Sometimes the fear is too strong.

I­t­ can overwhelm us and prevent us from going forward.

That’s where low barriers of entry can be a godsend.

Low barriers are ways we can put our toes in the water. It’s a half step towards making the dream happen. Is it better than total immersion? A whole step? No. But half of something is better than a whole lot of nothing. Essential we are breaking down our big hairy goals into executable bite-sized chunks.

Low barriers to entry can show us that ‘hey, this isn’t so bad after all’.

Want to start a blog/vlog or podcast? Start with making one episode. You don’t have to post it, you just have to hit record and show yourself that you can.

Want to start a freelance business? Start by becoming your own client. Design or code something /you/ want to create first.

Want to get healthy? Start with breakfast. Eat what ever you want during lunch or dinner and focus on making one healthy breakfast (or try Intermittent Fasting).

Make the first step easy. Experiment. Commit to a few months. Show yourself how good it can feel to do good for yourself and your aspirations.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1682

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The biggest hurdle to any habit or skill you are learning is an overloaded system.

It’s often that we fail because we are trying too hard and too much at once, not because we aren’t trying enough.

Not trying enough is a pitfall that can keep you from starting.

If you ever find yourself never quite being able to get started or find yourself consuming a ton of books, courses, and videos but never putting them into practice, then you have a problem starting.

Maybe it’s fear of failure or repeating past mistakes or not living up to your exceptions of yourself.

Whatever the case, put all your strength into taking a step forward, however small.

Starting is a physics problem. Things at rest tend to stay at rest. What we need is something that pushes us forward, even just a tiny bit, that gets the ball rolling. Start and build momentum.

But if you’re trying but making no headway at all, then you’re likely trying too hard or trying too many things at once.

Getting results requires focused energy. You can’t reliably half-*ss success (unreliable success is called luck).

We need a strategy that gets us to the end goal 90% of the time and on the right track (or at least somewhere interesting) the other 10%. That starts with limiting your focus.

I can’t tell you how many times I unintentionally derailed myself because I attempted too many things at once. There are only so many things we can do at once (…I’m mostly in permanent denial about this). Even if I had all the energy and money in the world, I’d still run out of time at the end of the day. Focus and priority are our best friends here.

The thing we need to remember is success and opportunity stacks. Neither is assured, but both success and opportunity tend to build upon one another. One success leads to more opportunity leads to more (potential) success etc.

So where do you want to succeed?

What’s a problem you are struggling with that would wipe out most of your other problems if you were to solve it?

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1681

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“We have learned how to do a lot of things. We must try to relearn why.”

Flora Lewis

One important aspect of learning is relearning. Refreshing our skills, even going back and studying the fundamentals, is an important part of improving our skills and taking things to the next level.

We become a different person when we learn something. And as we improve, we gain clarity and depth in our skills. Things might have seemed new, challenging, or perhaps even a little hard to fully grasp. But then, over time, we change. Ever so slightly it may be.

Relearning allows us to go deeper. Relearning the fundamentals allows us to solidify our foundational knowledge and go beyond our current level of skill.

By re-approaching the basics—or what we (think we) know—we can compare our more developed mind and skill to where we started with a different perspective.

Perspective is everything and will improve our skills even more. Of course, we don’t want to let our relearning distract us from taking action.

The goal is to remind ourselves:

• where we started and how much we’ve learned.

• see what gaps we’ve been overlooking.

• And why we decided to learn it in the first place.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1680

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Everyone is going to have an opinion about your creative work.

Some genuinely want to help you improve and succeed; Others are critiquing just to tear a new hole into your face.

Not all feedback is created equal.

It feels weird saying that too much advice can be a bad thing. The fact that people are giving us advice at all is awesome, but not all advice is created equal.

Advice comes from: experience, creativity, opinion, and or adoration.

And also comes from extreme places: jealousy, fear, caution, recklessness, and a bunch of other emotions they might not know they are pumping out.

An older, wiser person who has been through what you are experiencing or something similar should have more weight than an older person who has never been through it.

Experience doesn’t always necessarily mean the advice is correct (advice stuck in the past, for example) but it does have weight and value.

Advice can be tricky to verify, because you don’t always know where the advisor is coming from (experience or opinion? both?).

I think experience and creativity have a higher level of quality than opinion or adoration.

The biggest place where advice loses its equality is in opinion.

A hundred people’s opinion on what you should do will be all over the place. One person will tell you that you should do X. Another person will tell you that you should do the opposite of X.

The thing that can cut through most advice is making your own decisions.

Taking advice doesn’t mean you have to follow it.

We ultimately decide what’s best for us and for our work.

If a hundred opinionated people give you hundreds of things to try, you have no obligation to do it. Listen, then decide what you think is best.

And if someone experienced gives you advice, it’s always good to pause and take it honestly. then consider how and if it applies to your life.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1679

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There’s a sense of wonder and joy I get every time I create something.

There’s a great quote by John Lennon in a Rolling Stones interview that goes, “I’m an artist, man. Give me a tuba, and I’ll get you something out of it.”

Perhaps creativity is built into our DNA. Does everyone get it? Probably.

But it needs to be nourished.

Creativity comes in many shapes and colors, but at the heart of all true creative work is the joy of making stuff.

It’s taking an idea and making it a reality. It’s following your curiosity, where it may lead. And expressing your self and your ideas in a way that resonates with others.

To be creative is to be someone who lives to make stuff. Forget money, forget fame—those are only tools (and sometimes hindrances) to live a life where you can create more.

I have a full-time job. I don’t have to write and work on this blog. I don’t have to play music. But then again, I have to do it. I would feel stale and less happy if I stopped. Creating isn’t all of who I am, but it’s a part of me.

Some people ask why I do so many things. Why not stick to one thing and focus all your effort on that? It’s true. That does work for some. It’s not a bad idea. But that’s not me. I would be giving pieces of myself away.

Pursuing multiple things takes much more effort.

But the rewards outpace the effort.

Ideas cross-pollinate between the different crafts you are learning. You start to see and think differently. You start to see how things are all connected. Ideas create more ideas. Which gives you more opportunities to learn and make stuff.

You have a creative soul when you:

• Love Building.
• Can’t not create.
• Find meaning and joy in creativity.
• Always experimenting and challenging yourself.
• Are relentlessly curious.

Curiosity is what feeds the creative soul.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1678

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It’s good to periodically get away from it all, to not only appreciate what you have but also take a step back to broaden your perspective.

Travel, be in nature, go somewhere new, or anywhere out of the ordinary.

Sometimes you just need to completely uproot your life to find out what life’s really about.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1677

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When we commit to a new habit (whether that’s adding a good habit or replacing a bad one) we need to intentionally figure out the motivation behind it.

Habits are rarely easy. What starts as enthusiasm can quickly fade to reluctance from the day-to-day responsibilities and whims.

Plus, our habits don’t exist in isolation. Not only do our habits intermingle with each other, but they also exist within the ebb and flow of our lives.

Motivations create longevity. If we can see the long-term game behind the day-to-day actions, we can learn to push through the harder days and feelings of reluctance to keep going.

The value of a habit is in the consistency of action over a long period. Painting once and never again isn’t going to fulfill your dreams of hosting a gallery or selling art for a living. Painting every day will make you better over time.

If you love doing something, and you want to get better at it, then keep pursuing it.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1676

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The question should not be, ‘how do I change my life?’ nor ‘how do I make my dreams happen?’

Those are well intentioned questions to be sure, but they’re also broad, fuzzy and hard to grasp ahold of.

Instead, ask yourself—

What are the key decisions I can do today (and each day forward) that will result in a positive way in the future / near-future?

Every little shift you make today adds up in…someway especially when you’re focused on improving yourself, your habits, skills, and community.

The key decisions depends on your dream, or the kind of life you want to live.

Of course, there’s a lot in play here. One day of eating healthy is not going to amount to much if the rest of your life is filled with pizza cake and beer.

There are other forces at work. The goal is to gain mastery over the ones you can control — consistency, persistence, habit, saying yes, saying no, etc, and learning to be more resilient every time you face something you can’t control.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1675

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The benefit of good habits (or in the consequences of bad habits) is in their longevity.

Eating one salad isn’t going to balance out years of fried food and sugar. But a healthy salad every lunch is going to add up to something meaningful.

The benefits of a habit happens over a lengthy period, but often show up in the present after the habit is sustained.

One good action is the step in the right direction.

This is straight forward idea of habits we all understand on some level.

But when we pile on too much at once (too many habits, too much pressure, and/or massive amounts of expectations), we can easily get derailed and give up.

A good habit has legs. The best ones (the ones that work and provide meaning to our lives) are the lifelong habits.

Something you can reach for (and an ambition worth pursuing)

Something that you can sustain over the long-term.

Something that if you miss a day, you can pick right back up tomorrow. Because as much as today is the only thing that matter, what adds up to a life-changing benefit is consistent effort and dedication to the habit.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1674

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“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, well, you might find—You get what you need.”

The Rolling Stones

A big part of creating is going around lack/scarcity of resources to find clever solutions to problems.

But many (if not all) deny this opportunity to innovate and, either never start or quickly abandon our ideas/dreams because we want to be in a better position first.

At the center of this is the experience of needs versus wants and how wants often blur into all or nothing ”needs.”

We want the best tools first. We want more skills and experience first.

For example, I can think of hundreds of music gear, plugins, lessons, etc. I’d like to buy it so I can be a professional musician.

Music equipment can be super expensive, especially if we’re talking about high-quality instruments and music production supplies.

But do I really need everything on my music wishlist to create music?

Well, no. Not necessarily.

There are a lot of things I’d love to have that would help take me to the next level of creativity and expression, but most of those things are nice-to-haves, not needs.

Instead of seeing what you don’t have as a negative or liability, what if you saw it as an opportunity to think outside of the box?

Does it suck that you don’t have the opportunity you want? Yes, but does that mean there’s no opportunity to work with you at all? No!

Work with what you have. Get out of your way and see your ”limitations” as strengths. Clever solutions make for a better story anyway.