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Trust 30 Challenge: Day 7

Edward F. Gumnick — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 04:05:38 +0000

Day 7 of the Trust 30 challenge, which I skipped over yesterday, was suggested by Matt Cheuvront. It’s a long one!

Our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion, we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are parlour soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate, where strength is born.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Next to Resistance, rational thought is the artist or entrepreneurs [sic] worst enemy. Bad things happen when we employ rational thought, because rational thought comes from the ego. Instead, we want to work from the Self, that is, from instinct and intuition, from the unconscious.

“A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. Its [sic] only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.”

—Steven Pressfield, Do the Work

The idea of “being realistic” holds all of us back. From starting a business or quitting a job to dating someone who may not be our type or moving to a new place—getting “real” often means putting your dreams on hold.

Today, let’s take a step away from rational thought and dare to be bold. What’s one thing you’ve always wanted to accomplish but have been afraid to pursue? Write it down. Also write down the obstacles in your way of reaching your goal. Finally, write down a tangible plan to overcome each obstacle.

The only thing left is to, you know, actually go make it happen. What are you waiting for?

In Defense of Rational Thought

This prompt reminds me of everything that I didn’t like about The War of Art. After a lot of useful material about the nature and characteristics of resistance, Steven Pressfield goes completely off the rails in the third section of the book, suggesting that we need to credit gods or angels or Muses as the source of human imagination and creativity. He eschews rational thought in favor of instinct and intuition. That’s a shame, because a little more rational thought might have led to the realization that the human mind—of which rational thought is a small, but inseparable component—is sufficient to dream into being all of the creatures of our stories, including the Muses, angels, and gods themselves.

So I don’t care to follow Pressfield’s lead in rejecting the rational. I don’t know how I’d even go about using my mind that way. The conscious mind seeks out learning and stimulation, collecting raw material for creative work. It may follow the guidance of emotional responses, conditioned tastes, and cultivated interests, and it can apply rationality to the collection process, too, as when we make up our minds to pursue a course of education or read a particular book. We gather all of these inputs, and through processes that are beyond our awareness, unconscious components of the mind catalog, compare, store, and synthesize images, experiences, and words. We dream, we fantasize, we remember, we plan, we imagine, and then one day, we sit down to write. And if everything comes together, maybe we’re “inspired,” and a brilliant story, or a beautiful poem, or a radiant painting spills out of us, seemingly from nowhere.

Once again, I’m afraid that I’ve skirted the point of the prompt. But too many of the premises of the assignment seem flawed. Yes, a child believes the unbelievable…but children don’t produce a lot of great art. The fears that emerge from looking at our goals too “realistically” are fears—products of emotion. Rational thought can be our ally in dispelling fear and going after what we want. We don’t have to give up rational thought to imagine and create great things in our lives.

Trust 30 Challenge: Day 8

Edward F. Gumnick — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 04:55:33 +0000

Day 8’s prompt for the Trust 30 challenge, presented by Corbett Barr:

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

What would you say to the person you were five years ago? What will you say to the person you’ll be in five years?

Forward and Back

To the future me, I’d say, “Well done! I knew you could do it. Even though there were times when it got discouraging, you remained mindful of how much you could achieve in small increments. And now you’re accomplishing things I could only imagine—and things I never dreamed of. I’m looking forward to knowing you.”

To the past me, I’d like to say, “You’re on the right track, so stick with it. Be more patient with other people, though. And save every dime! There’s a rough patch coming, but it won’t last forever.”

[Dear readers: I skipped the Day 7 prompt, but I’ll come back to it.]

Trust 30 Challenge: Day 6

Edward F. Gumnick — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 03:54:42 +0000

Here is the prompt for Day 6 of the Trust 30 challenge, offered by Jonathan Mead:

Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you had one week left to live, would you still be doing what you’re doing now? In what areas of your life are you preparing to live? Take them off your To Do list and add them to a To Stop list. Resolve to only do what makes you come alive.

Bonus: How can your goals improve the present and not keep you in a perpetual “always something better” spiral?

Planning to Live

I’ve had a hard time with this prompt. I’ve put in a lot of time and effort to become a goal-setter, a planner, someone who lives life as consciously and intentionally as possible. If medical science cooperates, I plan to live a thousand years. It’s hard to adjust my time horizon to one week.

When I was a young adult, I was self-indulgent and selfish, always living for payday, chasing every impulse toward instant gratification. Somewhere in my 30s I got more serious. I became more strategic in my approach to life. I started setting goals and making plans. I’ve worked hard to create disciplines that have helped me accomplish the things that are important to me. I’ve lost 110 pounds, sold a house that I didn’t want, established a writing practice, and climbed most of the way toward being debt-free. My to-do list is full of projects and tasks about improvement, about designing my future life—balanced against getting as much joy and satisfaction as I can from the present moment.

Image: Tina Phillips | FreeDigitalPhotos.net

My younger self was chasing after pleasures of a less subtle kind than the ones that interest me now. These days, a lot of my sources of satisfaction are more long-term, deeper, more “big picture.” Big-picture goals take work that you don’t necessarily enjoy in the day-to-day life of the trenches. But that doesn’t mean that obligations that only serve a long-term goal aren’t worth doing. Now that I’m more of a long-range thinker—and doer—I set goals, create projects aimed at achieving those goals, think through the actions that the projects will entail, and then work my way through those actions to get the job done. Is that “preparing to live”? I don’t know. Maybe it’s relishing life on a different time scale.

All of that having been said, I get the point of the prompt. There are tasks we take on every day that are nothing but resistance to living, nothing but running out the clock.

Maybe I have to think about this prompt in terms of clarifying a distinction between “planning for life” and “preparing to live.” I get the gist of it, I think, which is that you can’t spend all your time setting the table—eventually, you should sit down and enjoy the meal. But I guess the thing is…I’m already enjoying the meal. Every day I sit down to enjoy the fruits of my labor: my independent work style, my freedom to set my own schedule, my ability to choose the clients with whom I work, my choices about what kind of work to do. I get to spend time learning every day—and doing all sorts of things that are important to me.

I like where I’m going. Are there things that I do that fall into the category of “preparing to live”? Maybe. It couldn’t hurt to examine my life—and my to-do list—with that question in mind. I’ll have to get back to you.

Trust 30 Challenge: Day 5

Edward F. Gumnick — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 04:23:20 +0000

The Trust 30 challenge prompt for Day 5 comes from Chris Guillebeau:

If we live truly, we shall see truly. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not everyone wants to travel the world, but most people can identify at least one place in the world they’d like to visit before they die. Where is that place for you, and what will you do to make sure you get there?

Perú: Making It Happen

I love to travel, and I can think of dozens, maybe hundreds of destinations I’d be happy to visit. But Perú is the place that calls to me the most loudly. I’ve been captivated for years by the idea of seeing the ruins of the Inca and Nazca civilizations and the cities of the Spanish Conquest, of hiking the spectacular mountain landscapes and exploring Amazon jungles.

Image: Jeff Ratcliff / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

But there are a lot of sites and activities to choose from, and some of the destinations I’d like to visit require reservations made long in advance. I’ll need to be ready for extremes of climate and geography beyond anything I’ve experienced in Europe or North America until now. It won’t be a cheap trip, and I’ll want to budget plenty of time off from my regular responsibilities. So traveling to Perú will take more research, planning, and budgeting than any of my previous trips.

I’ve already taken the first steps. I bought a guide book, started browsing the web sites of tour companies, and I’ve begun collecting links to things I want to see and do. Most important, I set up “Perú trip” as a formal project in the system I use to manage my time and tasks on a daily basis. I’ve created a long list of “next actions” that lead to the day when I will finally board a plane bound for Lima. The goal of this project is so compelling, though, that I don’t expect to have to push myself very hard to keeping taking action. Collecting information, making plans, setting up a budget, and all the other steps required to make the trip real will be lots of fun in themselves!

Believe me: I will get there.

Trust 30 Challenge: Day 4

Edward F. Gumnick — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 04:42:47 +0000

Today’s prompt from the Trust 30 challenge, suggested by Jenny Blake:

That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? … Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Identify one of your biggest challenges at the moment (ie [sic] I don’t feel passionate about my work) and turn it into a question (ie [sic] How can I do work I’m passionate about?) Write it on a post-it and put it up on your bathroom mirror or the back of your front door. After 48 hours, journal what answers came up for you and be sure to evaluate them.

Bonus: tweet or blog a photo of your post-it.

Post-It

Here’s mine:

Trust 30 Challenge: Day 3

Edward F. Gumnick — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 04:53:58 +0000

Here is today’s writing prompt from the Trust 30 challenge, offered by Buster Benson:

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

The world is powered by passionate people, powerful ideas, and fearless action. What’s one strong belief you possess that isn’t shared by your closest friends or family? What inspires this belief, and what have you done to actively live it?

Evidence Trumps Belief

I am an agnostic, an atheist, an secular humanist, an empiricist, a methodological naturalist—a skeptic of almost anything beyond the scope of what humans can know by way of the scientific method. I reject the notion that humans can add richness, meaning, or purpose to life by grasping at a belief or set of beliefs. I consider “faith” and “superstition” to be synonymous, for all practical purposes—unproductive ways of thinking at their best, dangerous fictions at their worst.

But it seems to be human nature to want to believe things, and to want others to share your beliefs, so my orientation toward disbelief is not particularly popular among my friends and family. No one gives me too hard a time about my lack of faith, but one devout Christian friend has opined that I can’t really be an atheist because I have “too good a heart.” If I think about it too much, that feels like an insult to my intelligence and judgment, so I chalk it up as the kind of ignorance that’s bound to flow out of “the evidence of things not seen.” Her beliefs about me are just another part of her fiction, and I take comfort in the thought that facts—deduced from the reality of the natural world—are what’s true, no matter what anyone chooses to believe.

I try to “live my unbelief” by taking a skeptical view of anything that’s presented to me as truth. I try to look for multiple, independent lines of evidence before provisionally accepting a new idea as a fact. I try to recognize my own cognitive biases, to examine my assumptions, and to listen to points of view that differ from my own—unless they ask me to take anything on faith. Naturally, I fall into the same emotional traps and habitual responses to which all of us are subject. But I pay attention, I remain curious, and I hope that I’m always learning. And I trust the centuries of evidence that science and skepticism are the only reliable route to knowledge.

Trust 30 Challenge: Day 2

Edward F. Gumnick — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 04:20:44 +0000

Tortured Metaphor

Today’s writing prompt from the Trust 30 challenge is by Liz Danzico:

Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. The force of character is cumulative.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

If “the voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks,” then it is more genuine to be present today than to recount yesterdays. How would you describe today using only one sentence? Tell today’s sentence to one other person. Repeat each day.

Here’s how my day went, in one brutal sentence:

The morning forecast predicted a calm, bright day with just one scheduled appointment and only a slight chance of sudden deadlines, but by mid-afternoon, a warm, moist mass of chaos moved in off the Gulf and collided with local conditions: unrealistic client expectations, technical difficulties, and an uncooperative vendor; the confluence produced a flash flood of incomplete deliverables and frustrated long-term objectives until an early-evening nap cleared the air.

Trust 30 Challenge: Day 1

Edward F. Gumnick — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 04:59:33 +0000

15 Minutes to Live

This morning’s e-mail bought an intriguing announcement: The Domino Project, Seth Godin’s new book-publishing initiative, launched Trust 30, a 30-day writing challenge that invites participants “to reflect on your now and to create direction for your future.”

I’m always eager for a new game to shake up my writing routine, so I signed up for Trust 30. The first prompt, from Seattle-based writer Gwen Bell, went like this:

We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

You just discovered you have fifteen minutes to live.
1. Set a timer for fifteen minutes. 
2. Write the story that has to be written.

I practice timed-writing exercises nearly every day, so knowing that 15 minutes was ticking away might not have produced the same sense of urgency in me that it creates in writers who don’t routinely use a timer. Still, trying to pretend that these were my last 15 minutes was an interesting exercise. I made four tries. Each time, I wasn’t happy with where the piece was going, so I stopped, restarted the clock, and tried a different approach to the prompt.

My first take was an attempt to offer some kind of life lesson to posterity. It was panicky, self-conscious, and obsessed with the idea that I should have started that project at an earlier time. The second was a love letter and a plea for forgiveness. The third was the fictional last testament of a man condemned to death for his unpopular lack of faith. The fourth was a list of secrets that seem too juicy to die with me.

They’re all unfit to publish for different reasons, but maybe I’ll find a place for the ideas in future writing projects.

Incompleat Iconoclast Revisited

Edward F. Gumnick — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 05:35:43 +0000

It wasn’t easy blowing all the dust out of my fiction-writing apparatus, but in compliance with my August pledge, I’ve resumed adding content to my creative-writing blog. Check out Exercise #28: Movie Star on Incompleat Iconoclast.

The August Project

Edward F. Gumnick — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 04:53:38 +0000

Here’s the plan for August blogging:

Monday and Thursday:
Post to Community & Conversation.
Tuesday and Friday:
Post to Working or Playing?.
Wednesday and Saturday:
Post to Incompleat Iconoclast.
Sunday:
Rest? Oh hell no. I’ll post something here. Tune in next Sunday to find out what.