Here's what he said:
Reject the tyranny of being picked: pick yourself
Amanda Hocking is making a million dollars a year publishing her own work to the Kindle. No publisher.
Rebecca Black has reached more than 15,000,000 listeners, like it or not, without a record label.
Are we better off without gatekeepers? Well, it was gatekeepers that brought us the unforgettable lyrics of Terry Jacks in 1974, and it's gatekeepers that are spending a fortune bringing out pop songs and books that don't sell.
I'm not sure that this is even the right question. Whether or not we're better off, the fact is that the gatekeepers--the pickers--are reeling, losing power and fading away. What are you going to do about it?
It's a cultural instinct to wait to get picked. To seek out the permission and authority that comes from a publisher or talk show host or even a blogger saying, "I pick you." Once you reject that impulse and realize that no one is going to select you--that Prince Charming has chosen another house--then you can actually get to work.
If you're hoping that the HR people you sent your resume to are about to pick you, it's going to be a long wait. Once you understand that there are problems just waiting to be solved, once you realize that you have all the tools and all the permission you need, then opportunities to contribute abound.
No one is going to pick you. Pick yourself.
Hear, hear! I couldn't agree with Seth more.
And you don't have to make a million dollars or reach 15,000,000 people. You can do very well on a much smaller scale and pay your rent, gas up your car and never miss a meal. With the gifts we've gotten from the wonderful techies behind the Internet and their zillion programs (which I praise every morning when my computer starts humming) it gets more possible every day.
Seth has walked his talk from the beginning, and I can testify that he is right: Pick Yourself.
(If you want to know exactly how you might do that, I'm about to figure out how to do impromptu free Idea Parties on Facebook and we can find out anything! Don't go away.)
Showing posts with label Seth Godin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Seth Godin. Show all posts
Monday, March 21, 2011
Sunday, February 28, 2010
I disagree with Seth Godin about Genius and Lizard Brain
I'd like to disagree with this statement by Seth Godin in yesterday's blog:
When the lizard brain kicks in and the resistance slows you down, the only correct response is to push back again and again and again with one failure after another. Sooner or later, the lizard will get bored and give up.
Much as I love Seth Godin, and have for many years, I think he's got this one wrong. There's no point and a lot of wasted effort in pushing back at what you call Lizard Brain. Save the calories and let the synapses rest. We're programmed to crash after a high as a way of keeping us out of danger and letting us build up some energy.
Here's what I have concluded over my years of thinking on this subject:
Excitement (caused by inspiration) is half fear and half joy. An idea hits you like lightning. It's fabulous. (I do believe it's definitely, by any definition, a flash of genius, but it's available to everyone.)
First you get high on the joy, then, when you get too high for safety (according to your survival mechanism) and you crash. Then you usually give up. I agree you shouldn't give up, but I see the process and the solution differently.
I see excitement as having 3 stages and no one seems to mention the third. (It's not a return to the excitement.)
Phase One: you're on a real high and when you're high, it's like being in love. When you're in love, you're a genius. You can see, hear, smell, understand what no one else can. That's why no one else understands that your newborn baby the most beautiful baby that has ever existed. You're not crazy. You can actually see details that they miss. And, because you're not in love with their babies, they look ordinary to you. Nature is no fool. She's got survival down pat.
In Phase One I advise all my readers/listeners/audiences to write down each and every detail, not in notes, diagrams or outlines, but in English, in long declarative sentences that explain how you came to each conclusion. You'll need to understand them later.
Phase Two: You got too high. Fear trumps Joy. Your primitive survival mechanisms respond to fear with a great mechanism designed to make you safe: a micro-depression.
You experience it as a crash. And when you crash, you have all the attendant frills of any 'real' depression: you lose energy, you lose interest, and you no longer calculate in action terms, or in the present at all. You feel all knowing about the past and the future. You feel old and wise and start to speak in terms like 'never,' 'always,' and 'how could I have been so blind?' 'It has always been so. It will ever be so. Those who hope are fools." Etc.
That's what some call Lizard Brain. That's where some say you must make yourself become positive again. I strongly advise against that. Fighting nature isn't smart. You, Seth Godin, thankfully, don't ask us to try to rearrange our brains and force positive thoughts.
But you do say to battle this phase. And that's where we disagree again, and most importantly.
At Phase Two of excitement, the crash, I advise everyone to give in. Relax. You feel stupid? Call yourself stupid and despise happy, excited people for not realizing that life sucks. Lay about watching disgusting TV shows and eating crackers in bed. Bathe less.
When you've gotten bored with Phase Two you will move into the most important phase of all. When your energy begins to build up a little, self pity, though enjoyable at first, becomes tiresome. That's when you get up and take a shower, and, if you're like most of us, you try to maintain the micro-depression brand of wisdom so you'll stop getting excited about things.
Fortunately, that never works, but what usually happens instead is that you wait until you get excited about another idea and go through the process over again.
But you're not finished with the genius idea you had in Phase One. Starting to feel normal is actually part of the process:
Phase Three You've gone through two of the three phases of excitement and now it pays off. You hit pay dirt. Phase Three is where you lay out a plan and roll up your sleeves -- without the high, without the crash, but with the clarity and steady energy that makes things happen.
You won't have that energy unless you collapsed when you were supposed to.
Now you can dig up those carefully written, completely understandable notes you wrote in Phase One and read them in sober daylight, without a negative bias, without heart-banging excitement.
Because Phase Three is where all the work actually gets done. It's always been like that: slow and steady. The Genius is gone. the Hopeless One has recovered, and the Intelligent Hard Worker has returned.
And you'll get there sooner if you value the first fabulous insights (aka 'genius insight,' 'inspiration') enough to properly record them and you don't wear yourself out battling Lizard Brain.
My two cents.
When the lizard brain kicks in and the resistance slows you down, the only correct response is to push back again and again and again with one failure after another. Sooner or later, the lizard will get bored and give up.
Much as I love Seth Godin, and have for many years, I think he's got this one wrong. There's no point and a lot of wasted effort in pushing back at what you call Lizard Brain. Save the calories and let the synapses rest. We're programmed to crash after a high as a way of keeping us out of danger and letting us build up some energy.
Here's what I have concluded over my years of thinking on this subject:
Excitement (caused by inspiration) is half fear and half joy. An idea hits you like lightning. It's fabulous. (I do believe it's definitely, by any definition, a flash of genius, but it's available to everyone.)
First you get high on the joy, then, when you get too high for safety (according to your survival mechanism) and you crash. Then you usually give up. I agree you shouldn't give up, but I see the process and the solution differently.
I see excitement as having 3 stages and no one seems to mention the third. (It's not a return to the excitement.)
Phase One: you're on a real high and when you're high, it's like being in love. When you're in love, you're a genius. You can see, hear, smell, understand what no one else can. That's why no one else understands that your newborn baby the most beautiful baby that has ever existed. You're not crazy. You can actually see details that they miss. And, because you're not in love with their babies, they look ordinary to you. Nature is no fool. She's got survival down pat.
In Phase One I advise all my readers/listeners/audiences to write down each and every detail, not in notes, diagrams or outlines, but in English, in long declarative sentences that explain how you came to each conclusion. You'll need to understand them later.
Phase Two: You got too high. Fear trumps Joy. Your primitive survival mechanisms respond to fear with a great mechanism designed to make you safe: a micro-depression.
You experience it as a crash. And when you crash, you have all the attendant frills of any 'real' depression: you lose energy, you lose interest, and you no longer calculate in action terms, or in the present at all. You feel all knowing about the past and the future. You feel old and wise and start to speak in terms like 'never,' 'always,' and 'how could I have been so blind?' 'It has always been so. It will ever be so. Those who hope are fools." Etc.
That's what some call Lizard Brain. That's where some say you must make yourself become positive again. I strongly advise against that. Fighting nature isn't smart. You, Seth Godin, thankfully, don't ask us to try to rearrange our brains and force positive thoughts.
But you do say to battle this phase. And that's where we disagree again, and most importantly.
At Phase Two of excitement, the crash, I advise everyone to give in. Relax. You feel stupid? Call yourself stupid and despise happy, excited people for not realizing that life sucks. Lay about watching disgusting TV shows and eating crackers in bed. Bathe less.
When you've gotten bored with Phase Two you will move into the most important phase of all. When your energy begins to build up a little, self pity, though enjoyable at first, becomes tiresome. That's when you get up and take a shower, and, if you're like most of us, you try to maintain the micro-depression brand of wisdom so you'll stop getting excited about things.
Fortunately, that never works, but what usually happens instead is that you wait until you get excited about another idea and go through the process over again.
But you're not finished with the genius idea you had in Phase One. Starting to feel normal is actually part of the process:
Phase Three You've gone through two of the three phases of excitement and now it pays off. You hit pay dirt. Phase Three is where you lay out a plan and roll up your sleeves -- without the high, without the crash, but with the clarity and steady energy that makes things happen.
You won't have that energy unless you collapsed when you were supposed to.
Now you can dig up those carefully written, completely understandable notes you wrote in Phase One and read them in sober daylight, without a negative bias, without heart-banging excitement.
Because Phase Three is where all the work actually gets done. It's always been like that: slow and steady. The Genius is gone. the Hopeless One has recovered, and the Intelligent Hard Worker has returned.
And you'll get there sooner if you value the first fabulous insights (aka 'genius insight,' 'inspiration') enough to properly record them and you don't wear yourself out battling Lizard Brain.
My two cents.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
