“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” -Ben Franklin
“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.” -George S. Patton
“If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” -Yogi Berra
Before embarking on a potential passion project, a good question to ask yourself is “What’s your plan?” Or “How do you see this working out?” (This is also a question you can ask a friend or family member who comes to you with their idea of a project or even what they might want to do for a career.)
By no means do you need to have some perfect plan or everything thought through from start to finish. But you should be able to answer, in a few rough words, the following questions:
“What is my goal or objective?”
“Why am I doing this?”
“Who is this for? What is this for?”
“What does success look like?” (Both maximally and minimally.)
If you have answers, then great. Get going!
If not, get going on coming up with your answers. Then, get going!
“If you are able to act ‘without forcing,’ your life is spontaneous, a life that is so of itself, natural, not forced, and not unduly self-conscious.” -Alan Watts
In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of the Tao, every day something is dropped. Less and less do you need to force things, until finally you arrive at non-action. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.
True mastery can be gained by letting things go their own way. It can’t be gained by interfering. -Verse 48, “Tao Te Ching” by Lao Tzu (Stephen Mitchell translation)
“It is important not only to understand intellectually the difference between letting it happen and making it happen, but to experience the difference. To experience the difference is to know the difference…When you try hard to hit the ball correctly, and it goes well, you get a certain kind of ego satisfaction. You feel that you are in control, that you are master of the situation. But when you simply allow the serve to serve itself, it doesn’t seem as if you deserve the credit. It doesn’t feel as if it were you who hit the ball. You tend to feel good about the ability of your body, and possibly even amazed by the results, but the credit and sense of personal accomplishment are replaced by another kind of satisfaction.” –The Inner Game Of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey
Imagine there’s no heaven It’s easy if you try No hell below us Above us, only sky
Imagine all the people Livin’ for today Ah
Imagine there’s no countries It isn’t hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion, too
Imagine all the people Livin’ life in peace You
You may say I’m a dreamer But I’m not the only one I hope someday you’ll join us And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can No need for greed or hunger A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people Sharing all the world You
You may say I’m a dreamer But I’m not the only one I hope someday you’ll join us And the world will live as one -song “Imagine” by John Lennon
Per Wikipedia, “Wu wei is a concept from ancient Chinese philosophy that literally means not-acting or non-doing, variously interpreted and translated as actionlessness, inaction, or effortless action. In Taoism, it denotes the nature of Tao, meaning that while Tao (the way, path, or flow of nature) is the source of all existence and manifestation of all phenomena, its intrinsic formless essence is that it acts or moves in a silent, invisible, ineffable, often-unnoticed manner that may even seem motionless and effortless. Accordingly, Taoists aspire to live their lives in alignment with such a harmonious state of free flowing and unforced activity. In a political context, it also refers to an ideal form or principle of spontaneous and non-aggressive governance.”
Sounds pretty good to me.
Imagine if we can all live like this.
Wu Wei says it’s pretty easy. If you don’t try (i.e. lose the ego). And just let it happen.
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” -Philippians 4:6
“Anxiety is the overestimation of danger and the underestimation of our ability to cope.” -Fr. Mike Schmitz
“Worrying is like a rocking chair; it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere.” -Glenn Turner
“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.” -Mark Twain
“There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” -Seneca, Letters From A Stoic
“Action is the antidote to anxiety.” -Jock Willink
“Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.” -Benjamin Disraeli
When you care about something or someone, you will automatically be concerned. And that’s okay, because concern gets you to ask the question, “What can I do?” Which then leads to action. And if you can take action, take it.
But do not mistake caring with worry. Because worry doesn’t lead you to ask the question, “What can I do?” Instead it leads you to ask the question, “What if?” Which then just leads you to spin out thinking about a future you can’t predict, let alone control. Which leads you nowhere.
If you need more reason to not be anxious, consider a 2019 study conducted by researchers at Penn State that states that 91.4% of the things people worried about never came true. And for many of the remaining 8.6% percent, the actual outcome of the things that did come true were significantly better than they expected,
So why waste a single precious second being worried about something that’s probably never going to come true?
But if you do find yourself in that anxious state, perhaps say a prayer for clarity and guidance. And then take action. It really does help.
If you want to shrink something, you must first allow it to expand. If you want to get rid of something, you must first allow it to flourish. -“Tao Te Ching” by Lao-Tzu (Stephen Mitchell translation)
“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start by somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper.”-Anne Lamott
“A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.” -Mark Twain
“Writing is rewriting. I will write 1,000 pages for a 60-page book. I throw away 90% of it, and that’s the best part of the book.” -Dr. Seuss
“The first draft of anything is shit.” -Ernest Hemmingway
“The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader, not its writer.” -Zadie Smith
One of the most painful things about writing is that you have to write a whole lot of crap that you know is crap while you’re writing it, but you still have to write it. And then you have to excise 90% of it.
The whole process sucks and feels like a huge waste of time. You just want to get to the good stuff.
I really love the below excerpt from my dear friend Robyn Cohen. Besides being an incredible human and artist, Robyn is a sensational actor and teacher. She writes in her weekly newsletter…
This thing is called SHOW BUSINESS.
We work in plays.
How did we manage to make it sound like a prison sentence?
Having spent the last three years immersed in a play called What the Constitution Means to Me, questions of freedom, possibility, and what it means to be human have been occupying a rather lively corner of my imagination.
Which brings me to another founding document, a familiar phrase, and a rather extraordinary little revelation that found me somewhere along a hiking trail:
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
And suddenly I had to move one tiny word.
Not:
The pursuit OF happiness.
But:
The pursuit IS happiness.
One word. An entirely different approach to life. And suddenly, freedom.
A revolution in how we live.
Because if the destination occupies 1% of our lives, and the walking toward it occupies the other 99%, where are we actually experiencing the life we’re living?
At the summit?
Or here?
Somewhere on the mountain.
With our legs shaking. Our hearts pumping. Our lungs working. Our maps changing. Our muscles developing.
Our eyes discovering views we could never have seen from the parking lot.
Maybe the view isn’t only at the top.
Maybe there are views all along the way. Maybe the mountain has something marvelous to show us at every elevation. And maybe the point of climbing a mountain isn’t simply to conquer it.
Maybe it’s to meet the person you become while climbing.
Well said Robyn C.! To check out her classes, podcast and newsletter, click Here. Robyn is also reading a play written by Suse Sternkopf in tomorrow night’s Vs. Tuesday Night Zoom Reading. Come watch!
“It’s time to reclaim excellence. Excellence is less about what you do and more about how you do it. You can aspire toward excellence in any worthwhile project.If you strive to do it well, just about anything can be truly transformative.” -Brad Stulberg
The reason to pursue excellence is…well…to pursue excellence.
Brad Stulberg in his book The Way Of Excellence points out that biologically we are wired to do so. He uses the concept of “homeostatic upregulation” to support this claim. While standard homeostasis is an organism’s baseline drive to maintain stability and survive, homeostatic upregulation is the innate biological tendency to go beyond mere survival and actively grow, adapt, and flourish.
Stulberg argues that even the most primitive organisms do not just sit passively in their environment; they possess a sophisticated form of “sensing and responding” that forces them to seek out better conditions, optimize their functioning, and expand. In humans, this exact same ancient, biological life force is what manifests as our psychological desire to master a craft, learn a new skill, and realize our full potential. According to Stulberg, because this drive is hardwired into our biology, working against it or living a completely disengaged, passive life feels inherently unnatural and unfulfilling.
So like it or not, it’s our job, our duty, our nature to constantly pursue excellence. That’s reason enough.
In medieval and ancient philosophy, the Wheel of Fortune or Rota Fortunae is a symbol of the capricious nature of Fate. The wheel belongs to the goddess Fortuna (Greek equivalent: Tyche) who spins it at random, changing the positions of those on the wheel: some suffer great misfortune, others gain windfalls. -per Wikipedia
“Thirty spokes share the hub of a wheel; yet it is its center that makes it useful.” –Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
“Happiness, fulfillment, well-being, and sustainable performance arise when you concentrate on being present in the process of living instead of obsessing over outcomes, and above all when you’re firmly grounded wherever you are.” -Brad Stulberg, book The Practice of Groundedness: A Transformative Path to Success That Feeds–Not Crushes–Your Soul
If life is a wheel of fortune, then the only way to avoid fear and anxiety is not to live in the ever-changing rim, but rather, to remain in the center.
What is the center? It’s that place where no matter what happens, you always come back to and feel grounded.
“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.” -Rumi
“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And you are the one who’ll decide where to go.” –Oh The Places You’ll Goby Dr. Seuss
To get started, you don’t need to know how to get there or if you will ever get there.
You just need to pick a direction and then take one step in that direction. That’s it.
Once you’ve taken that step, then and only then, will you concentrate on what the next step is.
For now, focus on one step.
Step by step. That’s how anything ever gets done.
It’s also the only way to ensure you enjoy the process. Which in the end, is the only reason to try and do anything, anyway.
“In 1977, the science fiction writer Orson Scott Card sent a draft of his later-to-be award-winning and film-adapted Ender’s Game to the science fiction magazine Analog Science Fiction and Fact. The magazine’s editor Ben Bova wrote back to Card. In the letter, Bova said that, though he liked Ender’s Game, it needed to be cut in half. Before he sent the draft out, Card had read and reread Ender’s Game over and over and over. “If something could be cut out,” he said, “I didn’t put it in.” As Card thought about Bova’s note, he eventually realized this: when Bova says the story needs to be cut in half, what he’s also implicitly saying is, ‘to me, it feels way too long.’ So Card asked himself, why did it feel too long? What did I do that made it feel too long? “I realized I probably had too many battles in it,” he said. “I went in and cut out one battle entirely. I cut another one in half. Then I realized a few places where I wanted to elaborate on things. So the manuscript I sent back to Ben was a page or two longer than the one he had told me I should cut in half. But I didn’t remind him that he told me to cut it in half. What I said was, ‘I addressed the problems you mentioned. Let me know what you think of it.’” The feeling that the story was too long was apparently gone, because Bova said nothing about the fact that the manuscript was now even longer, replying instead with a contract and a check to publish it. “So much for ‘cut it in half,’” Card said. -Billy Oppenheimer, Six at Six newsletter
“When people say that something is wrong, they are almost always right. When they tell you how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.” -Ryan Holiday
The Orson Scott Card story above reminds me of a classic Paul Newman story…I can’t recall which film or director, but supposedly after several takes, the director approached Newman, said the scene was dragging and politely asked if he could speed it up. Maybe talk faster?
Newman replied, “Sure thing.”
They went back, did the take. The director LOVED it. He came running up to Newman saying how wonderful the scene was. It was a print. They could move on. The director then asked Newman what he did to make it so riveting.
“The film editor Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The Godfather I, II, and III, American Graffiti, etc.) writes in In the Blink of an Eye that every time he test screens a movie, “there’s a lot of what is medically called ‘referred pain’ in the process.” Referred pain is when you experience pain in a part of the body different from the actual source or cause of the pain. Pain in your elbow, for instance, is often caused by a pinch nerved up in your shoulder—you just happen to feel the pain in your elbow. The pain in the shoulder is “referred” to the elbow. Audience feedback is often like that, Murch continues. If a percentage of the audience agree that they don’t like a specific scene, “the chances are that that scene is fine. Instead, the problem may be that the audience simply didn’t understand something that they needed to know for the scene to work.” So, instead of fixing the scene itself, “you might clarify some exposition that happens five minutes earlier. Don’t necessarily operate on the elbow: instead, discover if nerves are being pinched somewhere else.” -Billy Oppenheimer, Six at Six Newsletter
For the actor…
If you’re having trouble in a particular moment or beat of a scene, chances are that’s not the actual problem.
Go back a few pages and look over your all actions again. Most likely something is amiss in one or several of the prior beats. Get that right and everything else going forward will fall into place.
