Your job is to create and then put it out there.
It might not get the amount of views you want or it could be loved by millions, that is not something you have any control over.
It’s not your job to try and convince people that your work is good. In fact, you need to learn to be okay with the fact that some people won’t like it.
Focus on creating your work for the people that want it. That might only be a few to begin with but those people are important.
So, today I tried something new in the kitchen that involved shortcrust pastry.
My hopes were high but unfortunately the end result was pretty terrible.
I tried to rectify it but to no avail.
I found myself feeling a little frustrated because it wasn’t a complicated dish and I thought it was going well, until it wasn’t.
But once I got thinking I realised that it wasn’t so bad. I was lucky enough that there was plenty of other food in my house so I didn’t have to go hungry.
And then I moved on to thinking about what went wrong and what I could do differently next time in order to improve the outcome. I could roll the pastry thinner, I could cook the pastry for longer, I could use less egg for the filling or I could follow a recipe properly rather than just for the amount of butter and flour for the pastry.
The bottom line is that I tried something new and it didn’t work out how I had hoped. That’s something that happens a lot in life and I think the issue is that we consider it to be a bad thing when in fact it’s a normal thing.
It’s normal for things to not work out sometimes especially when it’s something you’re doing for the first time. It’s all just part of the learning process. And if you’re willing to try again, then there’s a possibility that things can get better.
There is often a gap between what we want and our actions.
For example you could say that you want to be a writer but you never take up the opportunity to share your work or get feedback.
Or maybe you want to move to a new city but you never look for jobs outside the city you currently live in.
In situations like this, when you’re actions don’t align with what you say you want it’s quite unlikely that things will ever work out.
And maybe you don’t really want the things you think you want but maybe you do.
This is why it is so useful to reflect and check. You might not even realise that if you just make a few small changes you can start making good progress towards the things you want.
There is a time to be open and there is a time to be less open.
It’s important to choose wisely.
Being open with people can be a great way to create understanding and build a connection. But it should also be appropriate to the situation. The openness required to create understanding with a romantic partner and a manager are very different.
Plus, the level of openness is also affected by the boundaries in place by others and also ourselves.
If a client asks how you’re weekend was the boundaries you have in place will ensure the openness is fairly restrictive. But if a friend asked you”re more likely to go into signififcnatly greater detail and divulge information that you may not share with anyone else.
These thoughts about openness and boundaries are nothing new or revolutionary but I do think it’s interesting to think about. It gets even more interesting when you observe the way openness decreases and increases as relationships change. Perhaps as a colleague becomes a manager or a friend becomes a romantic partner.
Often we look at situations and systems that are in place and we hope for better.
We are able to identify there is a gap between where we are and where we want to be.
And even if you have no idea how to bridge the gap, identifying it is the perfect place to begin.
You can then start thinking about how things could be better and what sort of changes should be implemented.
You can start asking useful questions like why certain things are the way they are and what can be done to change them.
Of course it is not solely up to you to make change as it would be impossible for one person to do it all. However, I think a bunch of individuals that are willing to hope for better than what we currently have is exactly what we need.
We need people that are willing to ask the right questions, people that are willing to say maybe we should try something different and most of all people that are willing to act even if they don’t directly benefit.
Often in life the thing causing the most anxiety and frustration is not particularly important in the long term. If you were to assess it in the grand scheme of life and death you’ll probably find that it doesn’t matter as much as you think it does.
We tend to get swept up in how other people feel and what other people will think (in general but mainly towards us). We do this because we are eager to please, want to be liked and we convince ourselves that if we just try hard enough we can control what other people think and feel towards us.
But instead of getting swept up in other people, think about yourself. Have you even considered that what you feel and think is important too?
More to the point, maybe how you think and feel is actually the most important thing.
How you view yourself impacts how you act. How you act, influences how you are perceived.
If you don’t think much of yourself, it’ll show up in your posture the way you speak and the kinds of things that you say.
And in turn you may be perceived as quiet, shy, uninterested, someone who doesn’t care. But maybe you have low self-esteem and maybe nobody taught you to think good of yourself.
Perhaps, even though you haven’t yet learnt how to say it or even show it, you actually care quite a lot.
Sometimes change begins not with action but with a feeling.
Perhaps you find yourself doing something you’ve done for years, something that you usually enjoy but this time it feels different.
And so you have 2 choices. The first is to follow that feeling and the second is to ignore it.
Following that feeling will allow you to go with the tide and become the person that you are developing into.
If you choose to ignore, it means resisting the flow of life. This happens when we are not ready to change because sometimes we feel like we need more time.
But eventually you’ll get bored of not growing and you’ll find ourselves seeking out the very thing you didn’t think you were ready for.
We never truly take advantage of what we have access to because we don’t value free stuff.
How many free pdfs have you downloaded?
How many free courses have you signed up for?
How many helpful free YouTube videos have you watched?
How much of that information have you implemented into your life or made use of?
There is an abundance of free stuff out there but the problem is, we don’t value it. Somewhere in our minds we feel like if it has no monetary price then it is not of value.
And we know that this is true because many of us pay for things that we can get for free.
