Last updated August 21, 2021
**GET THE BOOK** What To Do When It’s Your Turn by Seth Godin http://amzn.to/2mQaky2
Each of us can level up and create work that will be missed when we’re gone. It's your turn to do it.
There Is No Such Things As Writer’s Block
Writer's block is a form of hiding from our work.
Habits beat a lack of motivation. A habit means showing up on a regular basis, setting a time to write and then writing when it’s time to write. Your posture of leaning into this opportunity, of connecting and creating, and picking yourself: this is your work. How motivated you are has nothing to do with the opportunity and the obligation you face.
What if you’re not in the mood? Our need for motivation is due to our need for reassurance. We are paralyzed by our fear that it might not work, and we let the fear demotivate us, giving us an excuse not to create.
“Motivation is for amateurs.” -Chuck Close
There will never be an ideal situation of the right mood and moment. To do work that matters means being willing to do it even when it feels uncomfortable.
Invented Suffering
This is referring to the suffering we induce in ourselves.
One form of suffering is anxiety of experiencing failure in advance. In other words, judging ourselves for things we haven’t done yet.
Then there is a suffering from feeling owed. I tried, I did my best, and I still didn’t get the result I want or deserve.
So we create this system where we have so much anxiety and fear about contributing, that we push ourselves away. Then, when we do contribute, we immediately want gratitude from others.
This is a type of suffering we have created.
When success doesn’t occur, the easiest thing is to walk away and not make the mistake of speaking up ever again. The most important thing to do though, is to do it again, to care and to seek to make a change again.
Seth says the problem with the ability to take your turn is simple: it makes things your fault. This creates a lot of the resistance from us trying again and again to make our best contribution.
The Secret of Teaching (and the Secret of Learning)
Seth says after an entire lifetime of teaching, there is one thing that separates the successful students from the unsuccessful ones. The good ones show up and say ‘teach me’.
They look at failure and confusion as temporary conditions and say “that didn't work, show me another way.”
The others students want to know whats on the test. They need to be sold, or marketed to, before they can be taught. This is what happens in most organized education. If you cant sell them, they wont learn. Then they get frustrated.
You have to be thirsty in order to be able to learn.
To develop thirst, you need to have good habits. The habit of asking why, the habit of shipping, the habit of leading.
We lose thirst when we punish people for asking why, when we’re afraid of where people we love might go if they grow, and focusing on grades and outcomes instead of process.
We have to instead opt of going down the path of always learning.
