The Ripple Revolution (tm)

Posts tagged action

To create a masterpiece, first you need a lump of clay

February 13, 2014 Written by Curt Rosengren

Is trying to do things perfectly getting in your way of doing things at all?

Yesterday I came across a great blog post from Christine Kane where she shares nine tips for overcoming procrastination (not that I need any of those tips, of course…ahem).

Tip #3 was “Agree to do it badly.”

For me, that’s a huge piece of the puzzle for anything I want to do or create. While I’ve done a lot of work on it, my inclination toward perfectionism still rears its head more than I would like.

If I’m doing something new, or creating something (like writing), I constantly have to remind myself that I’m not going to get from zero to masterpiece without creating a lump of clay first.

Thinking about it that way gives me permission to do it badly. Because what’s more important than getting it perfect out of the gate (which inevitably nothing is) is having something to work with, period.

Attaching yourself to the need to “get it right” is a great recipe for either not taking action towards your goals or feeling like an abject failure when you do. It’s a form of black and white thinking that doesn’t take into account this pesky little thing called reality.

Seeking immediate perfection is a little like deciding you want to engage in deep philosophical discourse in a language you have never studied. Insisting on that as an immediate outcome would either a) prevent you from even trying or b) leave you feeling frustrated and inept if you do try. The reality is that you need to go through the ugly and clunky process of being new to the language before you can have any meaningful conversation.

You can’t do what you don’t start, and you’re unlikely to achieve anything when you set yourself up to feel like a failure if you do start.

What goal is the need to get it right preventing you from pursuing? What vision is lying in mothballs because you’re not taking action on it?

Stop trying to create a masterpiece, and give yourself permission to create a lump of clay.

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Taking action
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What is your Dream to Action Ratio?

January 18, 2013 Written by Curt Rosengren

Sitting here this morning doing a mind map about the things that can keep me stuck, I started thinking about my bias for dreaming over action.

I love coming up with ideas. I would be happy sitting in a room for the next ten years with other vision-oriented people scheming and dreaming about how to change the world. It’s fun! And I’m good at it. It’s one of my biggest gifts.

But scheming and dreaming doesn’t do a hell of a lot to actually make a difference, either in my own life or the world around me. Left to my own devices, I would just keep spiraling down the rabbit hole of ideas with nothing much to show for it.

Breathing life into a vision, whether that is the life you want to create for yourself or the change you want to create in the world, requires action.

Do you have enough action in your life? One way to explore that question is looking at your “Dream to Action Ratio.” Think of it this way.

X parts Dream + X parts Action = Realized Vision

If I just did what comes naturally for me, my recipe would probably be 9 parts dream and 1 part action. Not exactly a recipe for success. So I have to be really conscious about how much time I spend with ideation and how much time I spend taking specific, meaningful action towards turning those ideas into reality.

As much as I love dreaming, I suspect a more productive ratio to get to that Realized Vision would be 1 part Dream to 9 parts Action.

And when I say action, I mean action that is clearly moving the needle towards results. It’s easy to get caught up in doing busy work and feel like we’re doing something, when in fact we’re simply shuffling papers from one pile to another.

Someone else, on the other hand, might discover that their Dream to Action Ratio has 1 part dreaming and 100 parts action. Their focus is exclusively about implementing. That’s an incredible gift (I wish I could buy a bottle of it!), but there’s a risk for it to be stale and limiting without the fresh air that dreaming injects into the picture.

How about you? How is your Dream to Action Ratio? Do you need more action? More dreaming?

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Taking action
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Say no to perfection. Evolve instead!

February 15, 2012 Written by Curt Rosengren

The way people perceive me is an important part of my livelihood. People have come to me for the last 11 years because they believe I can help them.

So I always feel some trepidation when I publicly admit that, while I’m really good at what I do, when it comes to my own life and my own path, I’m just another schlep trying to figure it. And that sometimes moving forward means taking imperfect, even blundering steps, doing the best I can and building on it.

But I can’t bring myself to pretend that schlepitude doesn’t exist and let people fill in the blanks with perfection. One of  my biggest beefs with the “self-help guru” set is that, with a few exceptions, they don’t expose that vulnerable side. And that creates an unrealistic picture of what kind of people “make it.”

I don’t just want to teach the path, I also want to model it. And that means being real, not perfect.

I had the value of showing up authentically reinforced a couple days ago by an e-mail exchange with Shannon Noel, a subscriber to the Ripple Revolution newsletter (on a side note, check out her fabulous interiors at www.shannoel.com). Referring to watching my work evolve, she wrote:

I am inspired by both the results that are coming of it AND the ‘finding your way’ part. It is clear that you (and your work) are evolving by giving the best of what you’ve got in the moment, knowing that it will always be incomplete – always evolving … It gives me permission to put out there ‘the best of what I’ve got’ … in this moment … knowing that it doesn’t have to be the ultimate, perfect, exact right thing. It can NEVER be that – it will ALWAYS be evolving – AND this evolution will only happen by giving what I’ve got right now. The ‘someday-better’ version will happen automatically.

I read that and thought, yes! Yes! YES! A million times, yes! She captured it so perfectly, I asked if I could use it in a blog post.

The piece that really summed it up for me was “this evolution will only happen by giving what I’ve got right now.” How often do we perfect ourselves into inaction? How often do we cheat the world of what we have to offer because it’s not quite good enough yet?

Is your desire for perfection keeping you from creating the ripples you have the potential to make?

If it is, just take a step, give what you have right now in this very moment, and let yourself evolve!

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Authenticity, Making a difference, Overcoming obstacles
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