Work

More On The 2nd Part Of Being Scared

Garth Beyer

There are two parts to everyone being scared.

The second is my favorite because it has the potential of making you feel better than you ever have before. At my work, I have evaluated applications from students that have put in more than 2,000 hours of community service over a span of four years. But when I think of the second part of fear, I can’t help but realize that more empowering results can be created by talking to someone for two minutes.

Online example

Despite Twitter’s popularity, it’s far from perfect. In fact, I gave their ads a try and was revolted. They gave me $50 to start running ads and I quit before it was spent.

They also required you to have a debit/credit card on file before they gave you the money. Once I quit my ads, I wanted to delete my debit card information. I could not find any place to do this. So, I emailed them.

Within a day I received an email saying that the feature I requested was not available and that they would work on it – in the mean time I would basically have to deal with it.

Since then, a few weeks have passed. The other day, I opened my email to find this:

Twitter

There is always room for improvement

Whether the person, company, or client you’re talking to follows through with your suggestion – or in Twitter’s case, takes your unfulfillable request and turns it into something real – it’s still your responsibility to make that suggestion.

Out of the millions of Twitter users, I have no clue how many will be happy that they can delete their card from their account. I have no clue how many employees it took, how much red tape it had to go through, or how successful their actions really were. What I do know is that they took a request, an idea, and made it happen. And for that – although I still can’t stand the ads, – I will stick by Twitter’s side.

Personal examples

An old friend of mine wanted to start a blog about teen dads. I gave him roughly five lines of hard encouragement. I told him exactly what he needed to do. He never did. I didn’t let fear get to him, he did.

Another friend of mine was applying to law school and asked if I would review his personal statement. I gave him a few suggestions but explained more about human personalities and how those reviewing the application are real people. He understood, realizing that there was fear that the person reviewing his application might misjudge him. Because of fear, he wrote a safe statement. Once I called him out on it, he made some changes and while he has yet to hear back, I’m sure he will get in.

I shared a speech I wrote with a respectable entrepreneur. She critiqued the staleness and boredom out of it. Because of her, my speech became more remarkable. I also gave the original draft to a friend who said it was good, providing a couple grammatical corrections. You can guess which one had more of an impact.

Criticism is tough work

So is encouragement, accountability, and inspiration – all of which are required to back up another’s dance with fear. I’ve always thought that doing your own work is easy, well, maybe not easy, but always easier than helping someone else do their own work.

I suppose that’s why I love giving people feedback. Maybe, just maybe, they will see how valuable it is to them, that they give feedback to someone else.

 

Stay Positive & Let Others Know What You Think And Feel

Garth E. Beyer

Everyone’s Scared

Garth Beyer

Which means two things.

1. Very few dance with it or merely walk calmly forward. Few carry on when fear is pulling them back. That means that if you were to go forward with every fear imaginable (all fear is imagined), then you have an instant advantage without doing any of the easy work. Yes, dealing with fear is the hard work, actually making/doing whatever it is you’re passionate about is easy. Haven’t you walked into an art gallery and seen paintings that you know you could replicate? Making art is easy, but shipping it, putting it on the wall, giving it away, selling it – that’s the hard stuff. And fear is with you every step of the way.

2. Shame on you for enabling others to let fear control them. For saying it’s okay that they don’t give their work away, or suggesting they keep working on something until it’s better instead of showing it as it is. After all, the only way they will get better is if they show it and get feedback… from more people than just you. Yes, fear is what walks between you and your friend with its arms around both of your shoulders. Fear is tactful at making you as nervous as the person doing their work. That’s why you have as much responsibility to push others forward as they have to push themselves. Fear is about tough love and tough love will out.

 

Stay Positive & Keep On Keeping On

Garth E. Beyer

Repairing Motorcycles

Garth Beyer

You’re faced with a huge project. Or you’re trying to face one. Fear is eating at your gut. The saying now goes: No gut. Nothing to follow. But you try your hardest to not let it.

Gumption isn’t so much about putting up a fight with fear and pressing forward; actions and emotions are only half of it. The first half is having a project for fear to work on.

For me, I’m putting together a team to make ideas happen, for Robert Pirsig, it’s repairing a motorcycle, for you it may be starting a blog, showcasing your art, deploying a new business strategy, deploying a new business, talking to people who are different from you, or simply tackling the list of to-do’s you’ve put off.

Gumption isn’t associated with the tough decisions you hear CEO’s having to make, nor is it connected to those wearing hooverflags. No. Gumption doesn’t follow guidelines, restrictions, or limits. It doesn’t care how you were raised, what school you went to, or whether you skipped breakfast or not.

L. M. Montgomery said, “Anyone who has gumption knows what it is, and anyone who hasn’t can never know what it is. So there is no need of defining it.”

I suppose Maud never tried repairing a motorcycle. But now, everyone has to repair a motorcycle at some point during their life… or at least something similar to repairing a motorcycle.

Puzzling to acknowledge is that there are a lot more meaningful predicaments similar to repairing a motorcycle than not. Pirsig would agree with me that, yes, repairing a motorcycle takes courage, spunk, guts, initiative, aggressiveness, and a high altitude of resourcefulness.

It also takes fear and dances with it. When you go to repair a motorcycle, you know you’re going to have one hell of a time. Bolts won’t fit, parts will be stripped, dents will be accidentally made, you’ll have to repeat tasks, and – my favorite part – you will deviate from instructions.

If you ask me, Maud was partially right. Gumption can’t be defined.

However, it can be felt.

 

“I like the word ‘gumption’ because it’s so homely and so forlorn and so out of style it looks as if it needs a friend and isn’t likely to reject anyone who comes along. I like it also because it describes exactly what happens to someone who connects with Quality. He gets filled with gumption.

A person filled with gumption doesn’t sit around dissipating and stewing about things. He’s at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see what’s up the track and meeting it when it comes. That’s gumption.

If you’re going to repair a motorcycle, an adequate supply of gumption is the first and most important tool. If you haven’t got that you might as well gather up all the other tools and put them away, because they won’t do you any good.”

― Robert M. Pirsig

Stay Positive & Go Find Your Motorcycle

Garth E. Beyer

One Person Position

Garth Beyer

I love when I hear from someone working that they are the only one working the position. Because I know they are lying.

In reality, they aren’t working alone, they have people from different groups, departments, sections helping them out when things get tough. (If they don’t, that’s because they didn’t ask for help. May I suggest transferring to a position where you don’t need to?)

What I would love to hear when I ask for confirmation that they are really the only one working: “Yea, and I’m doing a hell of a job. The same results if you were to hire five people.”

Now that’s the person I would want on my team.

 

Stay Positive & Become A Linchpin

Garth E. Beyer

Blink

Garth Beyer

Blink is an aberrantly exceptional book by Malcolm Gladwell, yes. But the action is something entirely significant on its own.

An artist notes, “on a good day blinking refreshes sight and brings clarity.” The act of blinking revitalizes focus and perception to the world, and I state this on no low-level.

If you were to walk around with your best efforts to refrain from blinking, you would experience every emotion on the right-wing of negativity. Alas, this is not necessary. In fact, for lack of a better term, I would consider us lucky that blinking is primarily involuntary.

It seems suggestive that in order to perceive, understand, inspirit and reanimate life, we must blink. What if we conceptualized blinking into our work and our art?

When we incorporate “blinking” into our efforts – whatever they may be – we are naturally prone to create more understandable products: alive, lit up, stimulated, lucid.

The only difference: this type of “blinking” is voluntary. Though, equally invaluable.

 

Stay Positive & Be Sure To Blink, And Blink Often

Garth E. Beyer

Calling All Non-Freelancers

Garth Beyer

We need you to freelance.

The jobless are – without objection – staying jobless.

Remember the common saying, “the best time to start a business is during a recession?” Well, starting a business is similar to freelancing, but without the vital need of initial high monetary input.

I also believe that no matter your career interest, there is a way to hack it, a way to freelance it. (Worth noting: joblessness also gives you the opportunity to take a different path, start something new. If there was ever a time to say “you have nothing to lose,” that time is now.) For many of those unemployed, turning your expertise into a freelance model will immediately define your profession as a niche.

All that leaves is finding your market: given the internet and the long tail – check, and check.

Unemployment? Spit on it. Jobless? Create yours. Desperate? Take a risk.

 

Stay Positive & The Unemployment Rate Will Change, Only When You Do

Garth E. Beyer

When To Talk About Your Work

Garth Beyer

Running it by someone who might not understand is waste of your time.

Sure, you may get some variant input, but no serious support.

Instead, follow the motto: run with it and review.

Talk about your work after it’s shipped, not while you’re working, not while you’re creating, not while you can be manipulated by poor forms of criticism.

“Talk about what you have written, by all means, but do not read from it while the work is in progress. Every gratification procured in this way will slacken your tempo. If this regime is followed, the growing desire to communicate will become in the end a motor for completion.” Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street

 

Stay Positive & Until It’s Shipped, Follow The First Rule Of Fight Club

Garth E. Beyer