“Always. Be. Curious.”
These are my ABCs. Corny, I know. I don’t care.
My brain never stops; thoughts fly through my mind at light speed in a never-ending stream. There was a time when I tried to drown them out by mindlessly watching television or playing video games. I didn’t know what to do with all the thoughts; at times, they overwhelmed me, annoyed me, or just plain scared me.
Then I learned how to use it to my advantage – I started listening to Seth Godin who taught me to sit with the anxiety created by these racing thoughts and condition my mind to get used to it all rather than try and eradicate it by vegging out in front of a screen. I also read a book called How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci by Michael J. Gelb which taught me to keep a notebook and write down my thoughts and observations throughout the day.
It changed my life.
I have written down some absolutely stupid, ridiculous, useless thoughts in my notebooks, and yet I have also written down profound words of wisdom, insightful revelations about myself and what I want, solutions to problems that have plagued me, and some of the most interesting observations of the world around me which used to just pass me by.
So today, think about embracing your inner child, the one who used to ask questions about everything, the child that had to touch and smell and taste and listen to everything that crossed his or her path as a way to make sense of the world. Sit with your thoughts, without a phone or a tablet or screen in front of you. Let your mind wander. Write some things down.
Have you ever copied something? For instance, if you were learning to draw, you probably traced or copied some other piece of art in order to practice. Or maybe if you are a musician, you have emulated or copied something that one of your favorite artists played on a record or put up on YouTube.
Here’s something to think about – even if you copied it “perfectly,” it still wasn’t exactly the same. The note you played was probably infintismally sharper or flatter than the note the musician played; the line drawn probably had one or two atoms difference in the width or the length. So, in a certain respect, the art was original – it was yours.
You are quite similar to these “copies” – similar in many ways to those that have come before you or to the people working in your same career. Even if you try to be exactly the same or to strive for perfection, you will be different in some minuscule, perhaps microscopic, way.
At the very least, genetically you are one of a kind. I am paraphrasing Robert Greene here, in a book he wrote called Mastery, in which he says that each one of us has never happened before and will never happen again. We are original works of art, no matter how similar we may feel to others.
This is wonderful, because it means that each one of us has the potential to become something great, something different, to bring something to the world that has never before existed.
So go ahead and copy, emulate the people you admire, and learn from as many different sources as possible; each time you do it, whatever you do will be ever so slightly different. Eventually you will become who you were uniquely made to be, and you will give your gifts to the rest of us.
P.S.
Mastery is one of my all-time favorite books. It studies the great masters of many different crafts in varying periods in history. I highly recommend it for those of you interested in finding some inspiration on mastering your creativity. Find it here.
A number of weeks ago, my wife and I went out to play some pick-up soccer with folks in our community; it didn’t quite go as planned. After a flurry of text messages, it turned out that a flat soccer ball and someone’s annoying brother had wrecked our hopes of playing soccer that evening (yes, there is more than one obvious solution to this problem, but that’s not the point of this story).
We refused to let those issues stop us, and we had an idea (and luckily, a frisbee). We decided to teach the folks who were originally going to play soccer with us how to play Ultimate Frisbee. One hot, sweaty, muddy, grass-covered hour later, our group collapsed on the ground, exhausted and exhilarated. Not only did they all have a blast, they all wanted to know when the next game was happening. Since then, we’ve been playing 2-3 times a week, we have created a subscription calendar that anyone can get to see when the next game is, and our interest and attendance in the group has been steadily growing.
So why I am telling you this story? It’s really quite simple:
Start something.
Do something. Write something. Play something. Call someone and see if they are interested. Send them a text message. Put up a flyer.
Start something.
“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”
– Walt Disney
We all have ideas that could start something – it may not be a new career or financially lucrative, but it could start a community league, or a charity, or a movement (and it could also be a new career AND financially lucrative).
Just so you know – it might not work.
WHO CARES?
If you never try to do it, then it definitely won’t work.
Do you play guitar? See if you can go teach someone else the basics. Do you draw or paint or sculpt? See if there is someone you know that might want to try a new hobby. Are you an awesome chess player? Find a friend that always wanted to learn or start a group that meets each week to play a tournament.
Start something. It might not work; it might be a bad idea. Do it anyway. And then do it again tomorrow. It might not work.
Do you make something for the rest of the world to read, see, hear, or consume? Are you an artist, a musician, an actor, a writer, a blogger, photographer, videographer?
It doesn’t matter what your “art” is – you are a Creative.
I have four words to say to all of my fellow Creatives out there:
GET. OUT. OF. DEBT.
It doesn’t matter if you have a little debt or a lot – it is killing you. It’s a weight holding you down, preventing you from giving your best to the world – and we need your best.
How many of you went to college and racked up a massive amount of student loan debt to complete a degree in the arts? I did. By the time I finished my sophomore year of college, I had racked up $25,000 in student loan debt. Ironically, I was working so much as a freelance musician, teacher, and retail associate that, along with my partial scholarships, I could have paid the other half of my tuition out-of-pocket and keep my living expenses paid (as a matter of fact, when I “woke up” in my junior year, that’s actually what I managed to do, but the damage was already done).
Did you put your instrument, your camera, your computer, or maybe even your art supplies on a credit card? Did you borrow money for a car? I did – two cars, actually, and the first one was somewhere near 30% interest!
It may feel normal, but debt is preventing you from making your greatest contributions to the rest of the world.
Debt is making your career decisions for you.
You didn’t make a bad decision by studying your art or your craft – you simply made a bad decision with money.
How many of you took an 8-5 job after you finished your degree because you had to pay the bills? What opportunities have you turned down over the years because you had the weight of your debts hanging around your neck? How many of you have quit your art because you have to spend so much time making money at a “real job” instead of creating?
What would you do differently today if the obligations of paying the minimum payments to which you are so accustomed weren’t around anymore? Would you move to a new city? Take a more enjoyable job? Would you quit the 8-5 grind? Would you start creating again?
Debt sucks.
Debt may be normal in our society today, but I don’t care. I know from personal experience how damaging it is to our creativity. Make the decision today – declare debt to be the enemy of your art.
“How can I possibly live without debt?”
A year and a half ago, my wife and I made the decision to declare debt as the enemy of our art. Since then, we’ve gotten on a budget, told our money where to go, and paid off nearly $30,000 in student loan, consumer, and car debt. We are on a plan to be totally debt free within two more years.
No, we don’t make six figures. No, we don’t live rent-free with relatives. We simply have sacrificed, planned, and made the decision to change. We still have fun, even on a budget; we still eat awesome food every now and then. But we have decided to make our own decisions about what we want to do in life, not let the crushing weight of our debts make those decisions for us. It can be done; we are living proof.
The world needs your creativity. We need your art, your words, your music, your voice. Please don’t let debt stifle it anymore.
P.S.
If you want to know how we have been so successful in throwing off the yoke of debt, please feel free to reach out to me here on my blog or at any of the social media sites listed on the home page. I have a lot of resources I’d love to share with you, as well as some awesome people you should listen to. It would be my pleasure to talk to you.
We are big fans of the Dave Ramsey Baby Steps as a roadmap for getting out of debt and building wealth, as well as his company’s EveryDollar budgeting app for keeping track of your money and telling it where to go.
Nathan's Blog 