Take Aim, Even Badly

When I talk to people about doing the Future Authoring program, they often put it off. And it's not surprising because it's hard. And... But it's more than that. They think, well, I don't know how to write. I'm gonna do a bad job. I don't really like assignments. I'm going to have to do it perfectly. I need to wait till I have enough time. And like one of those is enough to stop you cold, and all five of them - you're just done.

And so I tell people: Do it haphazardly, a tiny bit at a time and badly. Because you can do that. I tell my students when they're doing their thesis, master's thesis, write a really bad first draft. And then we have a little conversation about that because they don't think I mean that. Because it sounds like a cliché in some sense. It's not a cliché. It's not a cliché at all. It means... You're a terrible writer.

But if someone put a gun to your head and said: "You have to have your hundred-page thesis done by next Monday or I'll shoot you, but I don't care how terrible it is". You would sit down and write it. And the thing is - then you have it! Right, then you have something and then you can fix it. You can iterate and fix it - that bad first draft. That's the most valuable thing. And so that's what you need. You need a bad first draft of yourself.

And there's an idea that Jung developed about the Trickster and the Jester, the comedian, right, that the Trickster is the precursor to the savior. That's one of the things I learned from Jung. It was just... It's so unlikely you'd never think that. It's so amazing that that might be the case, but the... satirical and the ironic and the troublemaker, that - the comedian - the fool - the fool is the precursor to the savior. Why? Because you're a fool when you start something new.

And so if you're not willing to be a fool, then you'll never start anything new. And if you never start anything new, you won't develop. And so... The willingness to be a fool is the precursor to transformation. And that's the same as humility. And so if you're gonna write your destiny, you can do a bad first job. You're gonna get smarter as you move forward. That's the thing.

It's that - so something beckons to you. That's what happens here. Maybe the star that Geppetto wished on was the wrong damn star. But at least it was a star. Right? At least it was in the sky - at least it moved him forward. And so you say in your life... Well, something grips you and... and fills you with interest and you think, well: "Should I do that?" And the answer is: "If not that, then something."

What if it's a mistake? It's a mistake! Rest assured. What do you know? You're gonna stumble around, right? And what's gonna happen is this. You're gonna move to - you're gonna not stay in stasis. You're not gonna wander around in circles. And I see people like that. They say, well, I never knew what to do. And now I'm 40. It's like: "That's not so good." That's not so good.

And you might say, well... And there is a literature too that suggests that people are a lot more unhappy when they look back in their lives about the things they didn't do than they are about the mistakes they made while they were doing things. And so that's really worth thinking about too because there's redemptive mistakes. A redemptive mistake would be a mistake that you make when you go out and try to do something. And no... You actually, you think, okay. I'm gonna try to do this. And you're not good at it. You make a bunch of mistakes.

It's like: "What's the consequence if you pay attention?" It's you're not quite so stupid anymore. That's the thing. You've been informed by your... by the results of your errors. And so what happens is... You... you follow the beacon, you follow the light. And... and you're blind! So you don't know where the light is. It's dimly apprehended only, and you're afraid to follow it.

But you decide to take some stumbling steps towards it. And as you take stumbling steps towards it, you become illuminated and enlightened and informed. Because of the nature of your experience. Because you're pushing yourself beyond where you are and you're going into the country that you have not yet been in. And you learn something.

And so what happens then is that the star moves. You move ten feet towards it. You think no, that's not right. I didn't get it right. It isn't there. It's actually there. And so then you see it somewhere else and you shift yourself slightly. And you move forward, and that's what happens - as you continue... as you change, the thing that guides you forward moves.

Right. It's like God in the... in the desert in Egypt. The pillar of light you're following. It's moving! It's not a permanent thing. You move towards it - it moves away. It guides you forward. And so you say, well: "Is what I'm aiming at paradise itself?" And the answer to that is: "No!" Because what do you know? You couldn't see paradise if it was right in front of you. But you might get a glimmer of it.

And so you move towards it and you grow. And then... The next time you open your eyes, you see a little bit more clearly. And that's what happens. Is... that just happens over and over. Right? It keeps moving. And so you move like this. But the thing that's so cool is that all those zigs and zags, you say, in each of those zags and zigs is a catastrophe.

I hit a wall, my God, and then I had to die a little bit and I barely got back up. It's a Phoenix transformation at each... At each turn. And it's painful. But the thing is that even though you've traveled 20 miles, let's say, on that road and you've only moved 3 miles forward - you've moved three miles forward! Instead of falling backwards, because that's the thing too.

If you stand still, you fall backwards. You cannot stand still because the world moves away from you if you stand still. And there's no stasis. There's only backwards. And so if you're not moving... forwards, then you're moving backwards. And that's... more... More of the underlying truth of the Matthew principle: "To those who have everything more will be given. From those who have nothing everything will be taken."

It's a warning. Do not stay in one place. Well, as you zigzag maybe then... Maybe the cataclysm of each transformation starts to lessen. There's not so much of you that has to die with every mistake. And maybe you end up oriented at least reasonably properly. And if you were sensible, that would have been your trip, but it wasn't. Right? It's that.

And perhaps it's a lot worse than that. Perhaps there's no shortage of backtracking. But it doesn't matter because as you stumble forward, you... illuminate and inform yourself. And perhaps that's partly because the world is made of information. And if you... encounter it and tangle with it, then it informs you. And then you become informed. And then you're information. And then you're ready.