First things first. I’m now a published author. It happened last night I’m still a bit blown away by the whole thing, but I’m now a published author. You can check out my first book, “The Sunday Blog. Volume 1: The Bathroom Book” by typing “the Sunday blog” at Amazon, or you can just click this link. I’ll let you know next week about how you can “Buy 2 Get One Free” if you’re interested.
And now for this week’s muse…
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We’ve all had our turn at the cup of self-help. We’ve read the book, gone to the therapy, listened to the Tony Robbins tape. We often seek this advice because we’re stuck. We can’t seem to create what it is we say we want for whatever reason. More money, better relationships,…writing a book. Sometimes this outside counsel works. Sometimes we get poked just hard enough that we change. Somehow we manifest the thing we’ve said we wanted for so long. Sometimes this does happen. But for you to get what you want and to make a change you say you want to make, there is something you must do first each and every time, no exceptions.
I was in an interesting conversation last week with a dear friend of mine. We were talking about the new Sunday Blog Book, and she said, “you know, I’ve always wanted to write a book, but I never did. You’re actually doing it”.
I’ve been thinking about her comment this week, not as a “look at how awesome I am” kind of thing, but in the larger context of all of us, you, and me. What needs to happen for us to finally get what we’ve say we want but don’t have? I’m sure I could Google it and someone far more self-important than me would have a perfect answer, but that’s not happening today. What I can tell you today is that I’ve thrown around the idea writing a book for the past few years. This year I did something different and that’s why it’s now a reality.
I just started doing it.
Sounds trite, doesn’t it? Just start and all your dreams will come true. Trite but true. People ask me all the time, “How did you get involved in this, how did you start that, how in the world did you…”, and my answer is always the same, “I started.” There’s a lot to be said for preparation no doubt. Preparation is vitally important. But some of us use it as a crutch. There’s a lot to be said about “fire, aim, ready”. The mere act of taking a step toward what you say you want is the first requirement for actually getting it. Preparation is important, just make sure it’s not a preventative.
When I lived in Park City, Utah, I skied pretty much every day. If you’re a skier you now about being a “single,” and If you’re not, it has to do with queuing up to get on the lift. I remember this one time riding as a single and I got on the chair with these people from Atlanta. It was a pretty epic Park City day, and the lady next to me asked me where I lived. I pointed behind below and said, “I live just down that road about 5 minutes from here.”
She said, “Oh you’re so lucky.”
I thought about that for a minute and then in my usual smart ass-ish kind of way on the chair with tourists I replied, “There was no apple truck, and I didn’t fall off” (note to millennials: “falling off the apple truck” is a reference to dumb luck).
“Excuse me?” she asked.
I said, “Ma’am, living here isn’t luck, it’s intention. I decided to move here so I did. You could live here too; you would just have to make the decision to do it”. Again, kind of smart ass-ish, but also very true.
As you know, every week I host 2 webinars: one for Does it Pencil and one for The Video Seminar. Last week at the Video Seminar webinar, one of our people said, “I really want to do this video thing, I just don’t know where to start.” I said, “Go to a room by yourself, put your camera on a tripod, and start talking to it. That’s how you start.”
I guess my point here is just this: all of us have a lot more power than we realize. In our state of being human we have enormous power to create amazing things out of nothing. The problem is starting. You have to start. If you start it might not work, but if you never start, it most certainly won’t.
Here’s the weird part of all of this: once you do start, you quickly realize that whatever it is you put off doing isn’t as daunting or as difficult as you thought it would be before you started.
Hopefully this makes sense. Just start, you might just amaze yourself. I did.
Good luck and have a good week.
Joe Still
2023.12.03
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“I miss 100% of the shots I never take.”
– Wayne Gretsky