A dream you don’t have to fight for isn’t a dream—it’s a nap. One changes your afternoon. The other changes your world. Keep fighting.
In 2008, I became the first person in history to go to a counselor to talk about Google Analytics.
Technically, there wasn’t a trophy or anything, but I’m pretty sure I hold that title.
Blog traffic became a drug for me and I hit the refresh button on Google Analytics like a junky.
I don’t hate Google Analytics. I think it’s a great tool.
It’s an amazing way for you to measure blog traffic.
But it’s a horrible way for you to measure self-esteem.
We usually think the distance between ordinary and extraordinary is a thousand miles.
When we survey where we currently stand and where we’d like to land, the journey feels massive.
The gulf between who we are and who we want to be seems impossible.
The distance between what is and what could be seems overwhelming.
It’s not though. It’s a lot smaller than you think.
And two cups of yogurt reminded me of that recently.
Week 14 of FinishYear is over! (It’s not too late to join FinishYear with us! Here’s what we’re doing.)
On every Sunday in April, we’ve been sharing e a quick summary of how we did that week on our Finish List.
Here’s my list of goals, and the summary of the progress I made:
1. Make the Quitter Conference awesome for people who attend.
I’ll be updating this one on April 16!
2. I am going to finish reading 12 non-fiction books this year. One per month.
I’m reading book number 4 right now, Imagine: How Creativity Works
3. I am going to finish running the Nashville half marathon Saturday, April 28th in under 2 hours and 10 minutes.
Ran three times this week, including an 11 mile run yesterday. I averaged 9:33 which would put me at my goal, but my left knee started hurting at mile 10. We’ll see how race day goes!
4. I am going to finish writing a new book in 2012.
Didn’t get a whole lot done on the book this week because of vacation and the next two weeks will be tough. I’m speaking 6 times this week and then going to California for four days the week after that. I have an idea on finding some writing time though, I’ll let you know if it works.
5. I am going to finish a box of thank you cards this year as a sign of my gratefulness.
Zero cards, second week in a row.
6. I am going to finish handwriting out the entire book of Proverbs in a moleskine notebook.
I’m in Proverbs 22. Slow and steady. Slow and steady.
That’s my week.
How was your week?
What on your Finish List went well? What on your Finish List needs more attention next week?
A while ago, Michael Hyatt wrote a great blog post titled, “Why I won’t retweet you.” (If you’re not reading his blog, you need to. He is a blogging beast.)
He raised some great points that really got me thinking about how I choose what I’m going to retweet. (I’m @jonacuff on Twitter.) I knew that someday I’d do my own version of that post, and today is that day.
Here are the 5 reasons I didn’t retweet you:
Now what?
Everyone has them, those nagging voices of fear and doubt. They only get loud when you do things that matter. And since we’re going to do a lot of things that matter, we can expect some voices headed our way. So what do we do?
We’re going to beat our voices by doing three things:
1. Write them down.
Voices are invisible bullies, and they hate when you make them visible. The best way to do that is to dress them up with words. To write them down in a simple notebook. (Or at nomorevoices.com) They can’t stand to be documented, because the minute they are, you can see how stupid they are. Lies hate the light of day.
Every time you take a step toward being awesome and a voice gets loud, write it down. Don’t ask, “Is this a voice?” before you do. Just write. Fast and furious and imperfectly. Scribble as many as you can down, and then refute them with truth, like I did with the ones that told me I was too late and already behind. That’s step one.
2. Refute them with truth.
Never argue with a voice. That’s a never ending, tangled discussion you won’t escape from any time soon. Instead, just write down a single sentence of truth for each voice. For example, one Monday morning I got up and heard a voice say, “The week is already ruined. You’re late, you’re already behind. You don’t have enough time.” I wrote that voice down and then refuted it by saying, “I’m late? It’s Monday at 7AM, I couldn’t possibly have more week ahead of me.”
Seeing the truth there helped me remember what liars my voices really are. So after you’ve written one down, refute it with the truth. If your voice says, “No one is going to like your dream,” write down, “No one? My mom likes everything I do, so no one isn’t true. She’ll like it.”
3. Sharing our voices.
Do you know what fear and doubt fear? Community. One of fear and doubt’s chief aims is to make you feel alone. Like you’re the only one who feels a certain way. Fear wants to isolate you and put you on an island. As long as you keep your fear to yourself, no one can tell you the truth about it.
No one can reflect back to you that you are lying to you. No one can admit they feel the same way too. No one can help you see what is really going on. No one can encourage you.
So if you’re going to tell your voices, “Kick rocks, punk,” you’ve got to share them with other people.
Now, this is clearly a pretty easy thing to do. You’re going to want to roll up to Starbucks, order a skinny extra hot Venti Vanilla Latte, and when the barista asks, “Do you want your receipt?” say, “No, I don’t need my receipt. What I need is to stop listening to these voices in my head that tell me there are already too many professional photographers in the world. Am I right? Do you hear voices too? No? Okay, I’ll just pay for my coffee and this Jason Mraz World Music CD bundle then. Thanks.”
It’s not easy to find folks to share your voices with. At the conferences I throw, we do that as an exercise. We do a whole session on it, and the tenor of the room changes as people start to realize they’re not alone and that everyone has the same doubts and fear.
You’ve got to tell your close friends or family or a counselor about your voices. The exact person will be different for everyone who reads this book, but never waste time trying to battle a voice alone. In some cases that voice of fear and doubt will have had a ten-year head start on you. Don’t go it alone.
Those are three quick tips, but if you want some more advice about punching fear in the face, check out my book Start. That’s what it’s all about.
For about a year before I started www.stuffchristianslike.net, I wrote a blog called Prodigal Jon. On my best day, two hundred people showed up and read what I wrote. On the average day, fifty people did. And a lot of those fifty people shared my last name. And were my mom.
It was a quiet blog that, by blogging terms, wasn’t very successful. If the goal of a blog is to grow an active, vocal community, then I was failing. Almost no one read it. And, even though I worked as hard as I could, it stayed roughly the same size. Day after day, month after month, I wrote Prodigal Jon.
At the time, I felt like it wasn’t going anywhere. I felt confused that so few people knew about it. I didn’t see the point of writing to a handful of people on a consistent basis. That didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. But looking back on it, I needed that year. I needed the gift so few of us want but most of us need: the gift of invisibility.
Want to hear a secret? I have a ridiculously easy way to double your productivity at work.
Here it is:
Week 13 of FinishYear is done! (It’s not too late to join FinishYear with us! Here’s what we’re doing.)
On every Sunday in March, we’ve been sharing e a quick summary of how we did that week on our Finish List.
Here’s my list of goals, and the summary of the progress I made:
1. Make the Quitter Conference awesome for people who attend.
More info on this goal is coming April 16!
2. I am going to finish reading 12 non-fiction books this year. One per month.
I started book number 4. I’m still working through Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son,
3. I am going to finish running the Nashville half marathon Saturday, April 28th in under 2 hours and 10 minutes.
Ran three times this week. We’re going to Disney this week, so I’ll have to do most of my runs on the back half of the week.
4. I am going to finish writing a new book in 2012.
I have a deadline for the manuscript now. It’s due June 1! That will be here before I know it, so I’m starting to really crank up the hustle on this one.
5. I am going to finish a box of thank you cards this year as a sign of my gratefulness.
Zero cards written this week, but I’m pretty sure I smiled more at people. So maybe that counts somehow.
6. I am going to finish handwriting out the entire book of Proverbs in a moleskine notebook.
I’m in Proverbs 21. Can’t believe I’m two-thirds done with this one!
That’s my week.
How was your week?
What on your Finish List went well? What on your Finish List needs more attention next week?
Writing a book is simple.
All you do is take a road trip to your soul and document the journey along the way for people who might need to take a road trip to their soul too.
The two sentences above are how I originally wrote this post. Then I talked with my wife about the book I was writing and she said, “Good grief. You’re writing this book like a dog pulling a sled. You’re dragging this important book behind you. You need to write this book like a dog jumping into a pool. Have fun! Otherwise, you’re going to end up with a really miserable book.”
She was right.
If you’re going to write a book or start a business or go back to school, make sure you have fun. The world has enough dogs pulling miserable sleds. Be a dog that jumps in the pool.
I have a hard time paying attention at church.
Why?
Because for more than four years, I’ve written a blog about church.
In order to keep up with the self-imposed content demands of my blog, I had to become a content machine. I had to train myself to see church and worship and Sunday not for what they are, but for what they could be.
I had to develop “blog goggles.”