Coming alive through the pursuit of our ideas

March 12, 2017 2:12 PM

Most people don’t finish things.

They’re too blocked by perfection and procrastination and permission and fear and doubt and disappointment and unworthiness and distraction and guilt and apathy and whatever other form of resistance shows up to knock their projects off the rails.

Interestingly enough, the word finish derives from the term finire, which means, to set boundaries.

And maybe that’s the problem. People don’t finish things because they’re afraid to put constraints and limits around their work.

I meet aspiring writers at least once a week. And every time they start talking about the new book they’re working on, I always ask them what their deadline is.

But few, if any, have that specific date chambered. It’s more of an open ended project that may or may not get done, possibly eventually someday maybe.

And that’s fine. I’m not the deadline police. It’s not my job to be every author’s unpaid career coach.

But it’s too bad to see people standing at the gates of their own dreams, unwilling to believe they’re special enough to push their ideas deeper into the world.

Call it producerism, call it indoctrination into the cultural falsehood that every human has something unique and urgent to express. But why else are we here?

At the heart of what it means to be a person is the act of dreaming, doing and finishing. Coming alive through the pursuit of our ideas.

And the punchline is, it’s not the result of extraordinary effort and overwhelming talent, it’s simply habitual attention.

Action is not heroics, but small practical things that come together to achieve effectiveness. Chipping away. A million tiny decisions we make everyday for years.

Until magically, on day, we finish. And move onto the next one.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you equipped to handle the demands of executing?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For the list called, “99 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur, Even If You Aren’t One,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

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Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com