Running Down a Dream: Your Road Map to Winning Creative Battles

First, identify the problem you need advice on. What is the current roadblock to your career that you could use some help on? Where are you stuck and feel like you’re making no progress? You have to have a specific problem you’re dealing with before you try to find help. Second, identify three potential mentors. I am a strong advocate against tryin

Sit down with a pen and paper and start dreaming. If you could wave a magic wand to make everything go perfectly and get everything you want in the next five years, what would that look like? What would you have accomplished? Who would you be? What would it feel like? Put it all down. Even the silly stuff and the stuff you just know will never happ

Whether it’s needing to pay your taxes, washing the dishes, or a marriage that is on the rocks. List it all out. The list must be exhaustive. If something pops in your head, put it down. There is no filter here. Second, write at the bottom of the sheet of paper, “All of these things are important and I promise to concern, worry, and fear over them

Here are the steps: Make observations Form a hypothesis Make a prediction Perform an experiment Analyze the results of the experiment Draw a conclusion Report your results Go back to step 1 Tool

“Failure is an event, not a person.”—Zig Ziglar

I realized the Truth. There is no finish line. There is no success or failure. There is nothing to fix. There is only the perfect me, my dream, and the joy of running it down.

So taking the experimental mindset, I decided to test out a new theory. First, I would start assuming I was good and had my heart in the right place, instead of a rickety monster that had to be held in check and put on a tight leash. Second, anything I did that was bad or wrong or unhealthy, I would just tell myself it was a layer of plaster on top

What if I started letting go a little bit and trusting what was inside of me without expecting a slap on the back or a check?

I thought about that movie with Jack Nicholson where he plays an obsessive-compulsive novelist who, through a long series of events, ends up back at his therapist’s office. After an unsuccessful interaction on the couch, he walks out into the waiting room, looks around, and then delivers the line that gave the movie its name. “What if this is as go