We often get caught up in one or the other for too long.
Laser focused on the tasks at hand. All tactics, little inspiration, no romance.
Or
Dreaming and wishing and talking about fantastic outcomes without any actualization. All dreamy desire, little action, no impact.
Somewhere in the middle is where we probably ought to spend most of our time…but when there is a season of extremes, enjoy the good parts of it and then intentionally start a little swing back toward the other one.
Try selling a kid on the idea that although the big chocolate bar is big…the small piece of chocolate is much better.
It’s nearly impossible. The kid is computing two things…chocolate and how much of it am I getting. You could even offer a sample of both…the big bar still wins.
Two things here…
-Go find people who are looking for something other than ‘how big is the chocolate bar’…rather than trying all day to convince the kids of something they’re not interested in.
-If you keep the kid excited about chocolate long enough, then overtime boredom and curiosity are likely to set in and one day the smaller better piece will be chosen. But for today the big bar is fine.
The other day a friend of mine proclaimed…
‘There’s no greater feeling than haggling for something you don’t need.’
The implications of this are obvious and widespread, but I’ll highlight a couple…
-When you engage in this way you can’t lose. Well, you can lose, but you won’t take it personally. Which is a win.
-When you don’t need the thing, you have a heightened ability to sense the seller’s desperation. On the other hand when you’re desperate yourself, it’s hard to properly gauge it from the other party.
-Since you’re not desperate you have all your tools at your disposal…and you’re more likely to be creative and develop even more tools on the spot. And the options are clear, not clouded.
The other day a friend of mine proclaimed…
‘There’s no greater feeling than haggling for something you don’t need.’
The implications of this are obvious and widespread, but I’ll highlight a couple…
-When you engage in this way you can’t lose. Well, you can lose, but you won’t take it personally. Which is a win.
-When you don’t need the thing, you have a heightened ability to sense the seller’s desperation. On the other hand when you’re desperate yourself, it’s hard to properly gauge it from the other party.
-Since you’re not desperate you have all your tools at your disposal…and you’re more likely to be creative and develop even more tools on the spot. And the options are clear, not clouded.
In real life if you’re being followed you have a sense you’re being followed. A feeling. A knowing. That someone is following you, watching you. No doubt about it. And then sometimes even when no one is following you, you could swear you’re followed.
Online it’s the exact opposite.
If you’ve been putting out good work for a while you’ve built up a following…the social media sites even tell you how many people have clicked your Follow button…Spotify even tells you how many people are listening to your music at this very moment. And yet even though there are plenty of people following you…you feel like no one is following you.
If you release a song and get a few thousand streams everyone is really happy for you. But if you release a song and get ten million streams…
When you get a little too famous, the people (and media outlets) who have known about you for a while but haven’t bothered to comment suddenly start saying how much you suck…now you’ve woken up the beasts. Now some people are talking about hating your band. Now you think ‘everyone’ is out to get you. Now you think maybe it was better when people weren’t saying mean things.
But it wasn’t better back then. You just got a little too famous and started getting a reaction out of a bigger pool of people….which includes the type of people who wait for you to get just famous enough to where they feel esteem and stature in their putdown.