is to wipe the sweat off your brow.
Stay Positive & Get Back In There
Persistence
The Bucket
Drip, drip, drip, drip, tip and everyone watches.
A bucket slowly filling with water doesn’t appeal too much to anyone. As the bucket gets filled to the brim, more people begin watching. As the bucket tips, everyone wants to be a part of the experience.
It’s a lot like doing what you love. No one pays much attention at first. You can write a novel, draw a master piece, give the greatest speech, but the audience is so small and they are watching from afar.
Write 50 novels (drip, drip, drip), draw 100 master pieces (drip, drip, drip), give 20 remarkable speeches across the U.S. (drip, drip, drip) and the more people will show up to be part of the experience.
The tough part is we never know when our bucket will tip. Alas, if you keep creating (drip, drip, drip) there’s no doubt in my mind the bucket will tip. (It also does well to remember here that there are always people watching you fill your bucket. Again, you might not see them, but they are watching you.)
No one likes being sprayed with water. But everyone loves to be there when the bucket tips.
Stay Positive & Are You Filling Your Bucket?
Photo credit
Enlighten Others
The gap, the taste, the fear
Gumption, persistence, relentlessness – they aren’t just buzzwords, they’re necessary attitudes to jump the gap, taste the taste and conquer the fear.
It’s all a matter of time.
Stay Positive & Remember The Power Of Delayed Gratification
Enlighten Others
Working Like You Drive
I made the short trek north from Rockford, Illinois, to Madison, Wisconsin, today while it was snowing. The roads weren’t terrible – heading north, at least.
As for those heading south, I saw nine accidents, one of which had about an eight-car pileup. Although the road I was driving on was clear, everyone was hitting their breaks and driving 30 miles under the speed limit resulting in what’s known as gaper’s block. They slowed down to look at the accident and all the pretty lights. They focused on the accident, backing up their own traffic.
This happens often in work and on those who are taking the long trek toward a common goal – they create a gaper’s block by focusing on the failings, mistakes and accidents of others.
Fortunately, no one refuses to drive because they see an accident. It puzzles me then, how someone could quit their pursuit after seeing someone else fail.
The point: keep going.
Stay Positive & Don’t Look Back (Or To The Other Side Of The Road)
Garth E. Beyer
Enlighten Others
Success Isn’t Fashionable
Success is always late. It shows up in the after hours. It arrives after the party. It reveals itself when you’re run down and ready to call it quits. It shows up to those who stay up late but aren’t night owls.
Success will show up, but always long after you think it will.
Stay Positive & Success Isn’t Fashionable, Thus Never Fashionably Late
Garth E. Beyer
Enlighten Others
Through All Of The Crap
It’s worth sharing Richard St. John’s three-minute talk of which I learned that to succeed, we must persist through crap.
Here are some favorite articles I have written on criticism, rejection, assholes, and pressure.
Stay Positive & Here’s Some On Persistence Too
Garth E. Beyer
Enlighten Others
Chasing A Dream
While we are chasing our dreams, we can’t forget that there are people around us also chasing theirs. And you know what? You may be working on different projects, but you’re still in the same boat.
Tim Gallen is a friend of mine who is chasing his dream. Here is what he has to say about it. (Thank you, Tim, for writing this up.)
Stay Positive & Enjoy The Read… And The Chase
Garth E. Beyer
Enter Tim:
They say a funny thing happens when you chase a dream.
They say the more real you try to make it, the more you try to birth an idea, make a dream come true, the more doubt gets in your face.
I didn’t NOT believe this, of course. I mean, I’ve been around the InterWebs, have heard through the digital grapevine whispers of such incidents. Times when people – excited, energetic, passionate people – pursued their dream but kept feeling uncertain: What if this doesn’t work? What if I fail? What if I’m not cut out for this?
But reading and hearing about something is completely different from feeling it firsthand.
I know this because I’m experiencing it right now.
For years, my brothers and I have had aspirations to tell stories using video. In other words, we’ve wanted to make movies.
This is a dream we’ve talked about ad nauseum. And for the longest time, that’s all it was: talk. Short bursts of excitable, dreamy-eyed chatter that gave way to the pressing obligations and reality of day-to-day life.
Until last year, when we finally reached a point of enough-is-enough. It was time to make a go of this dream of ours. We planned and plotted, recruited and recorded. It took us longer than we originally hoped and wanted, but we created a promotional video for a spoofy web series called Harbor Shores. It was an idea we’d had for a while and one we thought was perfect for launching our foray into visual storytelling.
I can’t speak for my brothers, but you’d think at this point, I’d be feeling the doubt creep up my spine. Well, honestly, I didn’t.
You see, we used this promo as part of a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to produce our first season of our show. From the middle of March through the middle of April, my brothers and I – along with some amazing support from friends and family – blasted social media and talked up our project. We managed to raise enough to fund our project.
And, while ecstatic about chasing the dream, a tiny voice called from my subconscious: “Why are you wasting your time?”
Truthfully, I may not have heard it the first few times. But you gotta hand it to forms of resistance – fear, doubt, anxiety, et al. – they’re nothing if not persistent. They gnaw away at you like a dog chewing a bone. They wear you down, tire you out. Persistent.
My brothers and I are knee-deep into our dream: putting together our Kickstarter rewards, securing locations, and filling the final remaining roles in the cast. We begin filming later this month.
And ever-present, I hear that voice whisper inside: “You’re a fake! Why waste your time with this? You’re going to fail!”
In my weaker moments, I wish I could somehow eliminate it completely. But I know all too well how resistance never goes away.
Knowing I will never completely be free of the fear and doubt, I choose to use them as a signpost. When I hear that whisper of doubt, when I sense the prickle of fear climb up my spine, I know I’m on the right track, chasing a dream.