My lizard brain* wants to hide out. My lizard brain doesn’t want to be remarkable, it wants to sun itself while blending into the bark on a branch.
My first couple of weeks on this blog were so faithful, while experimental. It was too much to sustain. So I’ve thought. Now what? Well, first, overcome the resistance, as Seth Godin sees it.* How? Get back with the programs of noting important conversations.
“If you knew that people—even 5 people—were waiting every single day to read what you were going to write on a blog, your brain would rise to the occasion, it would notice things, it would find things to talk about.”
~ Seth Godin, interviewed on Small Business Marketing Podcast from Duct Tape Marketing, available on iTunes.
Conversation: email exchanges with Kathleen, Lynette, and Grant about BlueBeary, especially about the iPhone application. The voice-over is done and the sound files are now with PicPocket Books. Lynette says it sounds great and "we'll be working on the app full tilt starting tomorrow." And now, BlueBeary’s cover is on the PicPocket Books website. So excited!
Conversation: Lana Buschert of Keys to Music Studio here in Calgary. I start teaching Wednesday afternoon, one day a week for now.
Conversation: Ollie Rogers about an expanded role with Tutor Doctor (i.e. a promotion?). What will this look like? How long will it last? We’ll discuss this tomorrow at 11:00.
Conversation: Kevin & Stephanie started her memory verse for church kids’ club. Though we didn’t actually talk about it together, just the process of hearing and saying these words over an over again was thought-provoking and fits well with the lizard brain
6 Go to the ant, you sluggard;
consider its ways and be wise!7 It has no commander,
no overseer or ruler,8 yet it stores its provisions in summer
and gathers its food at harvest.9 How long will you lie there, you sluggard?
When will you get up from your sleep?10 A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest-11 and poverty will come on you like a bandit
and scarcity like an armed man.
Proverbs 6:6-11
So many good opportunities. The trick is focus and hard work. Last week Rosie Perera recommended giving up certain high tech addictions for Lent, especially computer games like Settlers of Catan and Facebook’s Scramble. I was getting carpal tunnel anyhow. Fascinating the compulsion and confusion that rises to the surface without these to fill “empty” spaces and numb my brain. Good thing Easter’s still nearly a month away!
* “The idea of the resistance goes hand in hand with the lizard brain. And Steven [Pressfield] doesn’t talk about the lizard brain, but The War of Art … starts out as a book about how to overcome writer’s block, but it’s way bigger than that because writing isn’t the point, the point is shipping. And what the lizard brain does is when it feels you are getting close to something that could get you laughed at, it throws up roadblocks. Sometime those roadblocks are subtle like, “Well, I don’t really feel like writing today. I don’t really feel like doing something extraordinary. I don’t really feel like writing a blog post that people are going to read. And then, it can actually lead you to become an alcoholic, commit suicide, do all sorts of self-destructive things just to protect the lizard brain.
“If you are not shipping, if you are going to a lot of meetings, if you are whining about how your boss won’t let you do something, this is the work of the resistance, and you must call it up by name and you must follow really clear steps to find a path to defeat the resistance, because if you don’t, then you are on track to be mediocre, you are on track to be average, and you are on track—in this economy—to be trampled on and end up in a dust heap on the side of the road of failure.”
On stalling: “If you can spend 12 hours getting more efficient instead of 12 hours being remarkable, that’s 12 more hours that the lizard brain got to hide out.”
~ in 43 Folders – Interview with Linchpin author Seth Godin, available on iTunes.
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