“Don’t rest on your laurels.” – Gavin Lucan, SF&F News blogger
There’s a flip-side to making mistakes, and that’s when you don’t think you’ve made any.
I know it’s tempting to look at something you made without encountering many, if any, difficulties, and think that you’ve discovered the formula to success. Continue reading
“Mistakes are meant for you to learn from.” – Deji Adiatu
The mistake is perhaps the most overrated thing in life.
I’m as guilty as most at overrating mistakes. When I make one, I feel like taking to my own head with a crowbar. It’s as though the mistake is an indicator that I’m incapable, even broken. Continue reading
“Have your shit together.” – Emma “Emazon” Barbato
When I asked Emma Barbato for three pieces of advice for someone starting down the road toward becoming a coach, she only gave me one. But it’s a good one.
“When you place yourself in a leadership, mentoring or teaching position, every vulnerability or weakness will be tested,” Emma says.
“Make sure what you’re looking at interests you.” – Michelle Ward, Entrepreneur
“Passion” gets over-used. You can be led to expect that you need to wait for play that grabs you by your very soul and drags you into doing it at every opportunity, and that anything less is ripping yourself off.
Yet sometimes, what you think is passion is actually novelty – the rush of exploring something unknown.
Once you start to define and make familiar the new thing, the “passion” diminishes, and you start wondering whether the thing you thought was your thing really is.
“The thing you’re creating isn’t necessarily yours.” Andrew Navaro, Art Director, Fantasy Flight Games
There’s a natural tendency to be protective of your play.
If you’re doing it right, then it’s something that comes from within you, that’s yours, that speaks to others of the creator that you are. To paraphrase Dr. Seuss, there’s nobody out there more you-er than you, and there’s no one else who could create exactly the same things you create.
The trouble comes from the fact that you’re not just playing for you.
You’re playing for, and sometimes with, others.
That means you need to keep them in mind, whether as the audience of your product once you’ve completed it or as the fellow members of a team building something that your play is going to be a part of.
“Channel your path.” – Deji Adiatu, Actor and Employment Consultant
The curse of getting paid to play is that each of has so, so many ways to play, and when we engage that desire, we’re spoiled for choice!
Between having so many options and paralysing ourselves through trying to analyse each of them in order to find the “best” – we end up doing nothing.
“Look for the positives in everything.” – Matt Bond, Matt Bond Photography / Productions
One thing a lot of us have trouble with is the here-and-now, especially if we find our circumstances uncomfortable.
Five years before I spoke with Matt Bond for the podcast, he was working in a convenience store serving drunks after nights out.
My immediate internal reaction was, “you poor bugger.”
My first paying job was in fresh produce in a supermarket. I tend to think of it in therms of “having paid my dues” and “never again.”
Yet Matt told me that has never done a job he didn’t love. Continue reading
”Don’t make excuses” – Saffron Bryant, Fantasy Author
Excuses are great things. Neat little shifts of the blame for our inability to do something to a cause outside of ourselves.
It wasn’t my fault that I didn’t do it. I was too exhausted after a rough day at work to put the time in. I had to give all my attention to the kids that whole weekend. Something came up. I couldn’t give it my best.
Have you ever wondered: If I’m making excuses more often than I’m making the effort to do my thing, is there a deeper reason behind my excuses?
“Come out swinging.” – Kelly Gurnett, Cordelia Calls it Quits
It’s always tempting to hold back a little when you start.
After all, who are you? Just a beginner, that’s who. Why should you expect to be the all-fired, hot-buttered awesome right out of the starting gate?
Well, why not?