I’m going to tell you the truth:
I did not love this book while I was writing it.
I did not love this book while I was editing it.
Mostly because I was so ill with long c0vid that it was hard for me to love anything at all.
But I had faith.
And by the time I was in the booth recording the Audible version, I loved it.
I tell you this to underline this truth:
YOU ARE TERRIBLE JUDGE OF YOUR OWN WORK.
So judging
Stop evaluating.
Start writing.
The world needs your book – more than you even know.
If you would like to share some about your book project with me in a small group (no sales – just wisdom and mutual support) – please find a time here.
“Hi Sam;
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.
photo credit: A.K. Photography via photopin cc
And as you stand there
Late again
Because you forgot to allow time to park
And the elevator was slow
And you left 10 minutes late to begin with
With your shoes that pinch
And your pants that are a little too small
Since you started eating white bread again
And as you paw through your bag
Looking for the suite number
That you’re not sure you wrote down to begin with
Let us now praise you.
You, the untidy.
You, the careless.
You, the easily distracted by sparkly things.
The money you spend on late fees alone
Could feed a family in Africa –
Which reminds you that you meant to send in the kids’ Unicef money and
Forgot.
And that despite your best efforts,
You rarely eat a square meal,
You almost never get enough sleep
And exercise seems like a word that magazines have developed
Just to make you feel bad about yourself.
But you are good and brave.
You, flying by the seat of your pants
Making it work
Putting out fires
Saying your prayers
And dancing your dance of now and later and maybe and
I’ll–have-to-call-you-back-on-that-could-you-send-me-an-email-to-remind-me-to-call-you-back-on-that?
As innocent as each morning’s sunrise,
You are a fount of good intentions.
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.
