I’m not good enough yet.

“Do it anyway!”

I’m worried what other people might think or say.

“Do it anyway!”

Most of the people we admire and aspire to become like have one thing in common somewhere in their history.

They did it anyway!

Do It Anyway!

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00:00:02.380]
Well, good morning, my dear creative friends. Today I have been blogging, and every day I try and write the way I figure it, you know, we do what we say we want to be. Yeah, we if we want to be a writer. Well, a writer writes, if we want to be a singer, a singer sings. If we want to be a musician, a musician makes music. And which one of those comes first?

00:00:34.630]
Which one is the chicken? Which one is the egg? I will leave it up to your jurisdiction. But quite honestly, I think that often the action, although the route is in the identity, if that identity never translates into action, it can just it diminishes our sense of purpose. And so there has to come a point in our kind of creative life where we choose to step out and say, OK, instead of just saying that I’m going to be a writer, a singer, an author, a trainer, a course creator or whatever else it may be, we actually have to step out and begin to step into that kind of wobbly world.

00:01:27.820]
Yeah. Of being an amateur, doing things badly until we get good. And I have spent much time. I’ve spent many, many, many happy hours and many unhappy ones in those trenches of training. Yeah. And I encourage you to do the same. You know, whatever the cost, whatever the fee is, whatever the whatever the questions you may have, it’s certainly better to be questioning while you are on the way rather than questioning while you’re waiting to get started, honestly.

00:02:08.650]
And what I was writing about today and what I should want to share today here on the podcast and life is that I would encourage you to do it anyway. We’ve heard that kind of Nike mantra, just do it, you know, that kind of like leap off a cliff and you know that whatever it may be, I’m kind of probably if I had to have a saying, if I had to have like my go faster stripes on my shoes, it may not be quite the Nike take, but it would be do it anyway.

00:02:50.710]
You know, however you feel, whatever fears you’re facing, whatever you lack in knowledge, make up for in imperfect action, you know, because there are so many ways now for us to share our worth and share our ideas and open up the discussion around our creative passions with others that never existed before this generation. You know, we really are part of a generation that has seen an exponential growth in the just the possibilities that are open to us and our ability to take a hold of that opportunity and see what we can make of it.

00:03:38.440]
You know, and it really is a matter of seeing what we can make of it. Sometimes we don’t want to step in or lean in until we have like a triple, triple signed guarantee of some kind. But often that is not going to come. You know, faith really does step out onto the water before it knows that the water’s going to hold you. And I just want to encourage you, you know, that there is a great deal to be said for stepping outside of whatever boat you are presently ensconced in.

00:04:17.570]
And really the digital opportunity particularly has made so much more possible for us than previous generations. You know, there were there were gatekeepers there standing in the way of things not kind of wilfully necessarily. They weren’t kind of you know, you’re not coming in. You know, it was more just a matter of logistics. It was more a matter of the incredible investment that had to be put in up front in order to bring creative ideas and experiments into reality where people could actually consume them and take a hold of them.

00:05:00.890]
Like, the idea of publishing a book generally meant you had to have a print run of several thousand and it would cost money to do all of that, all of the kind of necessary things to make that happen. Whereas today, because we live in a digital economy, we can literally move in and we can have an idea on Monday. We can exercise ourselves fervently for a few days, have it complete by Wednesday and published and selling by Friday and all say, you know, this revolution that has taken place also means that we are no longer limited to our geography, because really, you know, at one time there was just a simple geographic limits that were placed upon us in the number of people we could reach or certainly how easily or quickly or cheaply we could reach them.

00:05:59.900]
Whereas today, you know, when you make that, when you make the most of the and leverage the technology that we now have right at our fingertips, you can literally even right now I am speaking not just here in my, like, modest office in some little suburban town. Yeah. In Burgess Hill in the south of England. I’m actually potentially speaking on the very other side of the planet. Someone could tune in and watch this right now, or they could look at it later and really literally within seconds of me stepping out and choosing to make opportunity for others to engage with what I carry in my heart and the message that I carry.

00:07:01.430]
And that is true for you, too. You know, your content where you’ve crystallised that content into digital products, publications and platforms can go to work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and can be actually ministering and helping and building and encouraging others even while you’re sleeping. You know, literally, is that that that is a reality for us now. And there are so many ways in which we can do it, some to you know, it’s not everyone’s kind of wheelhouse or kind of bag of sweets to jump in front of a camera like this and just talk in the way that I am right now.

00:07:45.800]
For some people, that might be absolutely terrifying. Yeah, and I totally understand that. For others, the idea, just the sheer idea of writing a book seems like a mountainous task that, you know, it would be like Frodo setting off on his way to Mount Doom, the idea of actually having to sit down and write words and then share those words with other people. It would be terrifying, you know, so and then as you say, it may not be that you want to show your face and it may not be that you want to even kind of show off your grammar skills.

00:08:31.220]
Yeah, but, you know. But what about podcasting? You know, would you be able to share your voice in that way? Each of the ways that have been opened to us, just opportunities for us to bring our voice to the table. And your voice is important. Your voice is significant. What you have to say and what you have to share is significant. I recently just published a book of my poems was like a pet project.

00:09:04.460]
It’s something that I’ve enjoyed for many years. We used to run a poetry kind of group in the church that we passed it. And, you know, I’ve put poetry out there occasionally in different on different platforms and at different times. But for some reason, I’d never crystallised it into an actual poetry book. You know, that was it. That was a an exciting and very satisfying thing for me. Whether people bought it or not, whether it’s how people responded to it or not, was in some ways really beside the point.

00:09:40.790]
There is a satisfaction in creating an a satisfaction in putting your work out to the world. And there’s also the reality that once it’s out there, you’ve got like a you’ve got a log of the creative things that God is. Placed in your heart, I love that, I love the fact that, you know, I know in years to come instead of something just sitting on a hard drive somewhere untouched, unused, unrealised, like it would be impossible for it to help, encourage, entertain or bless anyone in that form.

00:10:21.980]
But like giving form to your ideas through leveraging the opportunities that we have with technology right now is just a joyful, joyful thing to do. Like you can. I know that instead of just a few text files languishing on a hard drive, I now have a kind of historical stamp or a historical stake in the ground that no one recognises my worth. I’ve actually been doing it. You say to yourself, man, what I’ve got to bring to the table is worth bringing.

00:11:02.300]
My voice is worth hearing for some people. I’m not saying for everyone, but some people will be encouraged by what I have to say, you know? And so there’s a self acknowledgement there. And there’s also kind of an acknowledgement that you are on a journey, that you are making steps forward. You know, this is not the end of the journey. It’s just one step in the journey. And you being and you being willing to share it with others, I think is an important mindset shift that we’re not waiting until we reach the destination before we actually choose to do something with what God has placed in our heart.

00:11:46.670]
We’ve actually made the decision, hey, I’m in this and I’m just going to kind of come alongside my brothers and sisters who are on this kind of undulating road as we enjoy the highs and suck up the lows. You know, we are in this together. The creative life was never meant to be one that is kind of nice with with a nice little bow on it, with everything perfect. You know, I read the other day in a book I was reading, momentum is messy.

00:12:22.430]
That’s just a fact. Yeah. Momentum is messy. The Bible puts it this way. If there are cattle in the stall, if you got cattle in the shed, there’s going to be some it’s going to be a bit messy. Yeah, but a clean stall, a clean shed means there’s no life in there. I encourage you to share your kind of ideas and share your worth with the world in whatever way fits for your personality, whatever way is most comfortable for you.

00:12:54.530]
But just begin to take those steps and step out. You know, other people are doing it and sometimes we can consume that content and think that somehow they have kind of got there without taking the same kind of tentative steps that maybe you feel you need to take right now. I can promise you that somewhere in that in that history, on that road, they were taking those steps that made them made their knees knock, you know, and say, keep moving, keep moving forward.

00:13:29.000]
No one begins as an expert and being willing to do things badly until we get good at them is really par for the course in our most trades. We recognise that, don’t we? Don’t we understand that there is a level of apprenticeship that needs to take place for us to kind of learn the ropes and become proficient. And yet with our creative lives and with our creative work, sometimes this art nemesis of perfection keeps hounding us, telling us that everything has to be just so before we step up and step out.

00:14:07.490]
Well, that’s just not the truth in Nike’s mantra, as I said, is just do it. And I guess mine might be just do it anyways. You know, you might say I’m not good enough yet. Do it anyway. You know, I’m worried what other people might say or think. Do it anyway. Most of the people that we admire and aspire to become like have one thing in common in their varied histories, and it’s the fact that they at some point did it anyway.

00:14:44.070]
Well, thanks for listening, hopefully. It’s been an encouragement to you today, if you want to connect any further, you can do so through my website at Davidleemartin.com. Have a great day.