I am a part of a bunch of things to help my life and to help me transition into a career path that excites me! I listen to motivational podcasts, videos and audio books. I have signed up for different classes. I have mentors and am involved in masterminds in various parts of my life. All of these things help me in some way. I definitely feel like I’m on my way in various parts of my life. Not all of them help me 100% and some may get in the way a little. But it is the path I have chosen, albeit a busy one.
I’m curious what things have helped you in your journey. What are they? Leave a comment or direct message me.
I’m going to talk about two specific things I am working on right now. To lead up to this, as a part of the above things I do on a regular basis or in addition to, I journal and make lots of to-do lists! These are not the two things I am going to talk about right now, but they are integral to the two things I am going to talk about.
All of the combined things I listed above that I do, in addition to scouring the internet for all things related to editing and post, accumulate to one thing for certain, “busy-ness”! I am sure “busy”!
The first thing I am going to talk about is the “Book Club: Creative Calling with Chase Jarvis” class. It’s a six-week class (an hour each Saturday) covering his book Creative Calling. [The class is FREE.] We just did week three this last Saturday and it’s been amazing. As someone who feels they aren’t living up to their creative potential, it’s quite a revitalization to my purpose as a creative person. I highly recommend jumping on this if you feel you need a boost. One of the things that he brought up is the idea of being “busy” but not in doing the things you need to do to advance in your creativeness. Let’s just say this hit home with me.
The next related thing is having a mentor. One of the key principles to many self-improvement philosophies is “find a mentor”. Find someone who has gone before you and listen to everything they say! This serves a few purposes, one of which is shortening the runway. They have made the mistakes, they know what works and what doesn’t, etc. Now, I’m all for just going forth and making mistakes but I’ve been on this path for far too long and I’m starting to feel like I’m spinning my wheels a bit.
After all, I have mentors in investing (two in this area, actually) and one in motivation and one in another business I want to do. I mean, paid memberships where I am getting advice on a pretty much daily basis. Why don’t I have a mentor in the space for which I want to spend most of my time? Honestly, I’ve thought about it before. But for me the stars just weren’t aligned and I’ve felt, “Well, you know all you need to know, really, about what you need to do, you just gotta do it!” and “You’re almost there anyway, just keep pushing, Man!”
But that’s just it! I keep NOT doing it. Sure I know what I need to do but I have some sort of mental block. I’m just not doing those actions I need to do to reach my editing goals.
Enter the mentor. Until last week, I wasn’t ready to pull the trigger on an editing mentor. Heck, I didn’t even know what we’d possibly cover. But I found someone with whom I click with in a variety of lanes and sometimes you just need the right person to talk to, to open up your mind and cause you to look at things from a different perspective.
We had a good feeling-out consultation to see if we’d be compatible and things were just great. I signed up right then and there.
This morning we had our first real mentor session and it was just what I needed. We talked about the “busy” aspect and I now have a sniper-rifle aimed at exactly what actions I should do this week, vs. my spray and pray plan of the past.
In addition to this, I was able to just let everything out, all those things that have been bottled up inside of me that were constant mental conversations with myself but not doing anything positive for me. I’m sure I have more to discuss but we’re off to a great start, that’s for sure. I was able to explore my creative past and path and am very optimistic about its future.