Wooten’s book about the spiritual search for growth through music was transformative for me. Quite possibly the best twenty bucks spent on my artistic education.
Here’s one passage that was especially striking.
It’s always easier to build upon beauty than it is to pretend it is not there and try to create it from scratch.
This insight is especially helpful when our project screeches to a stop because the task seems overwhelming. Because in those moments when feel like we can’t even conceptualize how we are going to muster the momentum to catapult ourselves out of this shit pile, we remember something.
We rarely, if ever, have to start from scratch. Odds are, somebody somewhere has done something that we can build on. We just need to start. To choose. To take slow, small, solid steps that build forward momentum and launch a chain reaction whose impact is greater than what we can foresee at the moment the choice is made.
Once we bust through the wall of resistance and set that process in motion, no project is ever as overwhelming as we initially think it is.
There’s a perfect visual that a friend of mine once used.
Fear is a mile wide, a mile high, and paper thin. It’s like a football team running out through the tunnel and into the stadium.
Next time your troubles threaten to overwhelm you, make things easier on yourself. Nothing is as hard as it seems. Employ the greatest labor intensity reduction technique in the world by remembering that you never start with nothing.
It will create a small but perceptible increase in your courage in the face of emotional distress.
LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What do you remind yourself of when you feel like running away from all your responsibilities?
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Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.
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