“Comparison is the thief of joy.” -Teddy Roosevelt
“You have to run your own race. Problems begin the moment you start comparing your results to someone who is playing under different conditions.
The 40-year-old entrepreneur with three kids has different constraints than the single 27-year-old.
A painter with 20 years of practice shouldn’t be the benchmark for someone in year two.
Someone caring for aging parents is not in the same position as someone with no obligations outside work.
Play your own game. Emphasize gradual progress and keep the comparison internal. Are you getting a little better today?” -James Clear
“The big question about how people behave is whether they’ve got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard.” -Shane Parrish
“The solution isn’t coming. The solution is already here…In a rapidly evolving world, hope is a natural response when things are always getting better/getting worse. Acting like we have what we need already, though, gives us the chance to take action right here and right now.” -Seth Godin
Stop thinking you need something else. Stop waiting for something else to happen. Stop hoping for someone else to show up.
… Well I told you once and I told you twice But ya never listen to my advice You don’t try very hard to please me With what you know it should be easy
… Well this could be the last time This could be the last time Maybe the last time I don’t know, oh no, oh no – “The Last Time”, song by The Rolling Stones
“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“While you’re playing each song it’s not a bad idea to think ‘this is the song I came here to play tonight’.
It’ll help put your full weight into it.
You travelled all that way, sacrificed a lot of other things to be on the stage…why not (at least) act like and think like every song is your sole purpose for being there?” -Gabe Andersen
Chances are this won’t be the last time you get to make your art. Or to raise the stakes a bit…be the last day you live your life.
But there’s nothing wrong with proceeding as if it is.
Put your whole shoulder into it.
Give it everything you got.
Leave it all out there.
You’ll be so glad you did.
And if you’re lucky enough to get another crack at it tomorrow?….Well then, you’ll have all the gratitude you can imagine.
P.S. – Thank you to everyone who attended our Vs. “Veteran Artist Night” this evening and to all the Vets for sharing their incredible stories. It was an amazing night. And to all Veterans out there…we can’t say thank you enough for your great service to our country.
You will never regret showing up and supporting your friends.
And sometimes, like tonight, the play/reading will be awesome, your friends and the rest of the cast will be awesome, and you’ll run into some awesome people who are also there because they showed up too.
Choose your attitude and you get to choose your past (your view of it) and your present (finding opportunities), which then shapes your future.
H/t to my friend Joe for the image above and to Billy Oppenheimer’s always excellent Six at Six Newsletter for the Jay Wright story below…
Late in the 2016 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship, Villanova blew a 10-point lead. With 4.7 seconds left, UNC hit a 3-pointer to tie the game. Villanova’s head coach, Jay Wright, called a timeout, and as his players walked to the huddle, they were all saying the same word: “Attitude.” “It’s the most important aspect of our program,” Coach Wright explains in his book, Attitude. “When we break a huddle, we say ‘1, 2, 3, Attitude.’” The test of Attitude, Wright taught his players, is: “Where is your mindset after something bad happens to you?” Where is your mindset after you blow a 10-point lead? Where is your mindset after your opponent hits a 3 to tie the game with 4.7 seconds left? “When I looked into the eyes of our players,” Wright writes, “I saw no anger or regret. No one bemoaned [the UNC player’s] ‘lucky shot,’ or that any of our guys had failed to stop him from grabbing the pass that led to that shot, or anything else.” Instead, “they were all saying, ‘Attitude. Attitude. This is what we do. Attitude. This is what we do.’”
With this mindset, the players returned to the court.
Villanova’s Kris Jenkins inbounded the ball to Ryan “Arch” Arcidiacono. Arch dribbled up the left side of the court, crossed half court, cut right towards the 3-point arc, where he underhanded a pass to Jenkins, who caught the ball with 1.3 seconds left, and, in perfect rhythm, jumped then released the ball with 0.6 seconds, and hit a buzzer-beater to win the 2016 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship.
Famously, Wright barely reacted to Jenkins’ National Championship-winning shot. Before his guys went back on the court, he explained, “I processed all the potential scenarios.” Most likely, the game was going to go to overtime where UNC would ride their wave of momentum and win the game. “No matter the outcome,” Wright continued, “because of the way our players responded after UNC tied the game [“Attitude. Attitude. This is what we do.”]—I felt like they had the greatest lesson in life. I felt like that was an accomplishment that would follow them through their lives.”
Wright had to instill in his players a mindset, he said, “that they would carry with them for the remainder of their days on earth.” “In that sense, I knew we had already won.” Wright had done the work to have a lasting impact on his players. Everything else was extra.
P.S. – Here’s the buzzer beater. Watch Jay Wright after the shot goes in as compared to everyone else.
Get me on the court and I’m trouble Last week, messed around and got a triple-double Freakin’ brothers every way like MJ I can’t believe today was a good day -song “It Was A Good Day” by Ice Cube
Good day sunshine Good day sunshine Good day sunshine I need to laugh, and when the sun is out I’ve got something I can laugh about I feel good, in a special way I’m in love and it’s a sunny day -song “Good Day Sunshine” by The Beatles
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” -Viktor Frankl
Can you have a good day today without things going your way?
Michael Roderick, in his excellent daily newsletter, has some great advice on how to do it well. He lists four learnings from all his years of following up:
Everyone has a different response time – If I were standing in front of you and said hello, you would likely say hello back. You’d feel it was rude to ignore me. You also would say hello back very quickly to eliminate the awkward silence. Some people are like that with email or other communication. They respond right away, while others may read something and take time to respond. So if someone doesn’t instantly respond to your message, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are ignoring you. They just may have a different response time.
Everyone has a preferred channel – We all have a way that we like to communicate. Some people prefer in-person interaction and will not correspond in any other format. Some people live on the Book of Faces and treat their messenger like email. Some focus only on inbox correspondence. The list goes on and on. If you’re not hearing back from someone, it may be that the channel of communication you decided to use is either not in use or simply too backed up.
Everyone gets busy – Even the person with the most mundane life in the world will have some period where things are a little more hectic than usual, and the first thing to go in those instances is responding to other people’s requests. Sometimes we reach out at a time when people are swamped, and it takes a number of nudges before they are even able to realize that we’re reaching out to them.
Everyone deserves an “out” – We all have had moments in our lives when we agreed to something in the moment and later on realized we made a mistake. In these instances, it’s pretty common to ignore any follow-up from the person we made the agreement with because of the guilt we feel from changing our mind, even though we have every right to change our minds. Sometimes, if someone isn’t responding to follow-ups, it’s worth it to offer them an out. Let them know that if they don’t want us to contact them anymore, they can say so.
And for the few who get annoyed by your follow up?…Well, you just got a sneak peak as to what it’s like to work with them. You can cut ties now and save everyone a whole lot of aggravation down the road.
“It took me twenty years to become an overnight success.” -Eddie Cantor
“I did stand-up comedy for eighteen years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four were spent in wild success.” -Steve Martin
“I start early and I stay late, day after day, year after year, it took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success.” -Lionel Messi (after his debut match with FC Barcelona’s 1st team on October 16, 2004)
Andrew Bothamley in his wonderful “Art Every Day” Substack, tells the below story about the English painter, John Constable…
John Constable’s name will forever be tied to the English countryside.
With a career almost entirely devoted to depicting the landscape in sunshine, storm, winter, spring, summer and fall (or, indeed, in England’s unique habit for having a mix of all these things in a single day!) . . . the quality that really elevated Constable to being one of England’s greatest ever artist was his ability to paint with such an earthy authenticity.
A strong proponent of “braving the elements”, and painting outdoors – he set a precedent which would later have a massive influence on the ideals of French Impressionism.
And while his most widely famous work is the Iconic “Hay Wain”, which he painted on the banks of the River Stour in 1821 – today, I wanted us to feature one of his earlier Stour Paintings from 1819; because without this work, Constable may well have had a very different fate as an artist.
At the time of painting this work, John Constable was in his early forties and had been a professional artist for just under 20 years. But in all honesty, things were not going all that well.
Financially, he was just about scraping by as a painter of landscapes. Yet, with with every passing year, things were getting more difficult. And increasingly, he was starting to regret a certain decision he had made back in 1802 – when, as a young man, he had turned down quite a lucrative opportunity to become the art teacher at the renowned military college of Sandhurst (then known as Great Marlow College).
At the time, he was convinced that “compromising” with this more secure career path would lead him astray from his single minded “pursuit of truth” as a painter.
But to most people who knew him, this decision was entirely foolhardy. And in fact, a number of his artist peers predicted that “this will be the end of the man”.
Words which, frankly, were starting to seem worryingly prophetic.
Yet still, Constable pushed on with his work. And while knowing that his career as an artist really was becoming a matter of “now or never” – he started making plans for the upcoming Royal Exhibition in 1819.
This was going to be one of his largest works to date -measuring almost six feet in width.
And, frankly, the artist painted with all the intensity of a man who he was determined to go out with a bang if this really was to be his final painting.
But, fortunately, his hard work was about to be rewarded by a change in fortunes.
When the work was finally exhibited publicly. it received high praise; earning Constable a much longed for nomination for associate membership to the Royal Academy.
It was also purchased for a decent sum of 100 Guineas by none other than John Fisher, the Bishop of Salisbury at the time. And soon after this, Bishop Fisher also commissioned the artist to create a second painting too – which led to Constable’s magnificent View of Salisbury Cathedral. (A work we covered here previously)
Thus, after all those decades of hard work, Constable finally became “an overnight success”.
And from the brink of giving up on his career as a painter – he was now about to embark on a series of works which would result in many of his most famous masterpieces.
Although it’s worth mentioning that, for the rest of his life, Constable always remained particularly attached to his White Horse. Hence, in a letter to Bishop Fisher in 1826, the painter said:
“In the life of an artist, there are generally perhaps one, two or three pictures, on which hang more than usual interest.
This is mine”
You never know what will be your “White Horse.” Or if you will ever even have one.
But the only way to find out is to keep going, keep trying, keep making your art.
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” -President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1932 Inaugural Address
The scariest stories aren’t found in movies and books. They are found in our minds.
They are the stories we tell ourselves about why we can’t do something.
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