When You Have No Proof of What You Can Do

If you’re a creator, you’ve no doubt heard the story of Stephen King and his habit of collecting rejection slips on his wall.

“By the time I was fourteen,” he writes in his book, On Writing, “the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.”

So young. So much grit!

His story, along with Oprah being told she was “unfit” to be a news reporter, JK Rowling’s bout of living on welfare, the show Seinfeld almost tanking in its first season...

I’m sure you can think of another one...

It’s all meant to prove that if you keep trying and don’t worry about the nay-sayers, you, too, can create something well-loved.

By now, you know that getting cozy with rejection is absolutely necessary as a creative - even if it still sucks.

You need grit to get past that fear of failing in front of others.

But, here’s a different way to look at this...

What if you applied that same grit and stick-to-it-ness to the committee in your own mind?

Because here’s the thing – our entire lives, we’re constantly collecting evidence of what we’re capable of.

You’ve seen what you can do and, based on that, you imagine what’s possible for you and what’s impossible for you.

So, maybe by the time you’re 30 or 40 or 50 or 70, you see that you’ve never been able to “start up that thing” that you’ve always wanted to start up, based on fear, or procrastination, or time constraints, or whathaveyou.

Which slowly leads to the belief that you can’t do it. Or that you’re not the “type of person” who starts big, beautiful, amazing things.

But what if you treat that belief the same way that Stephen King treated his rejection slips?

What if you keep going anyway, in spite of your age, your experiences, and what you “know” about yourself?

Maybe this year, with a carefully-crafted plan, a little luck, and a LOT of self-acceptance, you will astound yourself.

I say, try it and see what happens.

Start by looking at the time you have and figuring out what you can actually do in that time. Not what you can achieve in that time... but the actions you can take.

Write them down. Get it all in front of you. Figure out what goes first, second, and third...

Then, on Sunday night, look at the week ahead and figure out where you can fit in the time. Write it on paper and tape it to the wall. Put it in Trello. Set reminders in your calendar. Do whatever you have to do to sit down for that amount of time and take a few small steps.

Every single Sunday night, keep looking at the week ahead. Make space to move forward, then fill that space.

Having never done a thing - or even trying and failing at it - is not evidence that you can't do it. You can never know what you are actually capable of.

And if you have a flame burning in your chest, or a not-quite-fully-formed idea you need to figure out...

Just make the time, and start.