While I applaud your efforts with this event and wholeheartedly agree with your philosophy, the bottom line is that you are a motivational speaker and people feed off of your energy because that is something that they cannot provide for themselves. It’s not about the book or the event, it’s about your personality and charisma…The problem is, once the book is read and the event attended we are usually back to square one…
Anyway, I wish you success in your efforts and I will continue to watch your webinars, you are really quite therapeutic but unless you are going to move in with me and give me a kick in the pants 24/7, this stuff usually doesn’t work.
– B.”
Here’s what I wrote back:
“Hi B. –
I think that what you are saying is exactly true — but only for about 80% of my audience.
That 80% attend a free training, they get excited…..and then they go right back to their same old patterns and nothing changes.
As near as I can tell, that 80% number is true for all personal development stuff from gym memberships to preachers to diet plans to financial strategies to everything else on the planet. Shoot – most of us wear only 20% of our wardrobe most of the time; the other 80% goes unworn. (It’s the Pareto Principle.)
And I think that’s fine.
If 80% of my people are going to use me as a source of temporary inspiration and entertainment, well, then — what’s wrong with that?
The remaining 20%, though….they actually DO IT.
They take the strategies and ideas I teach and they run with it and they change.
They double their income. They get out of destructive relationships. They publish their book. They get their “dream” business up and running.
My experience is that when people are — well, I was going to write “ready” to change, but I mean more than that — when change becomes MANDATORY for them — they find the teacher who’s right for them and they change.
So, B., if you suspect that you’ve reached the “mandatory” stage…or even if you’d just like a temporary shot of inspiration, I’d love to invite you to join us.
Thanks so much for taking the time to write.
Yours, Sam.”
Here’s my question for you —
Are you ready to be part of the 20%?
Are you hungry to see RESULTS?
Look, in the past 11 days I have:
– Handed in my 2nd draft of my new book to my publisher – whoot! whoot!
– Bought a new car because it was time to retire my wonderful 2000 Honda Accord with 184,000 miles on it.
– Spent 2 mind-melting-in-a-good-way days at a Byron Katie Workshop in Ojai
– Screwed up my courage to introduce myself to Stephen Mitchell (Katie’s husband) who is one of my literary heroes — I felt really shy, but I HAD to tell him how much his work has meant to me over the years and I knew I couldn’t keep encouraging you all to push past your perceived limitations if I wasn’t willing to do the same.
– Had a long, wonderful talk over an excellent bottle of wine with one of my oldest friends, who also happens to be a big TV star (and I got ALL the good Hollywood gossip….)
– Started a new paint-by-numbers. Don’t laugh. Paint by numbers is cool.
– Paid about a gabilion dollars in taxes — which was great because that means business is good and getting better all the time and plus I had salted the money away over the course of the year, so I could pay in full. My tax dude is very proud of me.
– Taught 7 classes — 6 online, 1 in person — to a total of over 1500 brilliant creative students. You can check out the open Q&A call I did here if you want a sample:http://iTeleseminar.com/83976132
– Drove into LA to drop-in on my favorite improv class taught by the great Dave Razowsky– I don’t want to let my acting skills get rusty just because I moved to the beach, right?
– Had 2 fun date nights with my sweetheart plus a few lovely beach walks.
– Made a lovely potato-leek soup from scratch from my old Julia Child cookbook – yum.
– Attended an Infusionsoft training webinar taught by my old pal Jordan Hatch so I can stay up on all the latest marketing technology.
– Plus had a crown replaced (ugh) got my iPhone fixed (also ugh) had two short, effective Team Meetings with my fabulous crew and finished two novels.
And I gotta say — it’s not like this past 11 days is all that different from the rest of my calendar.
But if you had told me 10 years ago that my life would look like this, I would have said, “IMPOSSIBLE.” I was broke, suffering from severe depression and while my creative life was OK, my financial life and my spiritual well-being were in serious jeopardy.
I couldn’t see how my life could ever change.
But I was willing to give it a try. So I got a coach, committed to a program and started down the path to here.
I invested, and I dug myself out of that hole and got out of my own way. And I can help you get out of your own way, too.
I created the principles, tactics and strategies in The Get It Done Workshop so that I could lead this creatively fulfilled, financially sustainable, spiritually enriched and FUN life.
Maybe you are in the middle of a dry spell so severe your lips are parched.
I’m sorry. I know that feeling — that sinking, empty, aching feeling — and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
But I know that eventually it will end. And you will live through it. I’m sorry I can’t say how long “eventually” will be, but I do know that you will get your mojo back.
You are an artist.
And sometimes artists endure extended periods during which it seems as if nothing’s happening.
It ’s called acedia, meaning “spiritual torpor and apathy; ennui” or “anomie in societies or individuals, a condition of instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values or from a lack of purpose or ideals.”
And it doesn’t mean you’re dead inside.
It just means that you’ve temporarily lost the ability to feel joy in your work. Which is sad.
But if you accept this dry spell as a stage in the artistic process, feeling fully confident that no one and nothing can ever take away your identity as an artist (after all, they haven’t been able to make it go away yet, have they?), you just might survive.
Maybe this is the time to pursue some of those other things you always say you want to do. Volunteer more. Have lunch with friends.
Take a temporary job in a field that ’s of interest to you. Spend more time with children. Read all those books you’ve got piled up. Plan a trip. Sit on the couch with the television off.
Whatever happens, don’t give up on yourself.
Eventually you will get a little tickle. An idea will whisper to you. You’ll catch yourself thinking, “I wonder if . . .” and you’ll be off to the races again, productive, happy, and rejoicing in the renewal of your vibrant, creative voice.
Disappointment is, literally, failing to keep an appointment. Which is why I think it hurts a little more than the other bumps and bruises of life.
When you feel disappointed, you are feeling deprived of something you thought was already in motion. If you’re feeling like you have an “appointment” with a promotion or a successful presentation or a new love, having that thing not work out is especially crushing because it was kind of a done deal inside your mind.
And that old saw about “don’t get your hopes up, and that way you won’t get disappointed,” is the biggest bunch of hooey I’ve ever heard.
First of all, it’s a bad strategy because it plain doesn’t.
If something you want doesn’t work out, you’re going to be bummed whether or not you had anticipated the failure.
And missing an opportunity to have delightfully high hopes seems. . . churlish.
I understand the impulse to say, “I just don’t want to get hurt again.” But guess what? You’re here to get hurt.
We’re here to try again. and again. and again. We’re here to gain resiliency.
So I say go ahead — get your hopes up. Dream big, lush, vivid dreams. Imagine your ideal of success with the full knowledge that reality may never measure up.
Then when things do work out, you haven’t wasted one moment tamping down your enthusiasm. And if they don’t work out, well, then, you are free to feel the full force of your disappointment. Which may or may not be as bad as you had imagined it might be.
I bet that if you stacked up all your disappointments you would you would find that very few of them make you think, “Oh, I wish I hadn’t even tried that.” I bet you would mostly think, “Well, I sure learned a lot.”
And that’s the other thing we’re here for: our soul’s education.
Nevertheless, disappointments can leave deep scars. And some disappointments take longer to heal than we’d like, even when we know we “should be over it by now.”
(Over it by now? Says who? What is this mysterious global time frame on getting over things? Honestly.)
Disappointment is a wise and valuable teacher. It acquaints you with grief. Grief, said the Greeks, is the daughter of anger and sadness. These two powerful emotions need to be felt, explored, and lived through.
Otherwise we are only a living shadow of our true selves: pretending we don’t care about the things we care about most.
So there’s a time to cry and a time to stop crying.
Your good humor is as graceful as a baby giraffe,
Even if that joke you were trying to make to the hotel clerk fell flat
And your toast at the wedding came out sounding a little….funny.
But you have gifts that no one knows about.
You have the strength to bend in the wind
You have the joyful spirit that loves a good belly laugh,
You have the wisdom to understand that everything will all come out all right in the end and
You have the faith to light a candle rather than curse the darkness.
That is, if you could find the book of matches from that romantic restaurant that you went to for your anniversary but since you didn’t have a reservation they made you wait at the bar for half an hour during which you had two appletinis and the rest of the night is a bit of a blur.
So much for the overpriced lingerie.
You are beautiful.
You are beautiful.
Frazzled and overworked and underpaid
You are the one who forgot your wallet
And forgot your receipt for the dry cleaners
And forgot your keys which you just set down five seconds ago, so where could they possibly have gone?
But you never forget to say, “I love you”
And you never forget to give a big smile to that nice parking guy
And you never fail to show endless patience when the
Too-tightly wrapped and overly-conscientious start to offer their Oh-so-helpful suggestions about how you might feel better if you would just learn to alphabetize your spice rack.
You are beautiful.
So, wear the lingerie on Monday for no reason.
And why not just refuse to participate in the bake sale this year?
And give yourself a compliment for something you did well today.
Because you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.
Every creative person I know says things like, “Well, I’m a writer. But I also sing in a choir and play bass guitar and drums and embroider and do needlepoint, but I don’t do counted cross-stitch anymore, and of course everyone in my family loves to cook, and did I mention that I also clog dance?”
Like I said, you’re good at a lot of things.
And then there’s the artistry that you bring to your everyday life.
Take a look at the list of creative activities below. This list was created and then added to over the years by hundreds of students and clients. As you’ll see, some of the activities on the list are a bit outside-the-box.
Maybe you, too, have some skills that you never thought of as creative, or dare I say… artistic?
The A-B-C’s of Creative Endeavors
Acro-Yoga, Acting, Acupuncture ADR (Additional Dialogue Recording) Agenda Planning, All Things Mac, Alphabetizing, Animal Husbandry Animation, Assembling Things, Awesome Salad Making
Dancing: Ballet, Dancing: Boogie-Oogie-Oogie, Dancing: Modern
Decoupage, Detail Designing (the devil is in the details), Doll Making, Doodling
Dream-Board Making.Driving in Los Angeles, Drumming
Editing, Emoting. Empathizing, Encouraging Entrepreneurship, Event Planning, Expressing Myself Honestly without Being Cruel
Facebook, Fashionistaing, Faux Painting, Film Critiquing
Filmmaking, Finding Order in Chaos, Fixing Things
Flute Playing, Foley Working, Footwear Design, Furniture Making
Gardening, Gift Wrapping, Going to the Mat, Grant Writing Graphic Design, Guitar Playing: Electric, Guitar Playing: Folk/Acoustic Gunsmithing
Handmade Card Making, for Prisoners, Home Cooking, Home Decorating
Honesty about Self (with Wit, Sometimes), Horseback Riding
Idea Formation, Improvising, Information Sharing Interior Design, Internet Marketing, Invoking
Jewelry Making, Joke Writing, Juggling
Kissing, Kite Making
Life Coaching, Lighting Design, Listening and Giving Advice
Logistics, Long Car Trips, Lovemaking, Lucid Dreaming
Makeup application, Making Others Comfortable with Themselves, Making Fairy Houses Marketing, Massage, Mediating, Mind-Body-Soul Coaching Motivational Speaking, Music Producing:Stage and Studio
Painting by Number, Party Throwing, Personal Training, Philosophy, Photography, Piano: Rudimentary, Playwriting,
Poetry: Limericks, Poetry of the Obscene,Poetry: Romantic Poetry: Memorizing
Poster making, Producing, Public Speaking
Pulling Business Concepts out of My Butt (a.k.a.Entrepreneurship?)
Quad Riding
Raw Food Juicing, Reading, Reading Aloud, Reading to Oneself, Reciting
Recorder Playing, Recovery (12-Stepping), Rollerblading, Roller-Skating
Sales, Saying No, Scabbard Making, Scenic Design, Scrapbooking, Screenwriting, Script Coverage, Sculpey-Clay Bead-Making, Set Designing,Sewing, Shopping, Show Producing: Multiple Genres, Shrinky-Dink Making, Silk Screening, Singing, Singing: Classical Music, Singing: Gospel, Snowboarding, Soap Making, Social Media, Software Design, Spiritual Leadership, Stand-Up Comedy, Staying in Touch, Studying/Being a Student, Stunt Fighting/Stage Combat Stunts
Take a sheet of paper and divide it into two columns.
In the first column, write down any of the skills or talents from the list above that you possess. Add to the list any additional skills you have mastered that you might think of as an art.
Gift giving? Coffee brewing? Comforting people when they’re upset? Daydreaming?
In the second column, make a note about how that talent might help you to solve a current issue in your life in a unique way.
For example, remembering how good you are at throwing parties might inspire you to make your next boring meeting more festive.
Calling to mind your puzzle-solving genius might suggest a fun, new way to approach your blog.
It drives me crazy when I hear an artist say, “Oh, I could never get a real job because I’m only good at one thing.”
Nonsense.
Spending a lifetime in the arts helps you develop all kinds of valuable skill sets: listening, reading body language, using your keen intuition; a love of history; good rhythm; the ability to present in front of a group; a sense of shape, color, and design; the ability to accept criticism; a knack for collaboration and teamwork (we usually call it “ensemble”); and most of all, the ability to think of a new idea and work hard until it’s done.
I’m not saying that you have to get a real job if you don’t want one.
I just want you to notice how many skills and art forms you bring into every room you grace.
Vocals
Water Skiing
Web Design
Whitewater River Guiding
Woodcut-Print Making
Woodworking
Wrapping Presents
Writing
Writing Love Notes
Writing Meditations
Yoga
YouTube
Once you are done noticing your own unusual art forms, you might want to take a moment to notice someone else’s.
People feel very seen and cared about when you take the time to praise the way they walk in the world.
A heartfelt compliment such as “I notice that you are always very considerate in your remarks when we have
these meetings — thank you for that” can do a lot for a strained work environment.
And I will tell you from experience that writing a kindly, observant thank-you note can win you a friend for life.
Select three of your special talents, and make a note about how these gifts might be useful to you in moving your project forward.
Would love to know what you came up with, leave a comment below if you feel like sharing.
