Read This First
When you go to business school you learn by studying successful companies. Starbucks. Costco. CVS. Apple. Their failures, successes. Every rise has many, many falls that come before. We see an end result. The spotlight on the they made it part. When, really, the entire company was built on failing. Failing and getting back up, trying again, trying different. On getting punched in the gut and returning to the arena. On being told this will not work / you will fail / you are not smart-rich-connected enough / save yourself and quit now / are you crazy? Big things happen on the other side of a thousand no’s, failures and disappointments. Things do not just magically fall into place. Because we never really get to hear the story behind the story, we can’t process all the things that came before the shift, the success, the big thing. This is where the good stuff lives. All the grit. Business schools charge $100K+/year for the proprietary behind the scenes case studies of how these successful giants Became. What if we had a human school. Where I told you my stories, you told me yours, and we learned incredible stuff from each other. Maybe this is my version of that.
I’d like to learn from you. To tell our behind the scenes stories of Becoming on a daily basis. What a world of knowledge and information and human connection is out there if we simply ask. If we are smart and brave enough to share.
A (big) part of sharing these words and stories about my life is so I can hear yours. How are you doing life? What is your story behind the story. I don’t have the right to ask unless I’m willing to share mine, too. For me, the writing brings clarity and helps me sift through stuff that can be murky and dense until I get it out of my mind and into a tangible body of words. It’s selfish but also an act of reaching out, of wanting to connect with other humans on the non-superficial, hi I’m great, how are you? level. It’s my survival. Tell me your story.
I chose to include this photo because it was yet another beginning for me in life. It’s part of my behind the curtain. An inner shift was happening and its taken me over a year to get from There to Here. Wanting to create and connect, capture and share. Its nagged, irritated and bothered. It kept unsettling me and disrupting me in all the ways that the things we know we must do do. Until we do them. And all that disrupt doesn’t go away, it just changes.
I’ve always been fascinated by how people do stuff. Their routines, schedules, way of life. I’m a what’s in your refrigerator? What time do you go to bed? and do you eat breakfast? type of person. I am curious because I want to learn and grow. Not judge and compare. When we share real things about our lives our potential skyrockets. Especially the things that scare us, the dark moments, the things we think but never say.
For every word you read here, there have been a thousand that have never seen the light of day. For every post I am brave enough to make public, there are 10 collecting cobwebs (fear! resistance!). In Do The Work, Steven Pressfield writes:
Why does Seth Godin place so much emphasis on “shipping”?
Because finishing is the critical part of any project. If we can’t finish, all our work is for nothing.
When we ship, we declare our stuff ready for prime time. We pack it in a FedEx box and send it out into the world. Our movie hits the screens, our smart phone arrives in the stores, our musical opens on Broadway.
It takes balls of steel to ship.
Here’s a true nugget from The War of Art:
I had a good friend who had labored for years and had produced an excellent and deeply personal novel. It was done. He had it in its mailing box, complete with cover letter to his agent. But he couldn’t make himself send it off. Fear of rejection unmanned him.
Shipping is not for the squeamish or faint of heart. It requires killer instinct.
It is terrifying to expose ourselves as human. As flawed and imperfect works in progress. But I am trying. For years I have sat on these words and thoughts and ideas. Until the fear of not doing it, the thing that keeps bubbling up inside of me, has eclipsed the fear of doing it. I am more afraid of inaction (which has been my constant state) than action. Done (shipped) is better than perfect.
I have only been able to gather my “balls of steel” because of the gazillion other people who have done it before me. I’ve consumed their stories and words and realized they are humans, too. And mostly they are terrified and they fail and they are judged but they do the thing anyway. Whatever Bigness is inside of you, it matters. And it is meant to see the light of day. It needs to, it is yours to bring to life.
Pressfield again:
When we ship, we’re exposed.
That’s what we’re so afraid of it. When we ship, we’ll be judged. The real world will pronounce upon our work and upon us. When we ship, we can fail. When we ship, we can be humiliated.
Sometimes it might feel like oversharing. It’ll always be unfiltered. There will be typos and links that don’t work. You’ll see me in my pajamas. Bloody from birth. Probably a nipple. Some words will be composed, others the stream of consciousness kind that I just let rip. Often I will not edit or “go back and revise”. I’m just gonna let it be. If I don’t, if I try to make it perfect and then present to you some polished version, it’ll all be an illusion. A fake. I will be robbing myself and you of the best part, the story and the grit it takes to get there. I don’t want to show you an “end result”. I want to show you me, in it, figuring stuff out, failing and trying and reaching out to you for support and guidance and community. Mostly I want you to send it back, your story. Please don’t make it perfect. Don’t put a bow on it and cover up all the good stuff. Be seen.
This is me, shipping. I’ll keep doing it. And hope that each time gets a little less terrifying. I’ll tell you about it. Some things might resonate, others might bore. Take what you want, leave the rest. You do You.
I have these words from Marianne Williamson taped to the wall beside my computer:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Here we are in the photo above, one year later. I’m not any more courageous or confident as I share these words than I was a year ago. I’m still scared. I feel exposed and vulnerable. Silly. Ridiculous. Crazy how the strongest adversary lives inside of us, not someone/thing “out there.” The inner critic is a real SOB. One word at a time I will give that inner critic the bird. Whatever may come next, it feels good to be on the other side of shipping.