The Joy of Creativity: Practicing Your Creative Craft with Both Discipline and Enjoyment. (DAY 13)
DAY Thirteen: Do-it-Yourself (D.I.Y) — PART TWO
This is a 21-Day Exploration of Creativity.
From DAY 12, we understand that we are not our emotions and we shouldn’t be expecting to always feel good on this journey to fulfil our potential, increase productivity, live successfully and on purpose. The question then becomes — are we to ignore our emotions entirely? That would be ridiculous! Why? We want to live more effectively without becoming robots! Think about some of the greatest athletes today. I use athletes not because our goal is to necessarily be world-class athletes but because we can learn some life lessons in our own quest to achieve personal goals. If we look at Serena Williams, for example. How would she be able to have a life-partner, a child or even pursue her sport with such passion if she did not have any emotions at all? Having this in mind, let’s understand and agree that we are not meant to be emotionless but, rather, we must understand that our emotions should not rule us and we should know how to still put in the work to achieve our goals regardless of whether we feel like it or not.
Athletes like Serena wake up and train in the rain or snow or whether the weather is ideal. They have goals that they are working towards and this means that if they are lying in bed on a rainy day and they feel like staying there instead of going to train, they remind themselves of their goals and are able to simply ignore the contrary feelings.
Most of us have not been trained to think like these elite athletes. We do not have the ability to override all the feelings that are contrary to our goals and to pursue our purpose relentlessly but what we have to realise is that this does not mean that we are somehow less than these athletes. It only means that we have not had the privilege of being trained like they have. That is why we have to fight to train ourselves because we do not have the privilege of having dad’s like Mr. Williams (Serena and Venus’s dad) who took his daughters to train religiously as kids and was their coach for a long while when they first started out. (Another father like this was Lewis Hamilton’s dad). However, rather than allowing ourselves to believe the lie that those guys have something special, some wonderful gene that we do not, let’s start to understand that people who achieve their goals simply have better strategies and are able to handle all kinds of situations that try to prevent them from achieving their goals. These strategies come into play when their emotions are screaming at them to forget their goals and sleep in instead of getting up to write or work out etc.
I have come to believe that the reason we revere celebrities and spend a lot of time adoringly following their every move is because, deep down, we believe they are somewhat better than us. We think they are better looking, are more talented and have an indefatigable spirit and unfailing willpower to achieve their goals that we, obviously, do not have otherwise we would also have achieved that level of success, right? However, those superstars are not better than you! In fact, in their book PEAK: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, authors Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool explore this whole idea that some humans are just better than others and totally debunk that myth by teaching how we too can achieve PEAK performance at anything we attempt if we learn the principles of dedication and practice. (Please note: This book is so phenomenal that I will be doing my next series about it and how, by putting the principles learned from it into practice, I have been able to change my life drastically by achieving goals that I had failed to accomplish for many years because of believing these lies!).
Anyway, my whole point is this: no one person is better than another. Yes, as also explored by Ericsson and Pool, there are some who have physiological advantages like those who have the height needed to be good basketball players or those who have petite bodies that are ideal for gymnastics. Other than that, if you get to the point in life when you figure out what you want, then achieving your dreams is possible. All you need is to understand what strategies are crucial and then putting them into practice with a decisive dedication coupled with the absolute conviction that you are also deserving of success and that you will see your dreams come to pass if you stick with it!
What do I mean by D.I.Y?
Two things:
- The realisation that you have what it takes. Sometimes we think that people around us have something that we do not and so we keep looking to external sources to empower us with the abilities that we need to succeed. However, the truth is that you need to look at yourself as being more capable and more able than you could ever imagine. You will not be empowered by a limitless pill like in the 2011 movie starring Bradley Cooper. You have what it takes to Do It Yourself — to achieve your goals and accomplish your purpose. Does this mean that you won’t need coaches or anyone else? Absolutely not. It just means that it starts with you…in your mind and in your heart. You have to Do the Work first then your Destiny Helpers, those who will assist you to fulfil your destiny, will make themselves known. Maybe you are not meeting the right people yet because you have not yet adopted the right mindset. You are looking for crutches rather than those who will simply water the trees of your dreams while you do the deep work of digging and tilling the soil and planting the seeds of success.
- The adventure starts with you.
To Be Continued…
The last part of the D.I.Y Section is on Day Fourteen.
Originally published HERE-iampreciousck.com
