Simple, Not Easy

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Good morning, friends and Uncommoners! After moving, sickness, and then trying to catch up with my Uncommon life after everything I present here again and will get back to regular postings. Thank you to all of you who send your well wishes and continued to check in these past few weeks!

Today we have a real treat – one of our veteran Uncommoners, Barry Wright, III, is taking the reins and sharing his knowledge and experience one year into his own Uncommon Life. Thanks for your time and wisdom, Barry, I know the whole TLU community joins me in thanking you for your time!

Simple, Not Easy

My name is Barry Wright, III; about a year ago I wrote a guest post for this blog, for this community of people trying to do something uncommon with their lives. Quick summary: I was beginning my senior year of college burned out on my major (math), despite doing extremely well at it and having many opportunities because of it. No, I wanted to get involved in the fashion world, something I have great passion for.

Twelve months later; I don’t have a boutique downtown, or a line through a fashion house, or even and editorial job at a tiny magazine. I have a website. I have one shirt. I have one piece of clothing of my own design.

Today I’d like to talk about why I’m extraordinarily proud of that, why it took so long for me to start, and how you might be able to avoid the same results. Through a few exercises, I’d like to show you that the path is extremely simple, but rarely easy.

Honesty

First, be honest with yourself about what it is you want to do.

I want to design clothing. I want to foster a positive, creative attitude about fashion. I want to create new design ideas through my unique background.

This is fairly straightforward, yes? I want to design happy, interesting clothes! Yet if you look at my website/blog over the past year you see the following:

- For the next three months, the only fashion content was extremely academic/philosophical (interesting material, but completely unrelated to “design happy, interesting clothes!”)

- February through April were better; most of the content was still theory, but I had some of it published in independent magazines, culminating in an actual photoshoot for such a magazine in April.

- Then, I returned to the text and got burned out. It wasn’t what I really wanted to do, and I could no longer maintain it. By mid-May I was beat.

- Naturally, there was a summer-long hiatus from the blog. I posted perhaps 10 times in four months, almost exclusively about non-fashion as I tried to regain momentum and passion for what I was not actually passionate about.

Why did this happen? Why did I spin my wheels, avoiding what I really wanted? I simply wasn’t honest with myself. Yes, I took a step by doing something tangentially related to my desired path, but it was a destructive compromise. Instead of really, truly taking the plunge, I didn’t give up that academic strength (that past achievement). I wasn’t brave enough to leave behind the past success and do what I truly wanted.

Exercise: Write down what it is you truly want to do (now, not necessarily for the next 50 years). This may take 30 seconds, it may take an hour, you may want to mull over it for a day. Then, look at what you’ve spent your time doing the past month. You will immediately know if you are working towards what you want or not. Simple, but the facts may be hard to swallow.

Fear/Failure

It’s very easy to put off our goals, even if it’s not via procrastination. Much of this is fear based. We naturally avoid things we care deeply about doing because in those cases, failure attacks our person at a deep level.

Consider this example; most people utterly fail at the carnival “Whac-a-Mole” game. However, we often greatly enjoy this failure because we have almost no emotional investment in succeeding at it. Our sadness increases with the emotional investment: the guy trying to impress his girlfriend with “Whac-a-Mole” (seriously) will be significantly more devastated when he fails.

Extrapolate this to your deepest goals; to become a doctor, a singer, a teacher, a stuntman, whatever. We’ll consider the doctor example. In order to become a doctor, you have to pass some very difficult challenges, such as getting into medical school. Failing to get accepted to medical is a paralyzing fear. Why? Because it is not simply an abstract failure, it feels like a failure of one’s entire life, one’s entire character.

What happens? People don’t try. They find safer careers (either because failure is less likely or won’t mean as much) as veterinarians, pharmacists, or nurses (of course, some people want to do these things passionately, I’m only referring to those who really wanted to be doctors). Maybe they drop medicine completely. Maybe they put it off as something to do when they’re “more prepared.” Whatever the path, it isn’t the one they really want.

Do not let failure scare you. You must take the power out of failure. Accept and enjoy the fact that you will likely fail many times on the way to success.

Exercise: Find a comical way to represent failure (an ink stamp, a funny sound bite, singing the word “FAIL” in an operatic voice). Then, find something you can fail at quickly; online games are good choice. At each failure, declare the failure proudly and humorously (with a vigorous stamping, unnecessary sound bite looping, or neighbor-annoying singing). Crack up about it! From then on, every time you recognize a failure of your own (serious or otherwise), take the power away with this laughter.

Do

You can always be working on something towards your goals and dreams. If you don’t believe me, spend an hour brainstorming things you do. Ask some friends (or the Google) if you need to. Then, keep that list with you at all times (I find the wallet to be a good location).

The method is simple; do work. The internet is full of complicated advice, step-by-step programs, and “power methods” for building productivity. It is all minutia. Tiny details that probably only matter to the top .001% of all workers. I’ve put some of it out there myself.

Why? Because complicated things are easy; they require a series of small, manageable steps that avoid the elephant in the room. While productivity systems and complicated exercise regiments and blogging about theory instead of doing work might actually require more time and effort, it is empty work. It is work designed to make us feel like we’re accomplishing something. It’s a cold realization to see that you’ve actually accomplished very little the past eleven months.

The biggest “secret” is to constantly assess whether you are doing work that truly contributes to you dreams.

Exercise: Create a reminder for yourself. This can be as simple as a piece of paper taped to the front of your wallet or it can be as involved as your first product. It can be as specific as a craft-specific token (a stethoscope around your neck?) or as general as a verbal reminder: “do.” The important thing is that you place it somewhere where you will see it on a regular basis, constantly reminding you to keep pushing.

Building an uncommon life is not easy. It’s really not. But at the core it is simple. Find what you love, then pursue it directly, constantly, and fearlessly.

Sounds like a plan for the next twelve months.

Thanks for reading.

Barry Wright, III

Tagged as: barry wright, III, uncommon life