The biggest barrier to an artist is self-confidence. The artist always battles his own/her own feeling of inadequacy.
When I was young on a movie set, I would try to stage the scene and the actors would read it, and they would begin to challenge the text. What I learned, which is a simple idea, is that if you hold out with your vision a little bit the scene doesn’t work immediately. It’s like taking the cake out without letting it be in the oven for more than a minute. Like, oh no, it’s terrible.
So you have to be patient, and then slowly everyone starts to see that the ideas are right, or make the corrections. You have to battle the lack of confidence by giving the scene the chance to solidify.
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. 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. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its 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 awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
“Expectation, as it turns out, is just as important as raw sensation. The build up to an experience can completely change how you interpret the information reaching your brain from your otherwise objective senses.”
brycedotvc:
Close your eyes.
Imagine, if you will, a startup that meets the following criteria:
- Their recruiting process is fundamentally flawed
- Their operations are a mess
- They make engineers pretty much do everything, which leaves almost no time for coding
- They don’t (care) about charity or…
Self motivation is and always will be the most important form of motivation. Driving with your eyes on the rear view mirror is exhausting. It’s easier than ever to measure your performance against others, but if it’s not helping you with your mission, stop.
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I quote Seth Godin a lot, but this one is just to relevant to pass up. I especially love the last line about it being easier than ever to measure your performance against others.
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Leaders are people who go their own way without caring, or even looking to see whether anyone is following them. “Leadership qualities” are not the qualities that enable people to attract followers, but those that enable them to do without them. The include, at the very least, courage, endurance, patience, humor, flexibility, resourcefulness, determination, a keen sense of reality…
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John Holt as quoted on the blog of Caterina Fake
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You don’t need logos. Logos are for insecure people. Just like they were in high school when the cool kids had to wear the right logos on their shirts, shorts and handbags. Show strength & conviction.
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Mark Suster talking about investment rounds with a laundry list of “rock star” investors. I also related to this comment with regards to deciding whether or not to accept my admissions offer to NYU ITP.
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Some choice quotes:
“It’s like the fight club of management: The first rule of the CEO psychological meltdown is don’t talk about the psychological meltdown.”
“Which interpretation was closer to the truth? In the absence of someone to talk to, that’s a question that I asked myself about 3,000 times. As an aside, asking oneself anything 3,000 times turns out to be a bad idea.”
“Tip to aspiring entrepreneurs: if you don’t like choosing between horrible and cataclysmic, don’t become CEO.”
“At times like the above, it’s important to understand that nearly every company goes through life-threatening moments. My partner Scott Weiss relayed that it’s so common that there is an acronym for it: WFIO which stands for We’re F#%ked, It’s Over (it’s pronounced whiff-ee-yo).”
“A Final Word of Advice—Don’t Punk Out and Don’t Quit. As CEO, there will be many times when you feel like quitting. I have seen CEOs try to cope with the stress by drinking heavily, checking out, and even quitting. In each case, the CEO has a marvelous rationalization why it was OK for him to punk out or quit, but none them will ever be great CEOs.”
The most dangerous way to lose time is not to spend it having fun, but to spend it doing fake work…the most dangerous traps now are new behaviors that bypass our alarms about self-indulgence by mimicking more virtuous types. And the worst thing is, they’re not even fun.
I tell my kids, what is the difference between a hero and a coward? What is the difference between being yellow and being brave? No difference. Only what you do. They both feel the same. They both fear dying and getting hurt. The man who is yellow refuses to face up to what he’s got to face. The hero is more disciplined and he fights those feelings off and he does what he has to do. But they both feel the same, the hero and the coward. People who watch you judge you on what you do, not how you feel.
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Cus D’amato, legendary boxing trainer from this post by Ben Horowitz
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