Archives: Blogging

Do you really “gotta fake it ’til you make it”?

The truth is, when you put on the façade of confidence to give yourself a boost, you’re not actually faking it at all – you’re accessing your inner confidence and bringing it to the front.

Everyone has confidence. Each of us have something in our lives – even if it’s just one, tiny thing – that we know in our heart of hearts we’re good at. Something that gives us that often-elusive state of flow whenever we are engaged in it.

The process of faking it is, in fact, a process of accessing our inner confidence through physical and emotional triggers that put our minds and bodies into the feeling of that flow state.

The next time you’re finding yourself in a situation where you’re trying to posture yourself into a major confidence boost, remember: you are not faking it, you’re simply accessing and living your inner confidence. Where that confidence takes you is entirely up to you.

Thanks to the great Chris Richards for helping me realise all of this.

You’ll remember that my Lent resolution this year to give up fear, inspired by my Twitter-buddy Jeanne who consistently inspires people with her utter lack of fear and her stubborn unwillingness to give in to it at any point.

Giving up on fear is at once much, much harder than you may first think and much, much easier, too.

–The Easy–

It’s easy to ‘say’ you’re giving up fear. It’s definitely a plus to be able to get the words out and feel emboldened by the commitment you’ve just made.

It’s easy to stop yourself fearing the everyday kind of things that used to bug you – it’s a conscious choice whether you’re going to allow yourself to worry about how you pay the bills or if your energy is better focused on how to generate the income that’s going to cover them. A fact that’s especially true for freelancers like me without a steady paycheque ((or paycheck for our American cousins)).

It’s easy to take advantage of the initial freedom that giving up fear brings you. It’s easy to float yourself away from the day-to-day issues and focus on your fear-free living–for the first week or so.

–The Hard–

It’s hard to genuinely beat your brain into submission when it tries to stir the old fear about those everyday items you shrugged off in the euphoria of your first few days or weeks. The rumbling in your subconscious feels like it’s never going to go away.

It’s hard to tackle the “new-found” fears that crop up without your being able to plan for them. You land a new job and you’re suddenly worried about being “the new guy”. How will you fit in, will you get on with your co-workers, will you be good at your job? All these things that life throws at us are wont to prompt a significant rise in our fear levels that isn’t easy to ignore.

It’s hard knowing that this new way of life is forever. There’s really no point in giving up fear for a few weeks or a month ((or 40 days)) – it’s a lifetime commitment. And that is scary.

–But, But, But–

When you’re successful, when you manage to rise above your fear, to master it, control it and stop it from being the boss of you, it becomes very, very difficult to revert back to your old ways. The idea of being scared becomes almost laughable when you think of your old fear of making that phone call, or attending that networking event on your tod or of introducing yourself to the hottie across the room who’s been making eyes at you all night.

When you truly commit to stepping up to the plate and facing Fear’s most crippling fastball, you can do so in the knowledge that you’ll swing for it, you’ll hit it and you’ll be running for home before you can say “I’m scared of getting my kit dirty”.

A large part of our lives is taken up looking for new and exciting things to do; peering into the future to see what we could be doing six months, a year, five years from now.

I see things differently. Perhaps because of the perspective two-and-a-half years on the transplant list gave me – knowing little else from sitting, getting worse and waiting for (a) death or (b) a second chance – I don’t see the point in looking that far into the future. Six months is about my limit.

Even now, my fiancée is being incredibly patient as we try to plan our wedding for July 2012. I’m just about grasping it, but it’s a long way off.

I prefer to live a life that focuses not necessarily on the cliché-heavy ‘here-and-now’, but rather on the soon-to-be. Not focusing on what I dream of down the line, but on the actions – however small – I can take now to take a step closer to those dreams.

As I move forward in my own, personal brave new world, I’m already committing to things, exploring things and taking action to make them happen.

If your life is full of things you’d love to do ‘some day’, be they personal, professional or otherwise, now is the time to take the next step, the next action and set the wheels in motion for whatever it is you most want to pursue.

Just because it’s not laid on a plate, doesn’t mean it’s not there for the taking.

I’ve now been blogging in various guises since 2006, initially charting my transplant journey, both pre and post, then moving on to cover more to do with my day-to-day life, work and career. Then this blog turned into more of a business-orientated blog looking at social media and productivity, among other things.

There Is No Answer is a natural (or at least natural-feeling) evolution of that blog based on where I am in life today.

Over the last three months various occurrences ((some of which I’ve blogged about, some I haven’t)) have, erm, occurred in my life to make me rethink and re-evaluate life, the universe and everything ((thanks to Douglas Adams for that one)).

Here’s a small selection of things I’ve learned about myself – and others – in that process:

1. I’m both far more fragile and far more resilient than I thought. That may seem oxymoronic, but my physical and emotional fragility were highlighted and tested by last month’s brain haemorrhage, pushing me into dark places of acceptance I didn’t want to go, but followed by the embracing of a new way of doing things, a new world order applicable only to the oliverse.
2. Failure is fine. It’s taken me over 29 years to finally accept it, but failing is a far bigger part of success than getting things right is.
3. Friends are those who you know will be there no matter what. I’ve learned some hard lessons about friendship in the last few months and had to face the loss of some people who have previously played a very large part in my life. But while my life has moved on, I’m not sure theirs has and that chasm is apparently too far to bridge.
4. There is always something else. For better and worse, there will always be a new challenge to face as soon as you surmount the previous one, but there will always been just as sweet a reward for tackling the next one.
5. Lastly, and most importantly, There Is No Answer. Nothing we do will ever be 100% right, but little that we do can ever be entirely wrong. Understanding – and embracing – the world’s lack of order is key to getting the most out of each and every day we’re here.

There Is No Answer is a call to everyone – artists, filmmakers, entrepreneurs, mothers, fathers, husbands and wives, dogs, dingos and donkeys – to embrace the knowledge that life is not a zero-sum game; it’s a multiple choice test that will only ever be marked by ourselves.

This blog will aim to highlight all those little things that can make life and work easier, more immediate, more fun and more enlightening. I am to lead the way in embracing the answer-less society by putting myself in the kinds of situations I feared before and pushing the boundaries of my comfort zone as I design and style a new life for myself.

Each day of my life is dedicated to the donor whose most generous of gifts allows me to be here today. I intend to honour their memory by living the life I want, the way I want with the people I want. Nothing more, nothing less.

Care to join me? Don’t worry, there is no answer.

Although yesterday didn’t see a new post on the blog here from the #Trust30 challenge, I’m still creating. I spent the day working on plans to migrate and upgrade some of the websites I own and run, including this very blog, which the eagle-eyed among you will have noticed isn’t where it used to be.

I’ve also been working on a page to collate everything I do and advertise myself to the widest possible audience. The page should be live in the next couple of days, but here’s a sneaky few peaks:

One of the interesting things about taking on a challenge like #Trust30 is the imperative to create.

Normally, we create out of a desire, out of inspiration that comes in many different forms, whether it be business ideas, marketing concepts or works of art.  By being part of a month-long initiative to create something every day, the onus is switched from inspiration to perspiration – we are forced to work to conjure something to post or begin.

Of course, creation-to-order is nothing new – media and ad agencies ((as TinyButMighty is evolving into)) develop fresh, innovative ideas every day, under pressures from clients only too happy to take their business elsewhere if they’re are unimpressed.

So can creativity be forced? Is it possible to access the hidden banks of ideas in our heads to keep the creativity waterfall flowing, or are the people who do it day-in, day-out simply overwhelmingly talented and in touch with their creative hemisphere in their heads?

Truly creative people are able to create from nothing in an instant. It may not be a polished, finished product or idea, but their brains work in such a way as to always be able to supply something. But I also believe that there’s no such thing as a “non-creative” – everyone is capable of it, one just needs to learn how to harness the creative muscle and make it work for you like anything else.

Yesterday I pledged myself to taking part in the Domino Project, Ralph Waldo Emerson-inspired #Trust30 project to create something new everyday.

As I headed to bed this evening, it occurred to me that I hadn’t written anything on the blog today. Sure, I busied myself with updating and catching up on The Indie Film Hub, which had also been hit by my minor health detour last week, but did that qualify under #Trust30 rules?

What is “creation” – how do we define it? How do I define it is probably the more pertinent question; the one thing we can safely say about all art and creativity is that it’s entirely subjective.

For me, this blog represents creation; the Hub represents curation, a very different thing. Even though I create new content to post every day, what I’m actually doing is curating the content I believe to be of value to other filmmakers and people who work in film. The content itself – the lessons, the examples, the information – is all created by the hugely talented people whose blogs, websites and newsletters I read every day.

So what is creation? For me, creation is about intent. Creation is about originating something that serves a purpose. It doesn’t have to be a higher purpose. It doesn’t even have to be a purpose that matters to anyone else. When I first started blogging, I wrote entirely for myself, to motivate me and to explore my life and my feelings. That’s a purpose. That’s creation.

By that definition, I suppose the Hub does represent that. So why doesn’t it feel that way?

What’s your definition of creation? Is it word-count, impact, intention? Or is it more ethereal, more intangible?

After the travails of the last three weeks ((detailed in 3 posts on my Journal Blog here, here and http://www.olilewington.co.uk/smilethroughit/2011/05/31/the-sage-concluded/)), it’s time to get back to the business of blogging and creating top-quality content for all my readers again.

To that end, a very useful little initiative popped up in my Google Reader RSS feed this morning – The Domino Project‘s #Trust30 initiative, based around their new release Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

#Trust30 is a month-long commitment to create something new every day for 30 days, whether it’s blogging, writing, painting, filmmaking or anything in between. The aim is simple to create.

I’m committed, are you? If you’ll be taking part, leave us a link to your site in the comments so we can all help to hold each other accountable.

Thanks to an unscheduled 10-day stay at the pleasure of various hospitals and doctors ((more on my journal site)), it’s been far too quiet on here.

Rest assured, normal service will resume after the weekend. Thanks for sticking with  me.

Sometimes knowing when to stop trying to be the market leader is good for you.

Everyone wants to be Top Dog and we all want to be known as the go-to place for people to find our products or services. But there are times at which accepting that you’re not the biggest can be a distinct advantage.

Take MySpace, for example. Yesterday, I tweeted that they have release a new app to help musicians maintain their MySpace page and update their Facebook Fan Page at the same time. While I’m sure that MySpace is still smarting from being the go-to social networking site for a good couple of years way-back-when, they have now accepted that the vast majority of people use Facebook as their primary social networking tool.

The problem that MySpace faces is that while it’s ingeniously designed for musicians in particular, it’s fairly useless to those individuals and bands if the only people using the site are the musicians and bands themselves. The artists want to connect with their fans and the easiest way to do that is through Facebook.

By effectively helping their members to advertise themselves on Facebook, MySpace are helping to ensure that those who prefer the interface and usability of their site over Facebook can still use it to reach millions of fans who may never have discovered them if they had stuck solely to Facebook.

Biggest isn’t always best, especially if you know how to piggy-back on the success of a larger player to give your core customer base exactly what they want from your product.