Be The Change

There’s an excellent quote from Gandhi: Be The Change you Want to See in the World.  Recently I decided to change this up for personal reasons, temporarily, to: Be the Change you want to See in I.

A little less selfless than Gandhi’s original intent, but bear with me.

Want to change your life?  Become something/someone bigger or better than you feel you are?  Pretend that you’re that person already, and do what they would do.

Muhammad Ali said: “To Be a great champion you must believe you are the best.  If you’re not, pretend you are.”

And he did that: he talked like he was the best (“I am the Greatest!”), he trained like he was the best…pretty soon: He was the best!

If you BEHAVE as if you are the best at something – you do the actions that the BEST would do – you will become the best. 

(All right, in all honesty, you might not become the BEST, but you’ll get better.)

I want to be a writer, and make my living by creating stories.  Right now I don’t.  So what did I do?  I thought about (and read about) the people who DO make their livings creatively. 

What’s one thing they all do?  Create every single day. (I mean, like it’s their job!)

So here’s my experiment: I fired myself from my “real job.”  And I gave myself the job of creator.  I’ve got about 6 months to live without a paying gig, before I’m in trouble. 

I’m creating every day – like it’s my job.  And I’m selling it every day, hustling, like it’s my job.  Because making up stories is one thing, but you’ve got to get those stories into the hands of someone who can do something about it.

So that’s what I’m doing: BEING the change I want to see in myself.  The hope is that if I do this long and hard enough, I’ll find someone else to pay me for it. 

And even if I don’t succeed in 6 months, I’ll probably be closer.

This blog will chronicle that experiment.  Welcome.