Join me this week as I show you why you have to start on the idea that you have right now, and you can’t be precious about it being the one or working out. Why do I say this? Because you won’t know the path or wisdom your idea holds until you take action and get feedback.
You’ll learn:
- What stopping and starting projects means
- What dating and projects have in common
- How there’s no such thing as failure (and what failure really means)
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Let’s become a generation of creative women who are examples for the people in our lives of what it looks like to prioritize our work (AND recognize our impact).
x, Jen
Full episode transcript below:
Welcome to today's episode, You Have to Start. You have to start on the idea that you have right now, and you can't be precious about it being the one or working out. Why do I say this? Because every creative I know has a slew of creative projects and ideas they've stopped and started, or they've started, and it's morphed into a new idea. And some have started multiple businesses. Nothing has gone wrong when this happens. And I wanna repeat that. Nothing is wrong with doing this- nothing is wrong with starting and stopping an idea, a project. Nothing is wrong with starting a business and then stopping it, or morphing it into something else. It doesn't mean you're a bad creative. It doesn't mean that you're lazy or scattered or procrastinating or not dedicated enough. And it definitely doesn't mean that you're starting at the beginning every time, or that you're starting over. Here's what's happening- you are running experiments, you're getting data and feedback. You're adjusting a variable, and you're starting again. It means that you're doing it. I want you to think about a real world example. Let's think back to when you were dating your very first boyfriend or girlfriend or partner, maybe you were a teenager like me. Thank God that wasn't the one relationship that you could have, and it had to be the one that you made last, and needed to be everything that you wanted it to be from the outset, right? Let's say that you had the opinion that you couldn't date as a teenager unless you married them and you had no idea who you were, you didn't know what you needed in a relationship. You didn't know what was important to you. You didn't know if you were even compatible. Right, you would've never done that. Maybe you thought about it, maybe you did think about marrying the person you dated as a teenager, but I'm guessing that if you're in your thirties like I am, you're like, thank God that wasn't the one relationship that I had to have, and it needed to work out and it needed to become everything for me. And I don't know about you, but I don't spend every day of my life telling myself that I messed up and I'm never gonna make it because I didn't end up with my very first partner. That sounds really silly to me, and I hope that as you're listening to it, it sounds silly to you too, because it is silly. It's very silly for us to think that our one thing, our first thing, the idea that we have right now, the partnership that you have when you're a teenager, or maybe the partnership you have right now, needs to be the one, and you're not willing to take in any other information. You're not willing to be wrong. You're not willing to learn, and morph as you go along and let things take the shape that they're gonna take. I really like this way of thinking about it, right? Okay. I'm not gonna say we don't try to change people, but like the reality is, is that you don't really change people and you don't know what you're getting into with them until you start spending time with them, until you start learning how you have a rhythm together, and you live together, and if you have compatibility and similar values and so on and so forth. And I believe that creative projects are really similar. We have a relationship with them. We need to feel them out. We need to learn if it's a good fit for us, if we actually are committed to seeing it through, if it's something that we wanna explore. I think that they're very similar and yet we put different expectations on ourself with creative work, putting pressure on ourselves for needing to be the one, it needing to work out. You need to take it all the way or else you don't wanna do it. And I understand that line of thinking because I think culturally a lot of us are conditioned that way, but I don't think you actually agree with it. I know I don't agree with it. And I think if we really think about it, it doesn't make sense to put that pressure on an idea that you have until you've explored it and realized if it's resonant for you or not. And I have some good news for you. With creative projects, they're very different than relationships with other humans in that you can always pick them back up again whenever you want. Should you decide that you wanna start it and then stop it and start on something else, or you got new information or you wanna take a pause? No problem. You can come back to your project whenever you want and just pick it back up again. So I wanna say here, that means that there is no wrong project and there's no such thing as wasted time or wasted effort. Everything can be a learning experience if you let it. I've heard this from clients. This is one of the favorite things they learn in working with me is that there is no such thing as failure. Everything can be feedback if you choose to see it that way, and everything can be a learning experience for you to... I'm thinking of when we're kids and we like to pick up little treasures, right? I used to stuff my pockets with things. So we can see gathering information as that and doing experiments as that. We're just putting stuff in our pockets and learning what works for us, what doesn't, and then we get to apply that wisdom into the next thing that we do and the next things that we do. Right? Because this idea that you have is probably just one- it's a starting point for you. It's probably not the only thing that you ever wanna work on for the rest of your life, although you might be thinking like that right now. But I'm gonna guess it's not the only thing. I am so glad that you are here and that we get to walk our paths together. See you next time. Same time, same place. Bye for now.
