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Week 4: Step 3: Execute

last week. Just a quick recap was the design. Remember, the book is ranted in four parts. Part one. Imagine part to design. Imagine what you want for your either your project or anything you're trying to make or be or become. Maybe it's even architect in your life. Imagine what's possible. Design a series of steps and behaviors to get that execute that plan that you made in parte de uh, that's this decision we're working on right now and then amplify, which is what we're gonna get to next week. That is all about building community. So in the design section last week, you talked about identifying creativity, zappers and blockers, things that jazz you up and fire you up and and things that ah, that drain you and how to do more of some and more of the things that fire you up unless of the things that suck. And while that may sound selfish, that is absolutely in your control. Um, we talked a lot about mindset. We talked about building a calendar and session plan for your creative work. I w...

ant to know if you got any of these tasks done. Some people were auditing their time. I got some messages via text about people who were brutally surprised when they started auditing. How much time they were a watching television be spending on social media, a missing aimlessly scrolling. So, um, before I get into the read, I'm just gonna have a quick quick Ask someone from the zoom call here. What a wonder. Willing to volunteer anything that they learned when they audit to their time or looked at their session planning process and realized that they were having a blocker. While Meghan is right like you are, the hand was up. I'm going right to Megan. Megan, start us off and share something that you did to overcome or what you noticed. And then what you did overcome it. Um, I noticed that trying to fit in the art, uh, while my kids have been home during the pandemic is just I've been doing it for a long time, and it's not working effectively. So I got a sitter to come into our germ circle for himself high schooler in our neighborhood, and she's coming Mondays and Wednesdays. Now, um, three hours in a row, and it's but awesome. I've been turning out our ever since. So nice. Super psyched about it. Nice. Okay, just a little. I'm gonna You didn't ask, but I'm going to, um, break that down just a little bit before last week. I am guessing you may have been feeling like a cork in the Thai like, Oh, it's so hard and many of the people that I work with my colleagues, my friends are experiencing the same thing that when they have little ones at home, it's really hard and understandable. But I want to just very simple, like putting this in your mind, deciding, you know, holding yourself accountable with this community that were and with today made a change. And now you're getting, you know, three hour chunks a couple days a week. It's it's it sounds complicated where most of us are sitting that whatever the hurdle is that we need to overcome. And yet with community with a little bit of guidance and some courage on your part, you made it happen. So I'm very, very excited to hear that. And I'm sure there are lots of other success stories. Thanks for sharing, Megan. Um all right. So I would like to as I do every one of these sessions. Start with a reed. I'm going to read at first from page 1 74 and then when a phase into a little blurb from 1 69 so you can follow along. Um, this is, uh, just oriented. Where I'm reading from this is, uh, talking about my personal journey. A photographer takes photos, a professional photographer cells photos. That's what I wanted to be. So that's what I did over and over and over again at the World Extreme Skiing Championships at Olympic qualifying events at Red Bull contests. Anything I could find on the competition calendar that I could get to, I took photos and I submitted them to magazines. Suddenly Or maybe not so suddenly. As I think back, my work began to appear alongside photos by the established pros with big budgets with press credentials and swagger. Sure, there. Photos were on the cover and mine were thumbnails on page 78 but my name was next to each one. It slowly started to work. The reason it started to work. I was working, you know, Page 7 69 While the first half of this book is about imagining and designing your creative calling this step and these three chapters in particular, are all about the power of action. I don't recommend crossing the highway before thinking, nor should you jump out of a plane before checking your parachute. But doing ought to proceed, thinking when it comes to baseline creative work, too much planning is a trap. Don't fall into this trap. Instead, try plotting out Oh, instead of trying to plot out the perfect novel before you start writing, except that it will take a few shitty drafts to get things sorted. I want you to just start writing. I want you to play, enjoy the process right, six different intros and throw five in the trash. You will figure out a lot along the way. All right, So it's as I said when we were just warming up here and I understand there were some audio glitches. Um, the were in the execute phase of the book and in the four step process that is a creative process to guide any project or making a masterpiece of your life, and or a lot of people are stuck in the, um, imagination and designing a plan, imagination. I could do this. And then here's I'm gonna go do, or if I wanted to own, I'm gonna be a sculptor and they go out and buy a bunch of clay and some sculpting tools and a pottery wheel, and then they go back. And so that wasn't my thing. And I'm gonna go back. Nothing when they get stuck in this imagination and design designing a plan loop and that is a lot of folks, those are new Delors. Those are starters. If you remember back to the early chapters of the book we named those folks and giving things a name is helpful. If that is you, this section is extra critical for you to pay attention to. Now, on the flip side, a lot of people are doers and they're just on a hamster wheel and busy makes him feel good, whether or not they're achieving progress toward their goals. Now for you, I do want you to make sure that you've over indexed on the imagination and designing a plan part. But this is going to be valuable for you because we want to do work that moves your goals forward and this section will help uncover the difference between the work that uncovered that that moves you forward. And as I said before, the hamster on a wheel is busy. We don't you We don't want you to be the hamster on the wheel. So, um, the topic the first topic of the three topics which coincide coincidentally with the three chapters that I want to talk about is not fake it till you make it, but rather make it till you make it. And what I mean by that I mean, as I said in my intro, read that too much planning is a crutch that so many of us fallen. And while I am a huge advocate of journaling, um, what I'm not an advocate of is toe have that journaling replace the action that you otherwise might be doing. This is why I like to carve out a very specific time in the morning. Um, and I like to keep that journaling time quite narrow. This is just my personal preference. And especially if you're a writer, that obviously wouldn't work. I want to start off, just as it is a exclamation point that this idea of planning of preparation of making things as perfect as you can before you start is a trap. Now, one of the things that you if you read the chapters you may have noticed and also was prevalent in the intro. And my my read is that permission is something permission to take action. This is why I love Megan's share. A. The beginning. Permission to take action is something that you take. If you look around and you are waiting for someone to give you permission to chase your life dream, it's not gonna happen. Or, if you are lucky enough to, you know, Mary, or find that partner have that best friend to who actually does want to help you get unstuck and take that crazy risk that may put your livelihood or your family in some sort of ah, a tight spot. But it's the thing you want to do than more power to you. But I just acknowledge that that's rare. Most of us, and as a human species, we are inclined. Um, we have a negativity bias, so starting things is hard because there's a lot of fear, their fear. We equate the fear of not getting very many likes on our first instagram post. Then we shared this new photo project that we're on or when we, um, you know, launch our go fund me to drive this new Web site that you want to build or a new app. We associate that fear with same fear of the saber toothed tiger, and I'm here to tell you that the saber tooth tigers are largely gone, and most of the fear of just starting is something that you'll need to overcome and its biological. So I want to acknowledge that that it can be hard, but there's only one way to do it, and it is through taking action. So the idea of thinking yourself out of the red future in or into starting is fiction. If I there's a little blurb here on 11 74 if I'd waited for permission from gatekeepers, I'd still be waiting now. To be fair, this took me years, and here's to learn. We've tried those out my own escapades over the course, the previous couple episodes of the class, but I bet if you look backwards and wait and the times in your life where you the most joyful and fulfilled. No one else gave you that idea. No one else told you that that was going to fulfill you. And then you started doing the thing and felt the feeling that that person was prescribing to you. By contrast, you felt these things. You did them even if it was just for a week, a month, a day, a season or a year in your past. And it felt good. This is this the doing? Part of the part that we identified in imagine and design is, um is a required step in you creating the best project that you can create or again making a masterpiece out of your life. You can't think yourself out of that action creates momentum. It, um it reminds you that there are no shortcuts in the best possible way. And there's so many times where, like, literally in climbing mountains is part of my previous profession. And so often career where I got to a place where I thought I was going to, um, be at the top of the mountain or have achieved a goal only to realize that that was a false summit. I don't know if anyone's a rock climber here or a mountain climber, You get up over this sort of buttress or whatever you to the top, and you realize that Oh, my gosh, that actually wasn't the summit. That's just what I could see from where I was standing, and I've got so much more to do. But if you've taken action to get there, you're better off than if you're trying to rationalize it from the couch. Part of what we get stuck in is, um, the process for creating anything beyond just a doodle or a sketch or part of the muscle that we've encouraged ourselves to build over the previous couple weeks. These lightweight activities, as started as soon as you start framing your big idea, whatever that is, whether it's completing that novel, the screenplay, launching that company, getting funding, whatever your thing is, um, we go through a process and it is very emotionally draining one. And it is not for the weak of heart. But none of this is none of the people who are that you look up to respect, admire, appreciate, identify with who are living there, truth who are living their dream. None of those people did not go through this process. And this process is a diagram that I would love for my team to throw up on the screen if we can. It is on page 1 73 if you're in the book. I don't know what the Kindle with the Kindle pages, but it's 1 73 and it looks like this. There you go. So I think, um, we'll have the team put that up on the screen in just a second. And in short, what? This isn't 1 73 is This is a, um, two axes. One is the joy to pain, and the other is time. And it characterizes the journey that we all go through as creators and, um, hands up. If anybody can identify with this, this'll like, there's a lot of energy and passion, and Okay, I see. Of the 50 people I see hands raised. I know Bar Perry a little late to raise the hand. They're not gonna hold it against you. Um, Mary Ellen, I saw your hand up early. Thank you. Um, this is this is something that again knowing that this exists and known that you're not alone is what I find very valuable. Because so many of us, especially early on in our career or when we're starting something new, we often feel all alone that were the first person or first, um, just ever go through this, or these feelings are somehow odd or obtuse and and limited to just us. And the reason I put this Yeah, this is only one of, like, six illustrations in the book, and one of the reasons I put that here is just so you wouldn't feel so alone. And for those who don't have it in front of them, essentially, the project starts off where we have a lot of energy. There's some planning, some understanding, what it is that we're going to do. And then when we start actually doing where it peaks, and then shortly after you begin the activity part, you actually put pen to paper. You start, you know, um, you file for the business license. You opened the bank account. There's this fear that sets in this like Oh, my God. What have I done? Oh, my God. Um, this is Ah, the bullets on the page here. This is hard Oh, my God, This sucks. And now we're below the joy in our into the pain. And then it goes to I suck, which is this again. This is perfectly natural. But if you keep going, whether it's on this particular project or you just keep doing as we've referenced several times making shitty first drafts, then you suddenly realize that this is doable, that this actually might come out and lo and behold, it might come out OK. And then you're back on the joy side of this ark. And if you're not familiar with that journey, um, I want to just ask you to turn to that and fold that page over and refer to it often. Um, all right, so part of what I think, Ah, ID like Teoh, go to the zoom community here. The folks that are in the text community and ask ah for think again. I saw 45 of the 50 people raised their hand, so I would like to hear again just so that we realize that we're all in this together. And it's not just me. You have been here that, um if someone is willing to share one of their experiences of being stuck and what they now on the backside of that being stuck What actually got them out of it? You know what? Whether it was therapy or more doing or whatever it was, If you've had some of this in the past, I would love to hear a little story that I'm looking for. A show of hands here. Okay, cool. Lots of hands up there. I'm gonna go to I think it's is it March, Ella? I'm a muting you march Ella body Eddie. How they dio you made my name so much fancier than it really is. I love histories more subtle. Verrier. Okay, Um, yeah, I was really stuck. I did of mixed media art class and in the art class, I created a piece that I absolutely loved. And then I got a home and wanted to create something else and for weeks did nothing. I just kept looking at all of my supplies and finally I I tried to figure out why I was so successful in the art class, and it was because I wasn't thinking about it. It was just random stuff that the teacher had and you had to go up and just pick stuff that you liked. And so I made myself go to my art supplies and just said, pick stuff that catches your eye without thinking about what you're actually going to create. And then once you have, all is gather. Did you get that? Yes, myself. Your audio broke up just a little bit there, but ah, wave your hands If that sounds familiar. Yeah. Yeah. Um, So what I love about your story is I think you said the word random and it was just like essentially doing something was better than doing nothing. Doing anything actually, was the mechanism that got you unstuck, even if you weren't sure what you were doing. And I think there's, ah, an extra special bit of wisdom embedded in there. And the wisdom is trust because once you've done that enough times where you just start typing. If you're a writer and you're looking at a blank page, if your pain or you just start brushstrokes, whatever endeavor, whenever your craft is just literally walking outside or you didn't have to go outside, I have a an assignment that I will give you this week which is, and it's specifically photography because I know we all have a phone that has a camera in it, and I don't care if you're a photographer or not. But the assignment is this. I want you to find five interesting pictures within 50 feet of where you're standing. When you whenever you decide to take on this assignment. And right now again, I'm in this 1924 little beach cabin and I'm like, There's well, there's some wood paneling I don't see much, but just the simple act of shifting into I must take five pictures. Random, as you know, as um, Marcello said, not necessarily connected to your big vision or a dream. It will get you unstuck. And when you finally look back, whether it's two minutes or 20 minutes later at your phone, or when she looked back at the work that she had done in just getting unstuck, there's a little a little win, and that win is a piece of trust. You were stuck. You were not doing anything. You did something and then you felt progress. Even if it was just for a moment, we don't have to call it inertia. Momentum you did something and that little trust is another muscle that we want to build. This is why action over intellect is required for success in any field. And specifically, when you're trying to create dreams that a lot of people in your life have told you are not possible. I can't overstate this little trust that you have in yourself. And what you're not doing is trying to reward yourself for judge yourself or punish yourself for Did you dunk the ball? Did you, you know, make the app That was the number one app in the APP store. Know you did something instead of nothing. And this repeated little trust is bond that you create with yourself will, um, become, in a sense, lubricated. It will become strong. And every time when your mind remember your monkey mind goes back to like, this is hard. I can't do this or you're a part of that journey that we just talked about. When you take action, you build that muscle when you build that not muscle and you get stuck less and less. All right, I'm have ah to other folks chime in. I heard Scott Nicol you had your hand up for a second before I called on Marcella. I was stuck. Has been a tough year. Uh, last year, a year ago yesterday, the Friday before Father's Day my father was put in the hospice and I care for him for the last four months of his life. Been taking pictures my whole life. Got some great pictures of Dad. And when he passed in September, I was just blocked and, uh, trying to road trip went down. You know, the Bixby Creek was something I've always wanted to photographs. Took my drone, loaded up all my cameras in my dog in my car. 10 and, uh, didn't work. Um, in January, I heard that Olympic college and Bremerton has a four year film degree fully accredited. It's a pretty interesting program. So I thought, Huh, There's any classes I could take. So I took a screenwriting class, something I've never done before. Uh, I heard of the hero's journey, uh, as a as a philosophy or as a process, but I never explored it. That really seem don't block up. You know, I'm pages into my 120 page screenplay. Uh, I've talked with a lot of family members who have given me inspiration for characters and things. So something completely that I've never done. Ah, never thought about writing a screenplay. But it was just the act of going in and getting with other people that were doing other creatives in this class Had people from the age of 17. I think they were running start students, um, to, you know, people that were 10 years older than me. And I'm pushing 60. So it was very great, too, just unblocking and try something completely different. And it's something that I found I've enjoyed. I love it. I appreciate you sharing Scott. Um, Jennifer Scott for courage. Their courage. We're in this together. Well done, Scott. And notice There is this element of accountability of and whether, you know, my goal is to get you to be accountable to yourself. But often the first step in accountability is signing up for a class deciding that you're going to do the thing that we're doing right now that you're gonna show up at 10 a.m. Every Sunday for sick or every Saturday for six Saturdays. Um, speaking of Scott, you're mentioning your father make me want Teoh. Say two things. One. Happy Juneteenth yesterday to everyone and tomorrow. Happy Father's Day to all the fathers. Um, there's a lot, a lot going on in the world and being thankful for some time to reflect, to be able to connect. Um, it's just it's a very special time. So thanks for the reminder. Um, And again, those 22 holidays that were book ended by right now, um, makes this feel extra special. I'm happy to be with you. So, um, Scott's point is not uncommon. Which again is signing up for some sort of accountability and that accountability is not doesn't have to be in the most precise again. So many people want no want perfect action rather than imprecise, bold, awkward, you know, hamstrung first steps. And I don't know anyone who goes. Anyone who isn't an established pro whose develop these muscles, who goes from 0 to 100 miles an hour that you should expect fits and starts. And I confesses, I shared last time even in writing the book. I had several fits and starts that where I needed accountability. Um, and again, I'm a professional. I've been doing this as you know, the primary. I'm building a career as a photographer and as an entrepreneur for 20 something years. So it's not something that we are immune from. And this is why developing the muscle and why I put charts like that in the book so that you can remember that you're not alone. And the take away here is learn to trust yourself with in perfect action, create some sort of accountability and do not feel like the action that you have to take needs to be perfect. Do something instead of nothing. All right, so one sort of reminder and I've been, you know, thinking about this a lot with respect to, um my educating myself around anti racism is this idea of performance and so much of the work, whether it's my experience educating myself around anti racism or your processing, um, the work that you want to do on your journey to becoming your best self, for living your dream or creating this This vision that you have for yourself for this project is that 95 99% of the work no one sees okay, and it's I do like community. I do like showing up in various ways. But it's important to understand that the work that matters the most is the work that no one sees. The work that you do when no one watches is the work that matters the most. So this, even just this, halting what we just talked about this, like awkward first step or in, um, in Scott's case, something that's completely disconnected. An area of exploration that was disconnected from his identity as a photographer is part of that work. All right, um, let's talk about the mind being the critic before we move on to Topic two today. So I talk a lot in this section about judgment, and it's come up a couple of times already, Um, and I, as a relates to this class in particular, I created a prescription for myself that allowed me to move forward with the book when I was writing it. So it's a little bit of a meta a meta. This is a thing that I developed, and it's on Ah 1 79 and it's called The Art of Done. Now again, I've I've posted planning on this in the past, and I come from a place of professional knowledge. But the truth is that I am not immune to this, which is part of what I'm hoping to do with this. Classes show you the you know, my struggles as someone who identifies as a professional and has most of my adult life. Um, but I had to create this small framework for myself, uh, in in completing this book the art of Done. Um, essentially, it's finished something, whether it's a photograph and again finishing a foot when it why I like photographs is because it's pretty easy to finish one. Um, but whatever project you endeavour or um you feel like is an area that you want to work in or that you're inspired to create in then and then call it good the next day. Iterated on that work. So an example for a photographer would be take a photograph, go explore, walk around Whether that's, you know, five photos and 50 feet around you, or you go for a walk, a photo walk, take your favorite photo, identify that cool. I'm done the next day, do something to improve that piece of work. So an example again in the photography case would be to take it into Photoshopped, work it up in a handful of different ways, and it doesn't need to be done. But I want you to improve it. I wanted to be better for further along in this time process, because sometimes look at if I don't know if you've ever, um my mom is in taking this class, and if she could speak, she would, uh, tell you how terrible I am. It's ceramics. I took a I took a pot making class in high school. And let's just say, um, she saved My mom saved these things and gave them to me. And not only did I not want them, but they swiftly went to the garbage because they were not even sentimental enough. They were horrible. And yet I remember that doing something instead of doing nothing was helpful. So for me, the idea of revisiting whatever it is you're choosing to do in this art of done section here at 1 78 that is literally the blueprint that I made for myself to finish this book. And so everything that you've seen here, every word that you've read at least was edited this many times. That is one draft illiterate once it a rate twice, and then you notice on Day three, I'm saying Repeat day to Day four. Repeat day three. They five decide that it's good enough and move on. And of course, again, I had a writing team, and so I was able to, um, to have others around. Whatever your particular case may be. Either deciding it's done or putting it back into the process either is fine. My recommendation for calling Day five done is that so? You do not get stuck in this executing loop where you're just just executing and you know there's That's the noodle er, if you go back to the beginning, you're gonna noodle this project until the thing doesn't even look anything like what it started. Ah, I I once shared a studio with, and I referenced This guy's name is Carl shared a studio with Karl, and he taught me how to paint and, you know, Ah, I was a terrible painter, but he helped me understand oils and see light and apply color, and he became fascinated that I was turning out exponentially more work than he was. Despite being knew. It knew at this endeavor and quite bad. And I think that there was this disconnect for him. And as I started with the book, I was quickly reminded of that. Like, I will I will noodle this thing. And as long as you let me as long as my deadline allows, as long as my unfortunately, I had some smart, talented people surrounding me. They were like, You gotta move on. So this is why I like this five day loop on page 1 All right, um, before we move on, I want I want to ask if there are any questions. I'm gonna go to the chat. Um, folks, not in the zoom call. If you have any questions about the mature we've covered. And while you're typing that right now, I'm delaying, allowing you to write a thoughtful question or I'll be able to go back and look at some that are already in there and go back to their opening read, which is the reason I finally made progress. What you didn't hear right before that was that I had been stuck. But the reason that I finally made progress as a professional photographer was because I was working. The reason why it was working was because I was working. Now, Right now you're saying OK, I've heard you say this for the last 10 minutes. Why are you beating this horse? And the reason I'm beating this horses because you are blocked or if you are not, you will be at some point by this thing. Full stop. Never had any project that that wasn't that didn't have some semblance of this. At some point, maybe it's down the right down the road at the at the participating community or launch phase. Or maybe it's early on in imagining you're blocked even. Imagine all of these same things of just taking action. Apply. Um, Eric Francis Ah, Harnden from Facebook is reminding those folks who do have the Kindle that the art of done is on page 1 49 Thank you so much. Ah, And before I keep going rough Ailes asking, how do we join the zoo meeting? Text your and get during the text club Rafael. And that's two or 6309 5177 Okay, so, um, don't see a good place to get a question. Oh, no. My little my browser. It seems to me to be frozen. So I'm gonna go to question any questions in the zoom call, hand up for what we've covered so far. Otherwise, I'm going to move on to the next chapter. Don't feel rushed. You've got a question. I'm good with it. Three to John is that you're reaching for your mouth. Your just playing with your pen there on your right hand, John. Okay. Um all right, we're gonna move on, So Oh, okay. Of course. As soon as I said that. A bunch of questions. Porn. Umberto Rivera. Umberto asks How do I reconcile who my audience is in order to solve that problem? Like I'm gonna be very direct. Umberto, your problem at this stage is not your audience. Your problem is doing the work. And I see this as an example of this is avoidance behaviour, and I just I'm Chuy's is called this tough love. And I appreciate you being vulnerable in sharing your question with us. But this is the classic example of needing to get everything perfect. Notice that it's not like you said, OK, I've got tons of work. I don't have any problems. I'm not blocked because then having an audience for your work or where to distribute this or where to share our feature it or post it or hide it or whatever. That's all a completely different problem. But I think it's interesting that right now in the making part, you're like, Who am I making this for? What's my end goal with? This is precisely the thing why I'm spending so much time and energy. And I spent 1/4 of the book talking about this problem because it's the problem of avoidance in one shape or another. It's not doing the work because I don't have the right tools. I don't have the right goal. I don't have the right vision. If you don't have the right goal or vision and you're struggling to imagine what you want for yourself, just do something, do anything, doing nothing and trying to rationalize your way out of from the couch or in Umberto's experience or in his challenge. He's stuck on determining his end audience before he even makes any work. How about an audience of one screen around? Pretty good book, you know, on audience of one, and that audience is going to see the shitty first drafts is going to see, um, procrastination, the form of doing creative things that are on all the different areas around the thing that you really want in life. But you're not doing the thing. I'm actually okay with that because you're doing something instead of nothing idea of who your audiences will emerge, the project that you ought to be doing will emerge. And the way it emerges this to doing the work exploring, tasting notice, all of these things are active verbs. Um, all right, so thank you for that question, Umberto. And let's keep on trucking, get a lot of ground to cover here. And I've only got 20 something minutes left. All right, topic to that. I want to talk about his lifelong learning. Now, it's not an accident that I am a lifelong learning and learner and that identify as such and and as a part of the expression of that that I created a lifelong learning platform, which we're all using right now. And I can't say that it started out with this perfect vision. And then it became exactly what I imagined it would be. The reality is that I was established well established as a professional, I don't a lot of work a decades, decades, maybe of work a decade and 1/2 of work before I was ever, you know, in the realm to create creative life. So it ended up matching it pretty closely. But this idea of Iterating is still present in all of the things that I'm I've done, including this thing right here. The zoom call. This is Iterating like. Okay, cool. This is something we're pioneering for the rest of the platform on Creativelive. I wanted to do it here because if something breaks or is in perfect or whatever, that I want to be the guinea pig and I want to find it all out so I can work with product team in the tech team. In the content team, this is the process of veneration. You were part of it. Um, and the reason that I'm doing this is a personal hunger To learn what you have is you have, and whether you acknowledge it or not, you have a huge reserve of curiosity. But the challenges most of us, Leavitt untapped. We've tamp this down by our school system. And again my wife, Kate, was a teacher, so we all went through the schooling system to some degree, and sometimes it feels harsh to throw stones at it. And that's not my intent. My intent is to say it's doing the best that it can, but things that are at that scale and have that much disincentive. For example, you've seen how online learning has been so hard, and part of that is because colleges, um, have been late to adopt online learning. Why? Because it doesn't benefit them. They have billions of dollars of real estate. They have very expensive, ivy covered buildings that need people in them. There's a belief that architecture, for example, I was speaking with the architect friend of mine is like architectures classes going online. The belief that it was impossible because of the textures and materials and all of the things was such a complex that you couldn't really learn much of that online. But when behold here, the University of Washington architecture platform is up and running, and they're learning architecture online. It's uncomfortable to do this. This is why this is largely has tamped down this curiosity in this, this idea that we're programmed to learn in wrote ways, and it's it's not surprising when you deconstruct the system that you know asking questions in being curious and being a non linear thinker, which many of us are is not rewarded. I'm here to tell you, and the 4000 people that are enrolled in the class are here to tell you that that's OK again by showing up as part of a community member and doing the work like you're doing right now. Not only are you engaging in the work, but you're also unlocking this idea that you're weird or different, or that the questions that you're asking that are you know, that you asked in school that slowed the production of widgets, moving out of the doors or graduating. It's anything that slowed that was seen as counterproductive, and you may have been disciplined or asked to leave, or maybe even recognize that that's this school in this format wasn't for you. That's fine. It's it's asking questions and derailing the existing system. Um is part of the process, and I I look at what you're doing right now as exploration. So how do we get through this again? We get through it through small actions, done regularly, small actions to pursue that curiosity, Samal actions to unlearn how you were taught. Toe learn. I I recount in the book. This idea of I got good grades in school. I was scared to knock it. Good grades. Um, and I wanted to keep my opportunities as wide as possible for me. Um, but this idea that, um, that grades were really, really important and that, um, my future depended on it was largely untrue. And I found that it limited what I wanted to Teoh experience. And as an adult when I started, for example, um, studying or pursuing something that gave me energy was a booster photography rather than a zapper. Um, my, uh, I'll just give you an example was I was going to be a doctor, and so I had to, um, work and or volunteer get a certain number of hours or to be to be accepted to medical school. And I found that that work was so hard. And yet, and by the work, I mean, I should have loved it. This was the first time you should as a student that I was gonna be on the front lines that it was gonna connect with patients. In this case, it was a Children's hospital. So connecting with kids and making them feel better and helping them and helping their families. And and yet it drained me to no end. And if it was, it was bizarre. And yet, when I decided fast forward a couple of years decided that photography was something that was passionate about, I started it first, exploring it, that exploration created momentum. Mo mentum created a lust for knowledge in the and it was the first time in my life that I truly understood learning for what it was not for school. Learning in school are different things. I found myself showing up at the library in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where I was living as a ski bum at the time and getting kicked out of the library like 45 minutes after they closed their like trying to be courteous there, like Dude, you got to go and I would just look up and like, Oh my God, it's dark. I've been in the library for seven hours. And when you pull on the thread of something that brings you joy. If you've imagined and started designing a future for yourself around the thing that matters to you, this is what the idea of learning starts to feel like. One of the reasons I think that so many of us when we were preparing for the class yesterday mean the content team we're talking and they thought it was a good idea that I share this, this idea, this experience, that right now, if doing the work, it's fair to be blocked and we've all got we've all you know if you've read the artist's way. Julie Cameron. We've all got resistance to certain aspects of our our job, and I think the book does an excellent job of playing through that. But I really like to question if you're here and you can't even get motivated enough to do some things that have nothing, maybe where you whiffed is imagining. And I do believe this is a problem a lot if you've been stuck in a particular place and these after sometime, if if you've, um, done the work that I'm prescribing here, let's say for 30 days and you're not making progress. Most people will get unstuck in a single or two or three sessions of this, thinking that the doing, you know, looking at the art of done. And if you've been trying for 30 days and you're still blocked her on the thing, I do invite you to go back and look at the thing that you're designing for yourself, because when I was, you know, training to be a doctor and I was just these were like this was a yearlong thing that I was doing working at Children's Hospital in San Diego. There was it wasn't a single time that I look forward to it, not one visit and I was doing the work and just look at that a year's worth of effort. I do think that no effort is ever wasted, but I do realize now that it's because the thing that I had imagined for myself was really what the culture had imagined for me and not the thing that I wanted to do. And so if you do find yourself after 30 days of trying this taste in this medicine that you're still stuck, I think it's worth. Um, re tracking and looking at what it is that you've imagined for yourself. Most people again having held the hands of millions of folks through this process through creativelive. We realize that if you do do the thing you're supposed to do, you get a certain juice from it that we talked a lot about in the previous two chapters. So in the previous two sessions, So I'm gonna move into something very prescriptive. Ah, and this is a I gonna have deduced my own experiences, the experiences several others on, um, the people who have achieved success and fulfillment. I always talk about those two things together because one without the others, I'm not quite sure. It sounds like help. The most successful people, they take the reins of their own education. They have a learning practice in the same way they have a creative practice. If I talked to Richard Branson and I say, Oh, you must be done, you know, done learning this particular thing, he would look at me with the most with a furrowed brow and scratches head. I have no idea what you're talking about. Um, I remember asking, sir, mix a lot question about. So you're sort of, you know, you're in a post, you know, you're sort of, um you've put so much work out there and now you know you're performing Network is your art performance. And he shared with me the fact that he is now wiring his own amps, building his own speakers, trying to get the music to sound a particular way using tools he just, you know, peeled back a layer that I never suspected, that he's that he's a crazy he's crazy audiophile and his learning is now around what you know, making new sounds. And for some and hip hop committee, that was the 80 a kick drum. It was a really unique, super deep bass sound, and he's exploring a bunch of other things like that. Now, you know, very late in his career he's been a you know, he's been rapper for 30 years, so this is a habit, this idea of learning that most people are not aware of, that they're heroes, that the people who are the top performers in the world have. I don't if you begin watched the um Jordan documentary, I think that reveals a lot. There's three phases of learning that I want you to know about. I cover them in the book. I'm just going to touch on them here. Um, the 1st 1 is personal. This is where right now you might be exploring your curiosity. Um, the goal is not to learn everything. The goal is to play is to taste is to example sample. Um, just to do something instead of nothing. Make lines on a paper, make you know, write some words, write a short poem, right? Three paragraphs of a shitty first draft of an intro to a novel that you'll never finish. Your curiosity, your extending, that the second is trialling Play when you find things that are fun, go deeper on those things. Something that brought you joy when you were experimenting. Play in that again. Why? I call this the personal phase because no one is watching you do this work. If you want to share this on social media. Great. That's a good muscle to be developing. But most of this sort of very, very baseline exploration is something that we do by ourselves. Are you inspired by someone or something? Did you see something that made you curious. Maybe it was a film. Maybe. Was a technique train replicated? This is part of this play, curiosity and inspiration that are all part of the personal phase of learning. What I find is that if you experiment enough and play enough in the personal phase of learning that you can then enter the next phase, which is the public phase of learning. And there's something there's three steps here that I think are are worth you writing down. If this section of the book was foggy at all for you, the first is scaled instruction. That is what we're doing right now. This is what CREATIVELIVE is doing. This is the principle of being able to take a class at scale where the investment is lightweight. The connection to the instructor to the material, um, is sufficient enough for you to see it in action. I like to think of this is watching mastery. Now. The reason I'm a master of this is because I lived it for 30 years before I started writing about. And then I wrote about it for a number of years before putting out this book. So sure, I like to think that I'm master photographer or, uh, I've learned enough about entrepreneurship to navigate the material in any way, and you can see a lot of problems coming up. I'll talk about mastery in a second, but watching it in an action or seeing my articulation of a problem that I've in corpora come into contact with tens or hundreds of thousands of people who are trying to solve that problem is what you should be looking at right now. If you're interested in needle point and you take it, you've taken a needle point class or you've watched a bunch of YouTube videos identifying people who are actually masters, I think is more valuable than just anyone. Which is why I think Creativelive is more valuable than YouTube with respect to learning photography, for example, because it's vetted and you know that those people are certified masters. But watching mastery and participating at a distance is a great way to open the next phase or the next step. Within this public phase of learning notice. This is different than personal cause you're doing with others, and it is community. This is what Scott was talking about when he shared that, he signed up for a class and he was accountable. When you tap into the community aspect of public learning, you are able to connect with others that are seeking the same skill you're able to be exposed to. A diverse set of ideas around the area that you have determined is interesting to you from that personal phase where you're trying a bunch of stuff and this this community part, it does set you up for building a foundation to actually launch your business or toe help bring people long to live your dream or create the support of community that's required for success in any field. And that's one of the reasons I like this. You know that aspect of the public phase of learning the last bullet under the public phase of learning is individual or small group instruction. Now I just for for personal reasons, I don't do individual coaching. Um, I find that my time and energy is boast is best spent trying to scale that and in this sort of a forum or with building creative life so that tens of millions of people can learn, But so it's not gonna be me that you're gonna learn individually from. But there are people in this field. Whatever your field, this I don't nurse again. 4000 people in the class. I can say confidently that on the Internet there are people who want to study something else, close enough to what you want to in order to get value. Your job is to find those people. That's the community, part of the public aspect of learnings who are masters that I can learn from. And you don't have to love everyone. You take four or five classes from someone you find out that that's the limit of their knowledge or their ability to inspire excite you. That's fine. Move on. But when you start to, um, when you start, this smaller individual group lessons is where the idea of mentors come in. Now you can still have mentors that don't know you. That's fine. Um, I tend to camp that you know, mostly in this scale learning effort, But when you've found an area, so many people they want to learn from me or in this environment and would say, like cool, should I take pictures of animals or dogs or buildings like you need to go back to the personal face. You need to explore you to be curious. What I like is when you have found out an area that you want to go deep on, this is when you should look to some individual mentors. Now again, these can be mentors that you don't have a one on one relationship with. But it's very helpful to get, like, physically in the same room as some of the people who are doing this thing. Small group learning. Now I'm gonna tell a little story about my college learning days. Now I have shared before that I was in addition, a fiddle philosophy had to this medicine stuff and it was hard for me and especially things like organic chemistry, which I had no aptitude for. Very little patience for wasn't inspired by didn't have any teachers that really let me up and you could tell again it was part of doing something that I wasn't put on this planet to Dio and I found that I had to study so hard I had to study individually before I could even show up to a study session or meet with the graduate student ta or do anything because otherwise I wouldn't even know what questions to ask if I got this person's time now, I thought that was just me with science. But lo and behold, when I started, you know, really diving deep into photography. My founding of creative life was actually because when I reached, I looked out on the horizon. There were no it was no great way to connect with people. I knocked on the doors of dozens of the world's top photographers. No one would let me and was very different era where there was the the holding back of knowledge. But like it turned out that the same thing that I thought was just limited to learning things that I wasn't good at was true for things that I loved. And that is, I had to spend enough time with the material to know how toe ask good questions to know how to that I wanted to pursue this thing and toe have enough context to be able to maximize the small group or mentor situation. So I believe that to me that's that's my empirical test that it doesn't matter what your pursuing that spending time in personal phase of learning before going to public the public at the last phase of that is actually having someone who's really good and can answer your very specific questions. If you do get a chance to asked me a question in this thing, you should ask me a question that you really have. Not like, uh, you don't want to get more clients like No, no. I want to know how to build a creative rates such that I'm not locking myself into an hourly rate and I want to build a charge A $1,000,000 for a campaign instead of $20 an hour or even $1000 an hour like that's a very specific thing that you've learned through doing the work and that you're stuck on. This is what I mean by one on one. You need to ask an expert who's already solved this problem. The more people you're around, the more community that you have. You're better able to identify these experts, and these experts can better unlock these very specific things, and that's why that is the last phase of the public learning, and then the last one. Ah, the last phase. Rather in learning. And I I forget what page this is. Maybe somebody can type it in the comments. This is the public phase or sorry. This is the practice phase, and what this is is repetition. This is continued to ask questions to do the work, get blocked, find a person or a set of people who can help unlock this for you and repeat. In a sense, this is the beginning of the deer system that I introduced previously. Deconstruct the work that is the best out there from your heroes and masters. Emulate some aspects of what they're doing, begin to analyze what works for you and then repeat that process. Dear D E a r. This is the practice phase of learning that, um, the people who truly are passionate about their thing, they've uncorked it, they've unlocked it. This is where you should be in high repetition. Now, the last note here is around mastery. I am an advocate of mastering something, anything in your life because it does two things. One. It's incredibly fulfilling to know anything, and I do not care if it's plumbing. If it's, um writing. If it's, um, mechanical engineering, I don't care what it is. Mastering something will unlock for you the ability to learn other things more quickly because you understood what mastery feels like. You understand that it's about navigating material, and there's so many things that you can learn from mastering anything that you can apply to mastering lots of things. I like to use Tim Ferriss as an example here, Um, he you know, his world class at so many things, and I used him because he's written a lot about learning. But what he did early on his career was master a handful of things using, you know, the principles that he developed in the four hour workweek and later in, um in what was it not the for our body, but four hours, something. The next time, the next four Howard thing. And when you understand mastery, you're able to lift and stamps so many aspects of it that you can learn more quickly, and you've known a lot about how you learn. I think this is why it's very important you you are starting to at this phase, and you've done this many reps. What is it about you, you need Are you visual? Are you auditory? Do you need to write things down? Is in person really important or sampling a broader range, You know, more helpful finding one teacher and then making them your mentor. Like you've learned enough through mastering plumbing to be able to apply that to basket weaving. So I I not always, um it's not required to have a joyful life, but it's very valuable to understand, um, how to be successful in and fulfilled in anything. If you've understood mastery, there's an increased. You have the increased ability to apply that more broadly to other areas. All right, Gonna pause for a second, recognize that I'm four minutes off and we still have one. This topic is small, but, um, the topic I one introduced. Now we're gonna lead off with a little bit of interaction here. I'm gonna go to the comments on I'm gonna ask some folks in the zoom chat, Um, and this is the topic of failure. The the chapters called You must fail to succeed. And of course, there's ah, double on tundra there. If you know if you're failing to succeed, um, that means you're stuck and you don't You define yourself is broken and all these things and also you must fail in order to succeed in this tension here is not accidental. It's because when we say failure number like, you know, end up in the gutter and, um, life unfulfilled, that's not that's not the meaning. The meaning of failure in this case is lightweight regular, ah, curveballs from what you can learn and correct your mistakes. So I'm looking for a vulnerable show of ah couple people's hands to tell me until the rest of us having many people are on the call right now. Some of your feelers around failure or success. What are some of your fears around failure or success? I'm gonna go first to the zoom call and let's see that would be Mary Fox. Very fox. Want to hear from you? What are some examples of failure? Your fear of failure? Feelers? Success? I would imagine fair failure would be just being able to not provide for yourself. Like, um, I just lost my job. So it's a lot of just trying to make sure that I can stay afloat to be able to continue to try to do creative stuff. I mean, at one point I just got back from New Zealand and I ended up living on a park bench for about two weeks in Breckenridge, Colorado. So I I have been on that port of failure where it's like, great, it's freezing. You know, the people I thought we're friends bailed on me, But the one thing that kept me going and having my stuff stolen, it was very much being able to have that one thing to kept me going just just kind of having that one thing like, no matter what, you can always create stuff. You can always have that one thing that's going to keep you going. Yeah, and I think, you know, basic human needs. That's a really you know, that's, Ah, big scary thing that, um sadly, too many people in our world today face. But this idea that here you are, I don't know what distance in time it is from when you were sleeping on a park bench with no stuff to now like, to me, that is the fact that is a great underscore of we have to get to that place whatever the failure. Ideally, failure with a small F is in order to create the success that we need. And, you know, I think yours is a profound example. And yet here you are. I don't know if you would consider yourself a success in the the whatever mission toward which you endeavour, but the fact that you're here to me shows radical progress, and I'm guessing that that failure small f was a valuable step on your path to success with a capital s Another volunteer from the zoom call. Ah, your experience of success and failure. We're gonna go to Ryan Ryan Diener of an unusually a military government man. Uh, yeah, I think you know, one of the things. I'm a product designer, and I created my own product probably two years ago, and it was a massive daily there, but I think you know, one of the things that was interesting in the process, you know, fear of, you know, loss of money, not generating enough revenue. Um, does the product represent me, uh, in my identity and just the embarrassment of of failure. Amazing. I'm gonna thank you for sharing, Ryan. Um, yeah. I forget to give a shout for Mary and Ryan for going on on film here, talking about their the failures in their fears. Um, Ryan mentioned a number of things Ryan mentioned, um, identity and this idea that we are our art, whatever our art is the manifestation of a product that we've built. Um, this book is Chase Jarvis. The photograph that I took, if it's not perfect, says that then I'm in perfect and this we caught up. Um, understandably so because we often had to go to a scary place in ourselves to build, to create something that will we will judge it. In this case, I like toe default to the Andy Warhol thing, which is says, I let other people judge my stuff, and while they're busy judging it, I'm busy making more. Now that's a paraphrase. And he said it more eloquently. He was a cool, quirky guy, but the concept is the same, and this releasing oneself from the judgment of the product is or decoupling it from your identity is a trait that most of the top creators and entrepreneurs in the world half now, you can be passionate and attached and committed and all of those things and still be able to move on. It's complicated. I get that. But it's a very real fair fear, and I want to say Thanks. Um, you also talked about money, which is not unlike what Mary mentioned. Like this fear of not having enough money not be able to make money. Ah, this is another reason why I like to decouple your requirement to make money. I would like to delay that in the process to make sure that you love the thing that you're doing. Because often remember the big Three that I introduced earlier in this class Money, Creative control and the company. You keep these air going to come up as conflicts at some point in your journey. And I like the idea that trying to understand what it is you think and feel about these teachings before you experience it, I think it's a good sort of like future visualization exercise, um, and money being one of those things that I like to defer until you are, um, until you you figured out something about yourself and that that thing that you figured out is like, This is something I really want to do now. You can do it in a lightweight way and, you know, put up ah on Etsy Store or, you know, sell T shirts online of the Amazon marketplace. That's great test. But when you're really tap into that thing, these fears around. As both Mary and Ryan said around money, Um, it's very natural. Um, all right, so I'm gonna go to the chat. And again we were live on YouTube Live and Facebook and Instagram live, and this is going to Rosa Chavez Barossa, I fear to invest my life and not be good enough. I lost my job. I have a baby and pursue my dream to write and illustrate environmental books for kids have been studying illustration for two years and strained or starting the writing part. But I can't find a mentor or place to share. I'm afraid I'll be hurt back critic. That will not help my growth that sound familiar to anybody. This is one of the reasons that I I enjoy. Doing this work with a lot of people is because the challenges are riel, but they're not many in number. What I heard when I read Robert Rosas question was, I'm pursuing my dream. But so two things. Is this your dream? Actually, Do you love the process of writing? Do you love the doing? That's if yes is the answer fantastic than you did great on, you know, imagination and you imagine what you want for yourself. It sounds to me like you're stuck Rosa in the design process and the execute process. Designing a Siri's. You know, I've been studying for two years. That's great and starting the writing part. But you can't find a mentor. I believe that if you continue doing the work and if you're willing, if you love the process than doing the work doesn't scare you as much that the mentor will come along. And also there's a line later on in the next chapter where I say no one's coming to save you. The mentor is not your answer and this again sort of tough love. But I want you to know that this fear is natural. The way you get through the fear is continued action, and when you get stuck, see, see this chapter, see the art of done on page 1 What what it does is it gets you moving. It puts you in action and action, not intellect, is the solution. Sounds to me. And I'm using using example. Because you volunteered, Rosa, you're you emulate a lot of the characteristics that all of us have or have had at one time, which is fear is blocking us. And doing the work is the part that gets you unstuck. Michael's timing and I want to get the book. It's on the Internet. It's there. You should You should do it. All right, Now it's 50% off. Sorry. Small distraction. All right. Um, last and final section, I want to get a couple of, ah of other points of interaction with this community. Um, but before we do, ah, couple last words on failure, The goal is not to avoid failure. The goal is to get used to it. And by failure again, um, in capital f. I mean, small, lightweight failures, small mistakes, and the goal should never be to avoid errors. The goal should not be to make mistakes. The goal should be get really good at fixing them quickly. Go back to something we said earlier. And this thing there's a little bit of trust that's built every time you make a mistake and fix it on the fly. I can walk out on a stage now in front of 10,000 people, lose my place in my speech, make a little joke, go back. Where am I? Okay, great. And that's because I've done that enough, and I've made enough mistakes in front of enough people that all right, then I learned to trust myself. Did this happen from Day one? Absolutely not. So if this didn't happen from Day one, it's a skill. It's a habit. It's something that I got good at over time, and you can, too. So this idea of avoiding failure is such a huge hiccup in our culture in so many cultures that, um, I think that's why sort of this comment of failure is popular in the vernacular, because it's it's like it's an attention grabber. It's a headline. Fail is like it. It has so much, um, I think, unnecessary metaphysical weight and our culture that it drives us to not even do. I want you to think about small goals, small risks and not about making mistakes, but about recovering quickly about resilience about grit. And I want you to remember that talent does not emerge without effort. This is not a skill like anything else we've talked about in this class that can happen from the couch. If you want to achieve escape velocity from planet Earth, you have to have the guts that you have to be willing to take the the bruises. You have to have the guts and the rocket fuel. This is why passion is really, really important in, and curiosity are important in this equation. But how much better would you feel if you failed with the I don't care to small effort capital laugh doing the thing that you were put on this plan to dio the very, very end you wanted to win the Nobel Prize and you didn't right before you passed away. But if you love the process, the benefits of pursuing something and failing at that thing, pursuing the thing you loved is so much better then not pursuing something you loved and finding mediocre success. You're gonna have to take some licks along the way anyway, you might as well spend it doing something that you love. There are systemic issues at play your cultural personal resistance. Um, again, whether it's you against your work or you against the world, I want acknowledge that overcoming resistance is part of the process. I like to get through that doing. I would recommend you to Julia Cameras Book Part. What I Don't Love About Julia Cameron's book is that it's very conceptual, um, and that it glorifies creativity as this very like, very lofty thing. And I think it's almost like it's a brute thing for human beings, but she does a fantastic It's a fantastic job book. It's It's classic. Um, I just want to remind you that adversity is is intrinsic to creative work. Um, embrace the suck. Give yourself permission to suck. Those were too valuable one liners that I would not mind if you tweeted all right action steps. And then we're gonna have a little bit more interaction, and they're going to go into Q and a 4 25 minutes. So action steps, um, read the next chapter or read the next section of the book. This is amplify. I think this is the thing that has been written about the least, where this book is perhaps the most innovative around. You know, nothing is a solo journey and cultivating community. Um, in addition to that work of reading, I want you to do a few things. I want to, um I want you to do three things. Make, learn and fail. Make. I want you to begin this week by doing something. Decide what it is you're going to do right now or before you turn me off for before you get up from your desk, decide what you're going to make. Make it and then ask yourself what you learned. Ask yourself what you learned from that process of making. Even if, you know, maybe the answer is some sort of something technical. Maybe the answer is some ah, tactic or a skill that you learned in in making this thing. And even if the thing that you learned was that you learned to trust yourself that making something was easier than you thought it was, that is a learned behavior, and then I want you to judge it, and I'm asking you to judge it because I want you to feel how unpleasant and unnecessary the judging is. It's a very strange exercise, I recognize. Just sit with him for a second. Is that a good thing? Not a good thing. And my belief is that you won't see it as a failure. My belief is that when you look at it through this concept of a habit as a muscle, as a process that the concept of failure becomes small and becomes something, it doesn't block you. And, of course, what we're trying to do is build up to these bigger swings, you know, making a feature film or writing the novel. And I understand these air bigger and scarier. But we don't get there by any other vehicle than this plan. Go back to the thing Picasso quote that we opened this whole thing up with. Which is that even in creative pursuit, we don't get anywhere without a plan. All right, um, closing read, and then we're gonna have questions. This is from page 209 into 10. It's from step into. The unknown beginnings are tenuous times. Getting anything substantial off the ground means making countless tiny decisions first, any one of which might assume vast importance. If you're successful down the road, the danger is twofold. On one hand you could become paralyzed, but all the citizens you must make they can steal your life from your project, whatever that medium is, and at whatever scale you're operating before you've even begun. What if I don't buy the domain name that every single variation of my businesses name and someone squats on that domain and then I have to pay thousands of dollars. And then, on the other hand, you also can't rush through the initial decisions in your enthusiasm to get something off the ground on Lee to realize that you've doomed a promising project from the start out of hasty nous. This dilemma is particularly thorny. If you're inexperienced when you're just starting out, you have very little basis on which to decide which initial decisions are critical and which can be tweaked later if things worked out. This is the point at any project when you have to remind yourself of two important things. First, that risk is inevitable in creating any creative work and no amount of preparation, zero amount of preparation can completely protect you. You'll develop the capacity to make these decisions well, Onley by making lots of them and yes, failing time to time and even failing Big second. There is the same middle ground between leaping off a cliff and hoping there's a net at the bottom and planning for that leave for three months before being distracted and wondering over to some other chasm. As the French philosopher Voltaire once wrote, Perfect is the enemy of good do enough research. Ask enough questions, but remember that action taking a risk is the beating heart of any creative work. All right, that was from two and nine and 2 10 For those of you who are curious um, sweet, um, I'm gonna say next week's read, remember, I'm gonna ask for more time for reviews at Amazon. We could do better if you've gotten any value from this class. Is free class six Saturdays in a row. I'm excited to commit to this, um, but it would be really helpful if you helped out with some reviews on Amazon, where everybody both would be great. Um, for this is your watching and listening before we get into the, um Q. And a section right down this phone number, it's my phone number to a 63095177 You can text me. There might be some automation in the first text that you receive, but then we will be connected. I will read. And I spent 90 minutes last night texting in advance of today's broadcast. I'm committed to that. And it's a great place to have, um, some a little bit of mentorship at scale. Don't forget to turn notifications on on my instagram, because that's where I'm issuing a few challenges this week. I gave you a little hint on what it might be, but, um, here we go. All right, So this is my favorite section. I'm gonna, um, allow 16 minutes, four questions. So we're gonna start off, resume those folks that are in the text group and hands up if you get some questions. All right. We're gonna go. Lauren Penny. Well, Lauren, welcome to the show. That was fast. That was fast. Okay, I listen to the creative life podcast that you did with burn a Brown all the time. It's one of my cup feelers. Like Neil Gaiman's, uh, you know, make good art speeches, something that fills me up over and over again. So I've been thinking a lot about how this book applies to create creativity, healing the collective and the current moment we're living. But I haven't heard a lot of discussion around how we use creative activity, your own like policymakers and institutional rebuilding. And if you have any thoughts about how we is a creative group, can impact that kind of like rial change that we need right now. First created Vacuum. It seems that the policy making level Sure, um, I spent a a ton of time a decade making sure that this four step process would work for anything in the world, whether it's art or a life or policy. Um, I'll steer you towards my conversation with Cory Booker, former presidential nominee. Eyes a talks You know, again, regardless of your politics, like the process of if you hear him talk about understanding, um, the issues that matter to him, What is he doing? He's imagining away. That could be different, right? What if you could just snap your fingers and it could be a certain way? That's his level of imagination. He's got a bunch of legislation in place or underway right now that exemplifies this force that process. Now he is designing a plan, whether it's getting his colleagues, his constituents or other people's constituents on board in order to get enough votes in order to get enough traction or to get some momentum. He is then executing visions, and he's building community all along so that when he has other ideas or when he needs to manifest this idea or a call to action, he has the votes. He has the momentum he has the inertia has the signatures. So the same exact process for policy works for painting works for starting a business. And I encourage you. This is like I think if I have done, if I failed myself in marketing this book, it's that I haven't put enough weight on the framework of this thing. It's a lot. There's a lot of individual pieces that different people take from something that's great. But to me, the master level work that I did on this was studying my own life and the lives of again hundreds of the top creators that are on creative live in my friends and peers and podcasts and whatnot. This framework works for anything, and I would invite you to go away and try it even in a local community level. Um, and what I think is the most exciting part is the imagination part because it is truly how the best things in world and in the world. I mean, look around, literally. Everything around you was designed. It was a first idea in someone's head. And then they put a planet, and then they did some things, and then other people said, Wow, this is a good idea. I'm gonna do it. Everything. The fireplace behind me, the couch, the computer, this granola bar. Okay, so I want to see think about that and apply that to policy as well. Thank you for that question. Going back to, um, zoom call. And if you are tuned in at Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, live instagram live, that was a good chance to ford a question to me. And I will get to annex, but going back to the same call Bernie is in the house. Bernie Holiday. Welcome. I chase and thank you for taking my question. I have a question about time management and one of the issues that I face is that when I I will try to get unstuck by starting something, and that's not the problem. The problem is that when I start something, I will achieve a flow state, and then I won't know when to stop. So next thing I know, it's three in the morning and I have to be a working day. How do you manage that? How do you find the balance between that flow state and starting to work? How much do you care about your day job? See where I'm going with this? Okay. My house baby cares a lot about my day job. I understand. Understood? Understood. Now you cited the problem. This is why I do. I love this conversation. And with so many people tuned in and why having a large community is helpful because we get all kinds of I think that is. You have a problem that is rare. Which is that you If you can tap into that flow state, that's fantastic. What I would encourage is is there a way you can build a life around maximizing that flow state? Because this the universe feeling effortless and you doing something where you lose track of time. Those were two of the most important things in life and flow. State is where you know you your hardest fluttering around the things that you're doing and if you can find a way to. That's why I asked how important your day job is to you. Um, because I put that flow state and doing work where time disappears on such a aspirational level that I would be working to build the rest of my life around my ability to do that. Now, if you're a starter or a new dealer, if you go back earlier in the book, then there's a set of prescriptions that are in the book that I would encourage you to, because this might be your glorification of an otherwise very real problem. Um, which is I'm I get all kinds of flow state when I start something, but I'm I actually, you know, shipping the product, getting results, building community, doing these other things. So I would leave that to you, to be honest with yourself. Are you glorifying something? It's actually a real problem, but and I'm trying to track down to two different scenarios. One is that I'm asking you if this flow state is set if you're doing something you love and you started a project and you get into flow State. Keep going. Do what you can to set up the rest of your life so that you can do the work that you put on this planet to do. Make your expenses smaller, make your job compartmentalize. Do carve out time to do things you're put on this planet to do because that is so rich and create so much fulfillment. It's hard for me to even compare the need to have a mortgage. If that experience is what you're rejecting on the other side, you need to be honest. Are you glorifying this? Are you really just a starter who gets a bunch of juice in the beginning and doesn't It doesn't finish anything, which it's fine. This is sort of the tough love part here, but you need to then go back and look at starter, starter or new driller and find out if you can give your if that's part of the prescription that you need to to give. So I'm not quite sure which one. I want to make sure to get a couple of other questions in before we got to go. But thank you for being vulnerable, Bernie. Appreciate it, everyone. High fives to Bernie. Nice job. But, um, all right, round of applause and let's go. One more zoom before I go back to the, um, to the written questions for the folks that aren't in the same group. Hands up. Who's got a question? Okay, I see a couple of Lisa. That was I'm gonna call in nearly because that was, like, a E. I kind of want to be called on. I don't want to be called on Lisa Alvarez. Go ahead. I'm gonna meet you. There you go. Yeah, because this is something I've been really struggling with lately. I just want to remind like this is how she raised her hand. What did they dio? No desk. Thank you for being courageous. What do you got? Um, well, the Overcoming Imposter syndrome, Um, I'm starting out when doing nature photography, uh, business. And I, um I've got a website up, although I'm already redesigning it. And one of the, um, what I want to do is have a to be contacting scientists to talk to them about photographing some of their projects. And I just have this real fear of, um, contacting them and not having the experience. And so I just how many people have you know? How many have you contacted to confirm this experience? What do you mean? To confirm To confirm that you are an experienced and shouldn't be doing this? You've contacted exactly zero people is my Yes, right. Instead, I've got this. You know, I'm just I just need to redesign my website. I was gonna call you out on that, but you called yourself out. You like? I haven't actually even called anybody yet. And I'm already redesigning my website. Yeah, his Thank you for being vulnerable. Thank you for sharing. This is tough love, but you have to Actually, this is why the next step for you when you're designing a plan. When you did imagine to the thing part of your plan should be contacting five people every week to get your work in front of them. Because I do not see where I like designing a plan such that if I actually follow the plan. This is the executing the plan part right? If I designed a plan and my plan says contact five people every week who might be interested in my work. And I'm if I'm executing that plan. There is virtually zero ways that you cannot find some peace of success for yourself because if you should call 50 people and offered to photographed X y Z for free for their grant, someone will say yes. And if you call 50 and you still get no nos, call another 50. And once you've called 100 people, then come back here and tell me called 100 people. Not one scientist wants me to photograph their project. Does anybody on this call show of hands thinks that if Lauren called 100 scientists and offered to photograph their project for free that she would get zero responses. There you go, Lisa, stop messing with the website. Start contacting people. That's the D you. If you're already in the process of designing a thing, your biggest hang up is where you should create the most structure, right? Because you getting another lens and you getting 10% better at understanding aperture. Priority versus shutter priority is not gonna actually get you to the work that you want to dio Thank you for sharing, Lisa. Appreciate you. High fives to Lisa. All right, um, Harry, it wants you to know. Wow. Least I think that's a great idea to photograph scientists. They would be so flattered. Um, Denise says shout out to you for speaking up. Um, yes, it's procrastination, disguising productivity. You're getting a lot of advice. And what this advice is coming in the form of is a lot of people cheering for you. Lisa, we've got a plan now, And you know where this is? Part of what? I mean, like okay, learning. Where do I go to get these names? Like, That's the thing for you and maybe, you know, but this is the kind of learning that I felt like. Okay, Great. Now I'm at the library. I need to figure this out. Okay. That's really learning. That's what learning is. Feels like in this part of your life. Relative to school. Wrote kind of stuff. These air practical examples of exactly what we talked about. Okay? Yeah. Morgan James from Facebook. I started working on a book. I've been caregiving to my parents for 4.5 years. Every time I write, I get pulled away. So I only inch along in my writing and I never get a flow state going. Your thoughts. Uh, Morgan, you need to carve out a time to write. That is not a care giving time. And that's probably a four o'clock in the morning or maybe a 10 oclock at night. But this is the burden that we bear in order to do things that are going to change your life, do things that the people that you look up to respect, admire and for whom you want to join their company. They do. They do whatever it takes to find a way to express themselves and pursue their passion. And it is very really that we have kids and bills and all sorts of obligations. But your process Run this process. Imagine what you want to do. Design a system for you. Designing a system is another place where it sounds like you're tripped up because you need to find an hour from 4 to 5 a.m. From 9 to 10 p.m. I don't care what it is or bring. Hire a nurse to come in for a four hour step. Stint. You know, Meghan. Sure that early on right in this call, she hired some child care to come in and it unlocked something for her. She got a three hour flow state just earlier this week. It's available to you gonna do one more? Um, oops. Sorry. All questions. Sorry. My browser window can only be so big. And I had a question flag, and it's now gone. Um, Drew Drew Castello. Ah, true. Says hi, Chase. I'm an aspiring outdoor adventure photographer. This beginning stopped at the action phase. My main problem is finding people in athletes that are willing to go out and be photographed. How do I find people that are patient to take photos rather than do there sport or activity? Um, that's a good question. It's very nuanced. I happen to know the answer because I've come from that world. Ah, to me, showing up and taking picture of pictures of people who normally don't get photos taken of them, show up at the skate park with the camera and, you know, ask 15 people if they want to be photographed and after you're done, get their email or text and text them some pictures. The best pictures. And after you've done that a couple times like, wow these air good or I've never had anyone taken interest in me or my work or like the point someone else just made about scientists like photograph 10 scientists and you start to be well known like, yeah, this person has great portrait of science that can help me get a better grant, etcetera. But if you show up in SK Park and find a two or three people to work with Ad Hawk, you send them good work. And then the next time you say, Hey, do you want to go out and make some more photographs? And they say, Of course, because they want to see where pictures of themselves and it's gonna help them get sponsors and all the other things and in the magazines, that is when you start to help them understand that the best photographs that they see in the magazines are created, their co created. It's the photographer and the athlete working together to get a very specific picture that is your step into working together with someone. That is how you find it. You show up, you find anybody and then you reduce the anybody to the people who care and understand what they actually want to do and that you are a vehicle to help them get there, and then you work with them directly. I got to say, as pretty lasers, pretty good answer. Uh, all right, last question. Um, for the day. And then I will just, uh, um wave us off into the sunset for having a great weekend. Great Father's day. Uh, and we're gonna go back to the zoom. I've taken a few questions from Facebook and YouTube. What? Not and I'm excited to have one more question here from the zoom group, and I realized I can't see everybody, I think now, in the zoom group. Maybe I can, but, um, show of hands. Anyone has another question. Otherwise, I'm gonna go back to the other phones as time to be brave. Ah, I see. 23 Is that a scratch? Cerci. It was a pick, Chris. I'm calling people out. That it All right. Um, Ryan already heard from you. I'm gonna goto Mary Ellen. Um, Mary Ellen. Last question of the day. I thank you for showing up at my book. signing party in Seattle. I remember signing your book. Yes, I I have right here, in fact. And now my mother as a copy, but she doesn't have a sign One, uh, yet. Um, so I do a lot of photography. I don't feel like I Ah, no, that much. Technically, I don't I feel pretty overwhelmed by photo shop, so I usually use light room. But I just like I tried different classes to learn stuff, but I just get kind of bored with it. I don't know how to focus on what I need. Toe learn because I text there, so yeah, they're so just get over. Well, go back to go back to dear d e a r. Deconstruct the work of the best people in your field and deconstruct the success that they create for themselves. You can watch the trajectory of anybody if you watch them closely enough. Pay attention of their social feeds. The work that doing galleries that work wherever that it hangs, wherever it shows up commercially or whatever they're talking about, you can chart their course and you're deconstructing what they're doing. Emulate that work. Analyze what's working for you. That you adopted in their work regimen and then repeat the stuff that's working for you. My guess is that what you're you're facing is we don't all love all aspects of when we want to make something our job, like whether it's billing or client management or, in your case, Photoshopped. That's fine. If you're looking at the images that are out there in the world and they are very well retouched relative to yours, you probably need to retouch your images in order to follow that dear thing. Now you might at some point, just in the future. You know what? My images are so good they don't need any retouching. They don't need any color about everything. I think thats unlikely, but that I want to explore that as a possibility. But for now, all of the photographers that you like their shit is polished and you need to have your stuff polish in order to emulate some of success that they are creating in their career. How do you do that? Either get good at it or outsource it. I would encourage you to do both things, try and get good. It sounds like you're trying to get good. You're not really interested. All right, then hire somebody to retouch your photographs, allocates and budget specifically to that, and then go do all the other parts of the process. And if you're identifying that as a thing that gets stuck, maybe having somebody else do that work is a great way to get unstuck, Pepito. Awesome. I am gonna go get outside. I am. I'm like I got a ton of energy and you know, the Q. And A part is always, um, my favorite because I love the fact that we are all in this together and that the problems that one of us has is usually a problem that so many of us have. So I want to say thank you for tuning in and giving your time. What you're really hopefully understanding is that you're giving your time to yourself that you're here because you've wanted to imagine something bigger for your set for yourself. Wanted to imagine a future for yourself. That, um, is in line with living your best life in this one precious go that we get. I want you to know that I think you're worthy that you are worthy that the reason you're here is because you care, and just showing up is a huge piece of it. Now, if it was just showing up and not doing the work, then well, the world to be a very different place. But that hopefully is something you can understand right now is that the fact that you're here and willing to do the work already separates you and creates an advantage for you relative to someone else that you that may not. And this is not a competition with your neighbor or across the street. Ultimately, I find that most of these challenges come to the stories that we tell herself. You remember that creative pyramid mindset is at the base of this? My hope is that what we're doing here, these exercises are helping you to get unstuck. So I'm going to leave with just a reminder of the work. And that is, um, make something realised, document what you learned from it, judge it and realize that even if it was a failure, that the concept of a failure is too lightweight, don't forget to subscribe to the insta so that you can get the challenge from this week, and it would be in the world to me if you haven't left a review. I mean, there's more people. Um, I recognize a lot of the name, so I'd love to see your names in the Review Chunk Review section and Amazon Appreciate the support. I hope you're getting value out of this. It's never too late to start again and tell your friends and stay tuned for next week. I'm already pumped for next week is the amplify section, so make sure to read that and have a great Regan.