Onwards!

After finishing Thinking Big, I started reading High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard. It wasn't planned to be an awesome transition, but it was. I feel like Thinking Big helped me work towards overcoming some of the basic blockers I had, such as fear and fleeting feelings of motivation.

Reprogramming your mind to be action oriented really helps reduce procrastination and helps you get things done because when you act first, you don't give yourself time to make a judgement. I've found this to be extraordinarily helpful.

The same type of thinking applies to my practice as an artist. I've told myself in the past, "I need to be in the right state of mind" or, "I need to be inspired to create art". What a bunch of malarky. What a fun word to say. Malarky. What does it mean? Nobody knows.

Recently, I became inspired by Picasso. Not because of his art, but because of his practice. Everyone from Malcom Gladwell to Macklemore have researched and talked about talent and excellence being the result of practice. Brendon Burchard takes the Gladwell approach a step further, and created a roadmap for success based on the data gained from researching high performers.

That's why I think Thinking Big plus High Performance Habits (HPH) should be read in that order. Or Outliers, then HPH. Thinking Big and Outliers are fun to read and provide great examples of high performers and the benefits of action. HPH gives instructions on how to live life like those who experience success and provides fuel for the successful to be more productive and happier. Not as much fun to read.

But it's backed by data, so you know it's good. I wish I could put emojis in here. That would be the ROFL guy. Data is good but also can be misleading. That's a whole 'nother can of worms.

I try to take everything with a grain of salt (it's so weird how many expressions we say without really knowing the meaning. I used to say "play it by ear" for a very long time until my Dad corrected me. Apparently it's play it by year, but I feel like they both work). I love learning about different perspectives, especially ones that are different from my own, because that's what helps me see better. I find it's hard to learn anything about the world when you only hear one side.

It's kinda weird that all the self-help books I've read pretty much say the same thing. But I guess that reinforces the validity of the claims.

I'm finding that the writings of these professional coaches are great advice on how to overcome bad habits you've developed. In my personal journey, I've found that most of these bad habits were learned from K-12 education. These schools didn't just "educate" me on mostly mandatory information, their environments taught me about how to think about myself.

The people in the system of education, ie: the educators, students, and other faculty all play a part in your education. Some might argue that the students have more impact and influence on you than the teachers. This should be considered when educating students.

The negative thoughts I developed about myself were taught.

These negative thoughts have caused so much pain throughout my life. I can't help but think that school should have a greater emphasis on helping young people learn how to learn, learn how to fail, and how to communicate effectively with others. These seem to be universally important skills that aren't part of curriculum, at least where I went to school. Instead, I had to spend years failing algebra and chemistry, and I have yet to call upon the learnings from either class.

Education is broken, and the state of our society is a reflection of that. I'm very interested to see how education evolves as now it seems it must.