Lessons

Self-Taught, It’s All On You To Create

Garth Beyer

I’m self-taught. Half because I don’t think school teaches enough of the important stuff. Half because it’s expensive to have others teach you. (Naturally, the younger you are, the less money you have to invest in your private education.) It’s not just tuition that’s pricey, but seminars, learning programs and teaching kits too.

It does well to remember, though, you can read up on books, watch YouTube and TED videos. You can ask a smart friend to mentor you or you can establish a club where you teach each other what your superpower is and learn together. But none of this compares to the impact, the lessons, the power of creating.

When you start creating, the lessons seek you, the connections find you, the success follows you. What you take in is half of your education. What you give out is the other half.

 

Stay Positive & Quite Possibly The Most Important Half Of Your Education

10 Lessons From A Successful #NaNoWriMo

Garth Beyer

NaNoWriMo

This year (2013) was my first year attempting National Novel Writing Month, shortened to #NaNoWriMo. I am ecstatically happy to report that it was a success. I will be editing the book through December and January and will have it available hopefully at the end of January.

Here are some of the best lessons and reflections while writing.

1. Stick to the schedule of 1,700 words a day, but don’t beat yourself up if you skip a day. I skipped a total of 9 days. It was fun having a larger word count to write some days. It mixed things up.

2. No editing. No review. No changes.

3. Following lesson two. Keep writing forward. How you ask?

4. Remember that you can do absolutely anything. I was riding in a car looking at the scenery and saw a park. I thought to myself “my main character should go to a park.” My main character never did, but I realized I could do anything I wanted.

5. Go at it with the goal of surprising yourself. I didn’t plan to share the novel with anyone or sell it on Amazon, but I will because I surprised myself with how good I think it is.

6. When you’re sticking to the schedule of 1,700 words. Stick it out in one sitting.

7. Keep your fingers on the keyboard as often as possible. Don’t sit back to think, don’t drink water to think, keep your fingers on the keyboard and think. Each time you lift your fingers off the keyboard, you’re disconnecting yourself from the story.

8. It never gets easier. You will have your spurts of incredible writing sprees and inspiration, but each day that you sit down to write, you’re essentially starting over. I laughed each time I would check off my writing on the calendar because each day is the shape of a square. “Tomorrow I’m back to square one.”

9. Coffee.

10. Do NOT talk about your story while writing it. I don’t care who is asking or why they want to know. I don’t care how good you think your story is or how many people are asking to hear about your story. I don’t care if you’re being bribed or blackmailed. Do NOT talk about your story while writing it. Just to set it in stone for you, I’m going to repeat myself a third time. DO NOT TALK ABOUT YOUR STORY WHILE WRITING IT.

NaNoWriMoGarth

Stay Positive & Next Year, Do It All Again

Garth E. Beyer

Photo credit

 

Too Much Intake Pt. 1

Garth Beyer

There was a time that I was information-crunching. I was spending every moment of the day taking in information, knowledge, lessons, and Ted talks. I was underlining, highlighting, and dog-earing pages. I was recording, bookmarking, and clipping. This went on for about a week and a half. Constant intake.

Then I felt I reached my limit and it was time for output. However, by then half of what I read, I forgot. All the soundbites I collected, well, it was hard to build on a perfect statement. Some of the passages I highlighted, I had no clue why I highlighted them. And of course, the scribbles in the spines, I couldn’t even read them.

There was once a time that you took in all you could, perhaps before you started writing a paper for one of your classes. Once you read up on everything, only then did you have the OK to go.

No more.

Intake and output is a daily balance, no longer is it weekly, monthly, or yearly. Becoming successful in any part of your industry is about balancing the amount of intake and output each day.

 

Stay Positive & It’s A Daily Thing (Learn → Apply)

Garth E. Beyer

Until You Stumble

Garth Beyer

Keep on going and you will stumble on to something remarkable. Notice how I didn’t say that you will find a treasure chest. Notice how I didn’t say you would stop in front of and look up at your reward. Notice how I didn’t say that you would meet your goal face-to-face. No.

We race so quickly to our goals, that when we fall, we never notice the X on the ground. We get back up and keep racing, leaving whatever reward (which often comes in the form of a lesson – at least at the early stages -) on the ground.

 

Stay Positive & Look Where You Stumble Before You Get Going Again

Garth E. Beyer

Enjoying The Journey

Garth Beyer

Have you tried non-resistance?

It’s much like the old simile of water flowing down the river. The water doesn’t force itself to try to push the rocks out of its way. The water simply flows.

I don’t like it. Those who live by the motto, “go with the flow,” aren’t living life. It’s a tacky way of going about. These are the people who fail to realize something massively important about living, loving, and learning.

You can live stronger, wilder, free-er, love more passionately, more intimately, more loyally,  and learn differently, zen-ly, interestingly when you are lost and confused than when you know where you are and want to be, when you’re single or even broken-hearted than when you’re on a date or moments away from asking your special one to marry you, when you’re broken and failing than when your right on track.

The only determination whether what you’re going through is a better lesson than what you would rather be going through is you. And the only decision you have to make is to be non-resistant.

 

Stay Positive & Learn From The River: Rifts, Waves, Stillness, And All

Garth E. Beyer

The Right Perspective On Mentorship

Garth Beyer

You’re looking for mentors to give to you, but you need to give to them.

When you get a mentor, as it benefits anyone who does, the obligation to fulfill expectations is only the base of what defines the relationship between mentor and pupil.

What makes it work is what you have to show and give the mentor. Not in the sense of doing as the mentor says, but doing more, proving them wrong, and surprising them. You may view them as a mentor, but they need to view themselves as observers, as pushers, as people who are about to get their minds blown.

The thing about this post-industrial society is that the teachers, mentors, evaluators and advisers… they need to be re-taught. They have grown up learning how to follow orders and eventually on how to give orders, how to maintain the status quo and the terrible curriculum of teaching set by tradition. It’s your job as the pupil of a mentor to be the teacher, to represent this post-industrial generation and to not only create something innovative and irreplaceable, but to change the way education is taught.

 

Stay Positive & Let’s Remind Them What It Means To Be A Mentor

Garth E. Beyer

The Parkour Take On Life’s Mistakes

Garth Beyer

Since the cold has taken the offensive I have postponed  my outdoor Parkour training. Even though I train and lift weights in the comfort of my home (which ironically is as cold as the outside since I never have the heat on) and at the small recreational facility seven and a half minutes away from my home, I still manage to acquire injuries. Ah, injuries — the most valuable reminders we can be given.

When I first became a Traceur, the only injuries I got were a sprained something-or-other and some nasty scratches. Although, there was a time I almost lost my man-hood when jumping over a goal post in Frisbee Golf. I should have checked to see how stable the post was before I decided to jump over it.

Regardless, when you are performing such an intense sport, you are bound to get injured. It may be slight scratches, a large gash, a dislocated shoulder or concussion. Than again, they are the same risks I take when working out at the gym or at home, if not more risky because of the lack of space. I can pull a muscle from lifting too much weight, scratch myself when trying to use the machines, roll an ankle running on the treadmill, etc.

Do I let these annoyances stop me from doing what I love? Of course not… Last week I pulled a muscle in my arm after maxing out on 50 push ups. The next day you could have found me doing P90X in the apartment. –bad idea– Injuries need rest but you get the idea. I am motivated and working out and Parkour training is a necessity in my life.

It’s all the same in life isn’t it? We have passions, goals, tasks that we have to accomplish and we all risk getting injured in one way or another. Christopher Paolini puts it perfectly in his book Inheritance, “Its impossible to go through life unscathed. Nor should you want to. By the hurts we accumulate, we measure both our follies and our accomplishments”

Stay Positive and Proud Of Your Scars

Garth E. Beyer