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Get Your Reps In 150 150 admin

Get Your Reps In

I can remember when I’d walk into my piano teachers studio.  I’d say hello, open the books and start to play what I was supposed to have been practicing the throughout the week.  This went one of two ways.

After I played there would either be an attitude of disappointment, or there would be praise.  This is how it went every time.  If I hadn’t practiced, she could tell quickly.  She’d tell me “you just need to get these things under your fingers”.

When I heard this, I knew she was just saying practice more.  What she was saying was that I needed to do whatever she had assigned…repeatedly…until I didn’t have to think about it anymore.  Until my fingers knew what to do without me thinking.  Here’s a Wikipedia article on the four stages of competence.  What she was recommending is that I practice what she had assigned until I got to the final stage in those four stages of competence – unconscious competence.

I see this so many places.  In sports, how many times do you see people practice drills and passes and free throws and three pointers.

From the outside looking in, it looks easy when they perform on the big stages, but you don’t see the hours of repetition behind the scenes.  Normally, the people who have reached the level of unconscious competence come around to the fact that nobody cares about the behind the scenes.  Nobody cares about Lebron James’ thousands of practice shots.  They want to see the final product.

In anything worth being great in…there’s going to be reps – things you do repeatedly until they become second nature.  Get your reps in.

Writing From the Heart 150 150 admin

Writing From the Heart

This blog post (the one you’re reading right now) and this blog post were written a little differently than normal.  Before writing the one you’re currently reading, I had a 20 minute visualization session, so I feel like I’m pretty in my heart now.  The other blog post was written by purposely trying to center my head an my heart for 10 minutes.  You can do this by focusing on and feeling gratitude.

This is method is mentioned in this article from heartmath.org.  From that article:

The feeling of genuine appreciation is one of the most concrete and easiest positive emotions for individuals to self-generate and sustain for long periods. Nearly all of us can find something to genuinely appreciate. By simply recalling a time when you felt sincere appreciation and then re-creating that feeling, you can increase your heart-rhythm coherence, reduce emotional stress and improve your health. (Coherence here refers to a balance or smoothness in heart rhythms.)

Even from those two articles of my 100+ articles, I can tell there’s a difference in the writing.  Writing from the head is facts and logic.  Writing from the heart is more emotional and connection focused.  Weaving them both together gives you the best of both worlds.  It also makes the writing flow more and is more enjoyable to actually do.

The Role of Feedback 150 150 admin

The Role of Feedback

When you’re doing creative projects, it’s important to get feedback along the way.  Feedback helps you change course if necessary.  It helps you align your creative projects with what people want.  It shows you ways you can improve.  It gives you ideas.  It can give you inspiration.  Constructive feedback helps everyone.

Constructive feedback fosters alignment between what people engaged with your creative work want and what you can provide which then allows things to flow.  It’s hard to get into a flow in isolation.

My first blog, Yougotdunkedon.com, was mentioned on ESPN’s First Take, ESPN Radio, and in Sports Illustrated Magazine here.  It’s an archive of people getting dunked on.   In the early days it was pretty much lost in the vast ocean of sports blogs.  It was a ghost town, but the feedback is what kept me going.  I was an active member on one forum, and I’d put the link in my signature and every now and then someone would send me messages saying “nice blog!” or “cool site” or “this is sick!” (meaning they liked it).  I also got feedback that people wanted the blogs arranged by the person who got dunked on as well as the person who did the dunking.  I didn’t know how to implement it back then, but I probably could and would now.

With that blog, once I started putting more efforts into marketing and reaching out to people to exchange links, it started to rank super high in the search engines (#2 for the word “dunked” behind Wikipedia).  Then I started getting a different type of feedback.  People started linking to my site…a lot.  That feedback meant a lot to me.  These were people who knew nothing about me, but that thought the content was valuable enough to share with other people.  I’d see links everywhere, to the point where it pretty much was normal.

One of the biggest eye-openers was when I built an email list for another project.  The feedback there was great!  I built the email list up to 3700 people, and I would just email them asking them what they wanted to see and some ideas.  They were lots of written responses all anonymous and pretty in depth.  I sent out a vote and lots of people voted.  It made things so much easier.  I had more direction and I didn’t feel like I was creating in a vacuum.  I didn’t feel like what I was creating would fall flat because they told me what they wanted.

People will tell you what they want – just ask.  Or look at what they’re buying already.  That’s a clear indicator of what they want.  You can even look at reviews on what people are buying and see the objections people have.  If you see a common objection that you can address – bam there you go.

There are times where people don’t know what they want.  If you can give people something they don’t even know they want but that would be awesome for them?  omg you’ve hit gold.  To me, this was the iPhone when it came out.  It wasn’t like anything else before it.

There is feedback everywhere.  You just have to look for it.

If you want more feedback give it.  It’s been said that you get what you give.  Give lots of feedback to other people’s creative projects and you’ll find that energy returns back to you.

The Counterintuitive Solution to “Poor Me” 150 150 admin

The Counterintuitive Solution to “Poor Me”

Sometimes there’s a life event or a series of life events that impact us in ways we perceive as negative which then might lead us to go into “poor me” thinking.

It’s where you’re feeling sorry for yourself and could lead to a big circle.  You keep looking at your life situation > you perceive it was negative > you feel powerless to change it how you want it> and feel even worse and the spiral downwards continues.

It feels like reality has violated your trust, and what happens when trust is eroded?  You might be hesitant to put yourself out there again to reality because they are afraid of being hurt again.

So then what happens?  Here is where you feel the need to contract.  You might feel like you need to isolate and protect yourself from reality’s trust violation.  You might feel like you need to hoard resources and information and keep to yourself, but the solution is counterintuitive.  The answer is to expand, get out of yourself and help others as much as you can.

What this will do is put your problems in perspective, and turn down the volume of your own problems.  When you’re in the midst of negative life situations, it can have a tendency to be right there in your face…taking up all your mental space.  You can easily compare and despair (comparing yourself to someone you perceive having a better life situation than you and feeling inferior/jealous/envious because of the comparison).  Helping someone seems to open the door to invite your own answers in.  You want / need coaching?  Coach someone else.  You want / need accountability?  Hold someone else accountable.  You need / want money?  Give money.

These counterintuitive solutions help you get back into flow with reality, and your relationship to this reality is of the utmost importance.

Just for Today 150 150 admin

Just for Today

This was taught to me in my food group, and I think it sums up how great goals are accomplished.

People would come in and see people who had lost excess weight and kept it off for years.  Not a product…not a sales pitch…actual people who were eating normal foods who once had a problem with their relationship to food.

Their advice was so similar.  It was some version of ‘just for today’ meaning do the right things today (eat the right foods at the right times during the day) and over time it all adds up…and it did.

I’ve actually used that so many places.  I don’t worry about the big goals.  The big goals take care of themselves once you get today in order and rinse and repeat.  It’s the habits over time that determine the quality of life.  Do the hard habits today…just for today…and life gets easier.

Blunt and Direct Books 150 150 admin

Blunt and Direct Books

If you feel like you’ve been in your head a lot – intellectually thinking about different concepts and shuffling through different ideas from different sources – and you take a hard, honest look at your actual real-world results and accomplishments and assess that you have nothing to show for all this thinking, then perhaps you should get yourself in motion and take some actual action.

If I feel like I need to balance ideas, concepts, thinking, daydreaming with something more grounded, practical and down-to-earth I’ll use mental programming and listen to some grounded material…maybe even courses with actual action steps.   If not an actual course on a subject or area I want to make progress in, I’ll go with mental programming and chose someone grounded to listen to.

Grounded, practical book suggestions:

Almost any book from Brian Tracy

Relentless – Tim S. Grover

The 50th Law – 50 Cent and Robert Greene

The War of Art – Steven Pressfield

These books are written in a tell-it-like-it-is style.  There is a rise in this style due to lots of “feel-good” books.  I think those two styles support each other.  A lot of the books with positive messages, affirmations, feel-good material enhance your ability to take bold and direct action without being hindered by your doubts and fears.  BUT like anything, there can be too much of a good thing.  Balance the “feel-good” messages, affirmations, ideas, concepts, and anything else that goes in the head with more motion and bold, inspired, direct action outward.

 

 

 

Thoughts After Two Months of Daily Blogging 150 150 admin

Thoughts After Two Months of Daily Blogging

So I’ve made it two months of blogging every day.  Check out the archives to see them all.  Here are observations so far.

  • It’s crazy to me that there’s still always something to write about – and I’ve written very little on current events.  I’m learning to trust whatever this is that’s giving me more and more ideas on what to write about.
  • It feels like I’m engaged with work – Finally! I like doing it.  It’s fun to me.  It’s a challenge to overcome my own blocks – and I love the challenge.  Contrast this with years of lots of boring, repetitive, non-stimulating easy work I did that left me deflated and disengaged from the thought of doing more of it.  Boring, easy work has a cost.
  • Listening to music helps with the flow of writing, but it does depend on the type of music.  I like music from John Mayer, Michael Jackson, Brian McKnight, Drake, Mac Ayers…something mellow but upbeat.  Matter of fact, this writing is under the influence right now.  I’ve been drinking too much John Mayer music.
  • I feel like I can progress because I’m getting thoughts I’m having up and out of my head. I can invite new thoughts and new actions because I’ve processed things through writing and can avoid circular thinking and circular living.  Shout outs to the people that taught me the importance of getting things “up and out”.
  • I’ve unearthed some big things for me.  One thing that comes to mind is the meaning behind writing so much about social skills.  It means a lot to me because I was told to shut up and be quiet when I was younger – a lot.  No blame, just grew up around pretty much all adults.  I had honestly forgotten about it all until all this writing.
  • There’s a higher sense of responsibility here to keep going.  To keep it fresh and fun.  To get it in front of other eyes.
  • There’s an edge because I don’t want to miss a day 🙂
  • Having clean space to work adds to the appreciation.
  • I want to do a better job of writing as soon as I get the inspiration to write.  Sometimes I push it off until the end of the day to my own detriment.  This is being written at 8:11PM, so I have lots of time and space left in the day to get everything out I need to get out.
  • So far so good 😉 Only…304 days left.
Does High Quantity Lessen Quality with Creative Work? 150 150 admin

Does High Quantity Lessen Quality with Creative Work?

A concern with a lot of quantity with creative work is…will the quality go down?  I saw this question posed by someone at the beginning of Steve Pavlina’s 365-day blogging challenge.  Since I’m participating as well, I actually wondered the same thing.

I’ve experienced quite the opposite in this 365-day blogging challenge.  I’m really proud of some articles that I’ve written, but I know they wouldn’t have happened without all the other articles I’ve written that I roll my eyes at.  It’s as if quality comes from quantity.   You have to get in the reps to realize the quality and see the results.

It reminds of something I read today about song writing, but one of my favorite song writers, John Mayer.

On the subject of writing good songs, John Mayer urges new writers not to worry too much about whether a song is good or bad when they are writing it. “Just write it,” he says. “The rule is: write bad songs, but write ’em. If you start writing bad songs, you start writing better songs, and then you start getting really good.

“If you try to get into the building on the twelfth floor, you’ll never make it. You have to get in the basement floor and work up from there.”