In our last +1, we talked about your Recovery Time.
Pop quiz…
How fast can YOU recover from life’s inevitable glitches?
THAT is one of the most important skills we can ever develop.
To master The Equanimity Recovery Game, we need to KNOW that we will INEVITABLY experience a glitch (or 101) today.
When we KNOW that we will INEVITABLY fall short of our standards of excellence, we don’t freak out the moment it happens.
Like the great golfer who makes a bad shot, we say to ourselves, “Ah. There’s my first (or second or tenth!) bad shot today!”
Then, rather than spiral out in shame and REALLY go off the rails numbing ourselves from the unacceptable lapse in our pursuit of perfection, we simply practice some Targeted Thinking—radically accepting our own imperfections and the challenges of the moment, getting clear on what we want, and then doing what needs to be done.
No drama. No big deal.
Just another day in the philosophical office.
Now…
I finished creating that +1 and then went back to my normally-scheduled AM protocol—finishing reading my notes from my session with Phil.
Then…
I thought of Rick Rubin and his great book, The Creative Act.
And…
I re-opened my Mac and decided to create THIS +1.
So…
Let’s get to work.
First, quick context…
As you know if you’re a fan of hip hop, Rick Rubin is a legendary music producer.
He’s worked with some of the most iconic musicians in the world—from Adele, Tom Petty, Johnny Cash and the Beastie Boys to Jay-Z, Kanye West, and L.L. Cool J.
He’s also the co-founder of Def Jam Recordings and former co-President of Columbia Records.
And, he’s a Transcendental Meditation practitioner who writes with the same lucidity as Yuval Noah Harari whose preferred flavor of meditation happens to be Vipassana.
The Creative Act is the distillation of the wisdom he’s gained working on himself and his craft over the last forty years. It’s PHENOMENAL. I highly recommend it. Get a copy here. Check out our Philosopher’s Notes here.
Now…
Although I didn’t talk about it in my Notes, one of the ideas he shares in the book was about the Beatles. Apparently, when they had an inspiration for a song, they WORKED ON IT IMMEDIATELY and DIDN’T STOP UNTIL THEY HAD A COMPLETE DRAFT OF IT.
I got goosebumps as I typed that in ALL CAPS.
Think of the Beatles.
They have an idea for a song.
And…
THEY CRUSH IT until they have a COMPLETE FIRST VERSION.
They DO NOT have the inspiration, get a little into it, then say they’ll come back to it again.
Why?
Because there’s something MAGICAL in the moment of inspiration and, when you’ve created enough stuff long enough, you KNOW that it’s REALLY hard to capture the FELT sense of awesome of an idea a week later as you look at your notes you made when you were inspired and try to bring it back to life.
That’s why Ralph Waldo Emerson says this in Self-Reliance: “Your goodness must have some edge to it,--else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company.”
And…
That’s why I just hammered this +1.
It’s one of the ways I’ve disciplined myself to create at a reasonably high level for a reasonably extended period of time.
And…
That’s Today’s +1.
Let’s remember Steven Pressfield’s wisdom from The War of Art where he tells us: “Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. ‘I write only when inspiration strikes,’ he replied. ‘Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.’”
AND…
Let’s remember Rick Rubin’s Beatles’ wisdom along with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s door-post as we create the conditions for our daimon to inspire us then respond appropriately when inspiration strikes.
It’s Day 1.
We’re all in.
LET’S GO!
P.S. Check out +1 #819 for Do It Now (Part I) in which we riffed on some John Maxwell wisdom from his great book 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth. Maxwell says: “In 1974 I attended a seminar at the University of Dayton, where W. Clement Stone spoke on the subject of having a sense of urgency. Stone was a business tycoon who had made his fortune in insurance. His session was titled ‘Do It Now,” and one of the things he told us was this: ‘Before you get out of bed every morning, say ‘do it now’ fifty times. At the end of the day before you go to sleep, the last thing you should do is say ‘do it now’ fifty times.
I’m guessing there were about eight thousand people in the audience that day, but it felt like he was talking to me personally. I went home and, for the next six months I actually followed his advice. The very first thing every morning and the last thing before I went to sleep, I repeated the words ‘do it now.’ It gave me a tremendous sense of urgency.”
If you feel so inspired, let’s get our fifty reps in now.
Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now.
Urgency established?
Now what needs to get done?!
Get on that.
Repeat.
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