However, it is sometime between the last two phases that we get caught in a sort of plateau: We do the task often enough, but our expectation of how we should perform is still miles away from how we think it should be. It is what Ira Glass calls the “creative gap,” the point at which most people give up.
“For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit….If you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it's normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
The difference between the people who persevere to see that their work rises to their standard and the people who toss in the towel is not one of sheer, unprecedented talent. It’s just a matter of having the (often uncomfortable) commitment to keep growing.
If you don’t have the desire nor the ability to push past the plateau, then an exodus is a means of showing you that there’s something else better suited for you. If you do, it means you must eliminate the unnecessary details, work with your current threshold for self-control, and keep going.
Getting unstuck is realizing that you were never stuck in the first place; you only stopped to ask yourself, “Is this what I’m here for?”
11 Abdi, Hervé; Fayol, Michel; Lemaire, Patrick. “Associative Confusion Effect in Cognitive Arithmetic: Evidence For Partially Autonomous Processes.” European Bulletin of Cognitive Psychology. 1991. Vol. 11. No. 5
26
THE ONE QUESTION
to ask yourself
IF YOU’RE TIRED
of fighting for
SOMEONE’S LOVE
We talk a lot about how to get love.
In fact, we talk about it incessantly. How to land a date, turn someone on, find a boyfriend, make yourself respected, admired, seen as successful. We talk about how to convince someone to commit, to get married, to take us out again. All of these things are the ways try to manipulate the love that people give us.
We talk a lot about how to get love, but we talk very little about how to give it.
We talk about getting love as though it’s a precursor to giving it. As though giving if we aren’t receiving makes us weak. As though no respectable person would keep being kind and loving to someone who didn’t love them back. As though being loving is being devoted, rather than being strong and honest and true and sometimes walking away.
You cannot convince someone to love you if they don’t.
This, above most else, is a rule. Love is not something you “get.” It’s not something someone else has and you must earn. It is not something that exists outside of you. When someone doesn’t want to express affection and love and respect to you, you have two choices: You can try to change that fact (and keep yourself stuck) or you can keep giving love (which will let you move on).
The pain of not having love is the pain of your heart being closed.
The pain of losing love is the pain of your heart closing.
The pain of losing love is trying to change or manipulate someone into thinking or seeing you differently. It is not actually a loss of love, it is a step into delusion and denial. It is the adoption of the idea that you aren’t lovable as you are.
Love is not something anybody can take away from you, though. (It’s not something anybody can truly give you, either.) It’s not something you “get”; it’s something you experience—and that exchange requires an equal and honest and willing contribution on each side. It’s not something that anybody is responsible to do for you, or owes you in a life.
If you go on living as though other people are required to give you love, you will never actually experience it.
If you go on living as though love is something that is always required of you, you will find it in everything. In every stranger on the subway, three-date-long relationship, six-year love affair that almost was “it,” and everything else. All of these different loves become equally important. The pain of losing transmutes into the beauty of having discovered something more important than someone who can promise you forever.
Your life turns into a series of little love stories, all of which teach you how to love better, how to give more, how to be more of yourself, what you like and what you don’t. How to walk away with grace, and respect yourself genuinely, and listen to your intuition.
When you want to pity yourself over how little love you’re getting, I ask you to stop and consider: How much are you giving?
27
BE WHERE YOUR
FEET ARE:
MANTRAS
that will
REMIND YOU
that your life
IS HAPPENING
IN THIS MOMENT
Presence is all we have, yet it often becomes a last priority. We know it’s important to be in the moment, but if it were as simple as saying it, we’d have an easier time doing it. In a world that is constantly demanding more and more of our attention, we can’t forget to give ourselves to what matters most: a glimpse at what’s happening right now. Everything you’ve ever dreamed, wanted, worked for, wished for and are waiting for stems from this moment. What you do now is not just something, it’s everything. Here, 15 little mantras that you can repeat to yourself when you need to re-ground and remember: Life happens in a series of moments, and any other ideas are just illusions that keep you from it.
01. All that exists is what’s in front of me.
02. Potential unrealized becomes pain.
03. The only way to be extraordinary depends on what I do with the ordinary.
04. Little by little.