So if you've never seen Seth Godin, he is a funky looking dude with usually some bright ass yellow or otherwise colorful glasses on. He is also a bit of a genius, who would rather say that we all have genius within us, than to admit to his own.
He is also a dude who has a lot of interesting and cool thoughts on a number of different subjects. The thing that caught my attention about Seth is when he was talking about trying something new. Seth says "trying is the opposite of hiding".
I feel like Seth's entire volumes of work all kind of revolve around one principle, which is just trying a number of different things, until something works. The problem is that many people, myself included, feel like trying something needs to have a reward at the end..some reward that is, at very least, equal to the effort we put into it. Seth would say that this is not always the case exactly. Seth would say that success is not a straight line in fact, "success is never a straight line".
He was on the show today, Chase Jarvis live. And Chase had said that at times in his creative career he had thought thoughts like "what would happen if this doesn't turn out well?" (referring to a piece of art he was working on). Chase then went on to explain that that thought pattern in and of itself is destructive for an artist.
I think with Chase Jarvis and Seth Godin are both trying to absolve themselves of is that the business mentality of X plus Y equals Z. I am a business major myself. I work for a large bureaucracy as well. I know how important goals are. I know how important not wasting time and energy is. I know how important certain initiatives can be, because of the outcomes that they will produce.
However, Seth and Chase are talking about our own personal lives, and furthermore our ventures as entrepreneurs. In the pursuit of these adventures, it is important to go out and experience and do things and try things that are different and new.
On his interview on Chase Jarvis live, linked below, Seth gave what I think is the best example of this using a bowling metaphor. He said if you had unlimited games of bowling you would want to go out and you would try different types of throws to experiment to see which throws work best for you and knocked down the most pins. If you only had a limited the number of games or a limited amount of resources, you wouldn't be that creative. You would probably throw in a straight line every time using the most predicted method of success.
Chases interview with Seth Godin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xMxAZhgVvU
In this world the resources for being, a photographer for example, our nearly unlimited to those of us who live in developed nations. Therefore, there is no reason to not go out and try a bunch of new things and see what sticks. The only reason that might hold us back, the only thing that might hold us back, is fear of what others might think and fear that we may be wasting our own valuable time.
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