I’m here at the head of another week. I’m a typical creative. The day lays before me and my greatest task is deciding which of my plates and projects I want to spin.

Some may be far better organised than I am, and have things neatly planned out months ahead. God bless that person, I need them to lay hands on me and impart some of that amazing!

It would be easy for me to slap myself up and get on own case for not being more awesome. After all are we not all supposed be superhero’s nowadays? Juggling business, life, and family like a rock star?

Or does that only happen on Facebook and Instagram?

In the down-and-dirty reality of putting the bins out, cleaning up spilled juice, cooking, washing, paying bills, praying, staying fit, and figuring out why-that-thing-is-not-working-as-it-should-do, days can quickly disappear.

Having said all this, I do a lot. I have two businesses up and running and making money, a healthy and happy household, and most importantly of all, a thriving relationship with Jesus Christ.

I must be doing something right I remind myself.

And here’s one of those things that I think is making a difference, at least for me…

Why I Choose To Share The Journey

---

00:00:04.490]
Well, we here at the top of the week. OK, just Monday, Mondays are a busy day for me. I, I run the publishing side to my business and Mondays is generally the day that I going to get books out and hit the publish button and then wait for them to go live so I can advertise them tomorrow and throughout the week. And yes, it tends to be a busy day, but I do I find sometimes, like a lot of creatives, that one of my biggest challenges is just knowing which plate to spin on any given day.

00:00:42.530]
You know, I can I can get up and there are numerous different projects that I can focus myself on and choose to give my time and my attention to. And sometimes it is a matter of kind of kind of just going to one, giving it some TLC, going to another, giving it some TLC or whatever else it may be. But I found it can become quite overwhelming. I know a lot of people in the creative sphere and whether they’re doing that online or offline who are very much ideas, people and also action takers, it can become kind of a little overwhelming sometimes.

00:01:28.070]
And we can fall into that kind of bright lights caught in the caught in the headlights type situation where we’re like there’s so many different options that we don’t know which one to do or which project to pick up at any given time. And, you know, I would love to say that I’m one of these like mega organised people. I would imagine some people may I have the impression that I am or that some people may actually even think that I honestly am quite organised.

00:01:59.840]
I guess to a degree I am. I run a couple of businesses. We’ve got a busy household where home schooling at the moment because of lock down and say there’s a lot going on Jim where we’ve and we’re doing well, you know, so I’m clearly doing something right. But at the same time, I mean, there are lots of things that I could look at and I could say, oh, man, this isn’t working. Why is that not happening?

00:02:29.570]
Why is this not growing or whatever else it may be? You know, there’s all sorts of different questions that you or I may have concerning kind of how things are and how things might or how things should be. But truth be told, you know, I do have to remind myself and I encourage you to do the same thing. You know, you have to remind yourself of the things that are working and like give yourself instead of giving yourself a slap in the head, give yourself a pat on the back and say, well, actually, there are some things that are working really well.

00:03:05.000]
And I want to share with you today very much from just a very practical perspective. One of the things that’s really working for me, and it may be something that you can kind of apply in your context. And that is simply that I’ve chosen to do a handful of tasks, okay, just well, I’ve actually got probably two or three tasks that I do every single day, you know, and I’m not including prayer in that. OK, that’s I don’t see that as a task.

00:03:40.690]
That’s not that is not a duty. That is not a task. That is my life and my joy. You know, I’m the one who benefits from that. I choose to do that willingly and and gladly. But in the kind of day to day practicals of content marketing and creating value and putting value out there, there are a number of tasks that I do every day. Now, there may be others that I could add to this that would certainly enhance my results.

00:04:14.970]
OK, but there are just a handful of things that I choose and I say I’m going to do this every day, OK? And it may be just by every day. Sometimes I do mean five days a week, like work day type tasks. And I choose to give myself options at the weekend. But those workday tasks, because something like if I complete these few tasks, then I win. OK, that’s as far as I’m concerned. Like even if I had, like these grand plans at the beginning of the day and they all go south, it doesn’t happen.

00:04:52.510]
These few tasks are the ones that I kind of say, OK, whatever else happens, I’m going to do these tasks. And as a writer, one of those tasks for me is to write. I write every day and instead of setting myself some grand goal of like and declaration, I’m going to write 5000 words a day or 15000 words a day. And I mean, as noble as that sounds, I know I couldn’t do it, certainly not with my typing skills or lack of them.

00:05:28.880]
So I set myself a task and I set the bar very low. OK, 500 words a day. If I can pump out 500 words a day, I win, OK? And and in that, it actually means that it is something that I can do. It’s something that I can accomplish. It’s something that I can kind of take and and give myself the pat on the back and say, I’ve won the day because I’ve done my 500 words.

00:05:58.330]
Now, very conveniently, a blog post, a decent blog post is approximately 500 words or more. And so I choose blogging as my avenue to fulfil that. And then through that, you know, I then repurpose that content. Some of it will be turned into books. And then every day I also then jump here and do a live presentation, which becomes a video that if I choose to, I can upload into my creative academy that I that I have a membership called the Creative Academy, that other kind of Christian authors and artists entrepreneurs are involved in.

00:06:42.100]
I can sometimes upload it into there. I can I could uploaded to YouTube, etc. In fact, I think YouTube, this already goes out there. So but I also take I take this life. And really what I’m doing is I’m taking what I’ve written and then I just talk about it, just talk about it from my heart, share some of my thoughts around it and say this goes out onto social platforms. And then in the background, if you were to be able to see what’s on my computer screen right now, you would see that I’ve got an audio app called Hindenburg that’s open.

00:07:23.440]
You know, other people might use audacity or logic or something similar or GarageBand. I use something called Hindenburg and that is recording this the audio for this video as this video goes out. Once I complete the video, it’ll be topped and tailed output as an MP3 and that will become my daily podcast. OK, and now, like, nothing complicated, nothing complex, nothing particularly grand or like overly expensive. But those are the tasks that I’ve chosen to do every day.

00:07:58.450]
I will write, I will go live and I will upload a podcast. If I do those three, I I’ve won the day. Yeah. And anything beyond that, like is just cream on the cake. And obviously there are other tasks that I need to do, but I don’t. I’ve stepped. Away from, like, lambasting myself for not getting done all of the things that I think I should be able to do in just such a short period of time, like we have this weird idea that a day is somehow this elastic.

00:08:41.690]
Entity into which we can cram like. 26 hours worth of activity into just the eight or nine hours that we can actually apply ourselves to do it. Yeah, and that’s just like that’s a losing equation. Yeah, I much prefer to kind of rather than setting I’m a big dreamer. I believe in big dreams, but I actually operate according to small goals. I believe big goals just tend to come and beat us up. So every big goal that I set, every big goal that I have gets kind of sliced and diced into small bite sized pieces that I can chew on and complete in a very, very finite amount of time during my day.

00:09:37.530]
And so that means that my day kind of stacks up with wins my day stacks up with. I did that check. I did that check. I did that check. And it’s also one of the reasons that I have a philosophy of sharing the journey as opposed to kind of reaching the the the mountain peak and speaking from the mountain peak, like like I’ve made it, you know, like here I am. Here is the accumulated wisdom of the ages going out to the world.

00:10:14.910]
You know, it’s not like that, is it? You know, I’ve chosen that it is much easier to kind of share my stumbling forwards rather than wait until I reach some peak of perfection and then feel as though I’m in a position to kind of render help to other people. It’s really the difference between being way over on the mountain top somewhere and, you know, like saying come this way, come hither, you know, hear my wisdom.

00:10:47.940]
And just like recognising, well, no, I’m not actually there yet and I may actually never get there, who knows? But what I’m going to do is I’m going to wherever I am on this path toward fulfilling whatever creative call and destiny God has placed on my life. I’m going to reach my hand back. I’m going to take the hand of the person just a few steps behind me. And I’m going to help them up. I’m going to help them take their next step.

00:11:17.640]
I’m going to help them reach their next kind of milestone or plateau where they can then kind of continue their journey. And, you know, this sharing the journey type philosophy is a great deal less demanding, a great deal less stressful, because at any given point, we’re not thinking, oh, man, I have to have everything together. I have to have all of my ducks lined up and everything in place before I write a book or create a course or go leave or begin a blog or whatever, whatever kind of means, whatever vehicle of value you might choose.

00:12:01.350]
You know, we don’t have to reach some pinnacle before we actually begin to step out and begin to add value to other people. You know, this is really like a Sherpa style journey that we’re on. And you can be the Sherpa, you can be the shepherd that helps someone else take their next step. And as well as we all engage in that kind of generous, generous walk and generous life, there’ll be someone else ahead of us whose hand we can reach out and we can get some leverage up to our next place and next step and our next kind of plateau of understanding and comprehension that will equip us for the next stage.

00:12:50.490]
And so I just want to encourage you and ask you really, you know, you know, I really I want to be the person who’s there holding the rope for the next person coming up the hill. You know, I want to be someone who is ready to hold the rope and give it a good give it my strength to help someone else come up. And I believe that one of the best ways to do that is these small daily tasks that become your habit, small daily tasks that become like non-negotiable.

00:13:28.710]
Whatever else happens, even if nothing else happens, I’m going to get this done because this is important, I believe, for my destiny. OK, whatever that may be, it’s going to look different for you than it looks for me. And and so, you know, I want to ask, you know, what’s your daily. Yeah, what’s your daily task, you know, not your massive, big, hairy, audacious goal that’s like just seems like an impossible dream.

00:13:57.690]
What is it once you put it through the slicer, what is it once you put it through the mince machine and just take that little bit, okay. And say, okay, these are the daily. Tasks that I can do that will lead me towards the fulfilment of that big, hairy, audacious, whatever else, whatever it may be. Yeah. And when you begin to nail those down, when you begin to put them in place, I tell you you will be amazed at the progress that you make.

00:14:32.940]
Some people, like I say, get caught in the headlights. They get caught in this. Over by place of overwhelm, because they have like this mountainous dream, desire, vision and goal way out ahead of them, but they never actually just track back and say, well, you know, fair enough. You know, I may not be there yet, but I am here. What can I do right here, right now, today? And what could I do each day?

00:15:05.800]
What can I do every day? What what individual tasks could I undertake each day that will keep my kind of momentum and keep my my direction moving forward toward whatever the big goal is. And the truth is, you know, we can have all of these ideas and big goals and visions, etc.. Now, I’m a I’m a visionary person. I believe in that. But the truth truth is, we just never know what’s coming, OK? We never know what kind of challenges are going to sideswipe us or what discoveries we are going to make along the way that really just kind of demand or encourage us to pivot into something else.

00:15:58.030]
Yeah. And so understanding that each part in each leg of the journey has its own nature, has its own challenges, has its own benefits and and things that you will do and things that you will learn. But, you know, although we have an idea where we might be going, we may be surprised along the way to discover that, you know, the mountain top that we were aiming for actually is not where we want to go or where we’re destined to end up.

00:16:29.510]
After all, maybe it’s some other place of influence. And I like I never, ever, ever, ever imagined that I would go into business. And yet I get a lot of satisfaction out of building a lifestyle business, out of building a like a value adding business that helps other people. I’ve gained tremendous satisfaction from that. And yet, like back in the day when we were out in the trenches, planting churches, pastoring churches, preaching on the streets, all of that good stuff, I wish I could never have really even pictured this mountain.

00:17:10.450]
But as we’ve taken our journey, you know, you take your journey and you kind of go up the incline, you get to a certain point and suddenly you can see the vista opens up further and you see, wow, there’s actually a range of peaks here. There’s there’s actually more than I even envisioned. There’s more possibilities and opportunities than I’d originally understood. And who knows where the Holy Ghost will take you. And that’s why I encourage you, you know, don’t get so caught up on this is the outcome that must happen for me to be fulfilled or satisfied or to walk and stand in my destiny instead, just to understand that man, the journey is to it, you know, and understand what I’m saying here.

00:18:00.430]
The journey is the destination. You are right where you need to be right now. And right now there are actions that you can take today, tomorrow, the next day that are going to keep moving forward until you see more, until you experience more, until you can can handle more and take a hold of more. And in that OK, part of that process is also being willing to turn around, put your hand behind you and look for someone else and say, hey, I’ve taken that step.

00:18:39.310]
I’ve taken that step that you are looking to take. I’ve I’ve climbed that part of the mountain. Let me give some of my strength. Let me give give you some leverage from what I’ve learnt and let me help you to fulfil what God has put in your heart. And I can promise you, as you give, it will be given unto you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over. Well, thanks for listening. Hopefully it’s been an encouragement to you today.

00:19:13.360]
If you want to connect any further, you can do so through my website at Davidleemartin.com. Have a great day.