We kill most of our great, wonderful, creative ideas before they’re ever born.
We write them off, dismiss them out of hand, smother them…
But we can’t know if our ideas are good—if they’ll work or cause the change we seek to make in the world—until we publish them.
Only by letting our ideas engage with the market, the world, or our audience can we know if it’s good.
If you judge every idea before you try it out, you’ll never be creative.
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You’ve been told your entire life you should do things well.
Perfectly.
Like an expert.
And if you can’t do it well, you might as well not even bother to do it at all.
That’s wrong. You can’t instantly be great at doing ANYTHING.
The only place to start is at the level we currently are.
The always relevant, and sometimes irreverent, Zig Ziglar said one of my favorite quotes of all time:
“If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly.”
What did he mean?
Simple: anything worthwhile requires that we start as a beginner.
Golfing, tennis, writing, painting, jazz improv… It doesn’t matter what it is.
If it’s worth pursuing, you owe it to yourself to be bad at it. And then get better at it every single day.
He uses the example of someone learning to play golf: if everyone could join the PGA Masters tour after a couple of lessons with the local pro, there’s no reason to do it.
Give yourself time to do things badly…
On the way to doing them well.
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I don’t think I’ve ever met a single artist who was not a jack-of-all-trades in the arts and humanities–an “artist-of-all-arts” if you will.
It seems every artist is not only attracted to multiple forms of art but develops skill in multiple areas as well.
My late friend Michael McNally was a brilliant cellist and a gifted, passionate actor. My friend Lindsey is a skilled artist, photographer, designer, and also a singer with a beautiful voice. (You can see some of her work here and here.) Another friend of mine, Alden, is one of the best photographers I know as well as a talented artist and connoisseur of music.
It seems to me that anyone attracted to the arts and humanities is attracted to all of them. It’s as if once the right brain is fully engaged, it looks for beauty everywhere.
Such is the life of an artist, and why, I suppose we can seem to others to be so scattered in our work and interests–and perhaps feel that way about ourselves.
An artist is a lover of beauty no matter its form, so we chase it everywhere.
What about you? What forms of art are you attracted to or skilled in? Let me know in comments below!
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