Hello! 👋
Here are this week’s three insights that will help you improve yourself:
1. Be shamelessly prolific
As a creator, you spend most of your time worrying about your bad ideas and quickly forgetting about your good ideas.
But the audience tends to only remember your good ideas and quickly moves on from your bad ideas.
Therefore, there’s a huge advantage in learning to be shamelessly prolific. The ability to continually create in the face of constant embarrassment and self-doubt is likely proportional to long-term success.
Put another way: the secret to creative success is pain tolerance.
— Mark Manson (Source)
I don’t intend to make a fool of myself, but if I do, I must be ready to quickly learn the lesson and move on.
You can just take everything as an experiment, like a scientist. She does not take failures personally. Her objective is to try things, find out what works, what doesn’t work, and how to benefit from those findings.
2. Don’t let them define your reality
The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality. Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keeps working.
— Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
Critics are rarely helpful. It will be advantageous to just avoid them.
Be your own critic. Only you can have a sincere desire to improve yourself.
A person making progress, says Epictetus, “keeps an eye on himself as if he were his own enemy lying in ambush.” (Enchiridion 48)
3. The solace of a dying man
My one solace is that I do not submit … I will never be resigned and milky. I will keep my claws sharp and fight to the end.
— W. N. P. Barbellion, The Journal of a Disappointed Man
Looking for encouragement? Above are the words from a man who could have literally died any moment, even while writing those sentences.
If you never yield, you never lose. If you persevere, you increase your chances of success. And if you stick around long enough, nothing can keep you from winning.
Until next time 🖖,
p.s.
I am experimenting to make this newsletter worth looking at, worth reading: As minimalistic & as clean as possible, and full of value.
You can reply to this email if you have any suggestions.
Disclosure: This email contains affiliate links, which if you use and buy something, I will receive a commission without any extra cost to you.