Tag: inspiration

Do bad work

Posted on by philipdodson

Do bad work, it is the only way we get to good work.

If we are too frightened to do anything as we fear it will not be perfect, then we will never get to doing work that matters, we will never learn and improve, and we will never do even better.

We will hide behind perfection and fear, we will not show up and we will make excuses as to why we can not do.

Doing is a thing of this moment and it requires us to step away from thought, from the mind and its sabotaging fears. We have to be vulnerable enough to try and trying means we will not be sure of the outcome, so we just have to do and that will mean some bad work and that’s OK. When we do things that fail or are not right then we learn and we do even better next time.

If we keep doing the bad, then the good comes, if we never do the bad, we never get to the good. Being prepared to do without concern, means we will get better and better. We will overcome the fear of doing and that is the breakthrough, that is the key to unlocking our true potential to create our very best work.

Keep doing the bad work and being brave enough to share it. Sooner rather than later, we get to even better work. The more we keep going the even better the work gets. It removes the block, it takes away the fear and builds a habit of being vulnerable enough to share the best we can do right now. As we ship more and more of what we can do we learn and improve.

Or we can stay stuck with fear, too frightened to do and then we’ll never learn, we’ll just hide behind perfectionism and put our shields up to prevent any exposure to risk. We will not reach our true potential because we didn’t show, we didn’t take the plunge, we stayed safe and avoided uncertainty.

Bad is good.

Back with an old friend

Posted on by philipdodson

After 6 1/2 years of continuous daily blogging, that’s over 2,400 blogs without missing a day, I decided to take a break in April. I’ve been back a few times, but I’ve certainly dropped or lost the daily habit. It has been good having a break and I was getting a little stale, just bashing out the posts to keep the streak going. I was doing it for the ego and not the love.

I have been reading a few of my old posts and that has sparked the bug again, it’s like being back with an old friend that you haven’t seen in years but the love is still there no matter what.

I have missed my blog and that is a good thing, I think before I had taken it for granted just how much joy this daily exercise in writing gave to me. It is a period of time where I am in the moment, I am sharing my thoughts, my wisdom, my experience, and most often, I am talking to myself, giving myself advice. It is the joy of doing and not the outcome. If you take regular daily steps then you get to the outcome anyway and you avoid the suffering of thinking about the big picture which is too daunting.

Of course, like most of us, we are good at giving advice and poor at taking it or acting on it, especially our own. We are not good at eating our own dog food.

I actually do this blog for the joy of it and I genuinely do not mind if no one else reads it, that is the best way to be, I write for my own pleasure and you could say ‘well, just write in a paper journal or an online journal and don’t bother publishing it’ and, to be honest, there is something in that. I did do 6 plus years of daily journaling, which was never published.

However, I do know that many people over the years have also enjoyed reading my blog, so if you have something to say, and we all do, then it is definitely worth sharing it.

Until we share our work, it is not created, it is not born, by hitting that ‘publish’ button we are actually stepping over the divide from thought and fear to creating, and that is a step not to be underestimated, in terms of how it builds our confidence and habit of showing up and being brave enough to ‘step into the ring and dare to be great’ (Brene Brown).

It could ramble on some more, but that is it for today…it’s great to be back with an old friend.