burner won’t change that. You were you before you walked in the building. You’ll be you when you walk out. Only more awesome.
So fire it up. It’s time to blow some things up and see what the debris can ultimately teach you about yourself and your truest dreams.
5: Editing
5
Editing
How will you know when you’ve entered the land of Editing?
You won’t.
Moving on.
Wait, that can’t be right.
We want steps. We want a checklist with fourteen boxes we can check off so we know we’re perfectly prepared for what’s next.
You can’t have them. I can’t either. The map doesn’t work that way. And neither does life.
That’s like asking, “When do you become a man?” I really hope it’s not when you learn how to make furniture by hand. In the movie Red Dawn , it was when Thomas C. Howell shot a deer and drank its blood. Or in the remake when Zac Effron shot a unicorn and stole its tail (I haven’t seen the remake, but I’m assuming that happens).
The problem with trying to draw up really precise boundaries is that there’s too much overlap between the stages. They bleed into each other more like the colors of a real rainbow and less like the colors on a paint wheel at a hardware store.
Just when you think you’re out of one stage, you’ll find yourself stepping back into the previous one, and vice versa. For instance, I hope even when you’re in the land of Guiding, you won’t stop learning about your specific version of awesome. I hope if you have the chance to help someone else while you’re in the land of Learning you won’t say, “I’d love to lend you a hand, but I haven’t crossed into Guiding yet, sooooo . . .”
The easiest way to tell you’re in the land of Editing and no longer in Learning is with a math metaphor.
Learning is about addition. Editing is about subtraction.
In the land of Editing, you’re going to take the fifteen or fifteen hundred things you learned and see which ones seem to stick to you. What passions, dreams, hopes, and callings will you be carrying deeper into this journey with you? Which will you leave on the side of the road for someone else to pick up? They are not broken or ruined; they are simply not for us. They are part of someone else’s unique definition of awesome.
Editing is the phase of your journey where Michelangelo stands in front of the meticulously selected block of marble. Out of an entire quarry, this is the one he has chosen. And now, with a chisel and a hammer he will remove the pieces that do not belong so that David is finally revealed.
Cue the fog
My friend Tim in Atlanta often misses breakfast meetings.
He doesn’t want to. He is actually one of the kindest, most conscientious people I’ve ever met. He sends handwritten thank-you notes after he eats dinner at our house, the kind of notes that my wife holds up and says, “See? See? This is how to be a gentleman.”
But he has a hard time getting to breakfast on time or at all.
One morning it was because his iPhone battery was dead and its alarm didn’t go off.
Another morning it was because his iPhone was in another room and he didn’t hear it.
Another morning it was because he had the sound turned down too low and he didn’t hear it.
And still another morning it was because . . . well, you get the picture.
The solution to this dilemma is not very difficult. It is not complex. One must not call a brainstorming meeting to hash out possible fixes.
The solution is a $10 alarm clock.
It couldn’t be simpler. It automatically fixes all the issues he’s had with his iPhone alarm. So why didn’t Tim just fix the problem with that simple solution the first time his iPhone clock plan failed?
Because we love complex problems and are terrified of simple solutions.
We tend to add complexities to our challenges because if the problem is simple to solve, then we have to change. And change is scary. So when faced with a challenge we really don’t want to fix, we tend to
So fire it up. It’s time to blow some things up and see what the debris can ultimately teach you about yourself and your truest dreams.
5: Editing
5
Editing
How will you know when you’ve entered the land of Editing?
You won’t.
Moving on.
Wait, that can’t be right.
We want steps. We want a checklist with fourteen boxes we can check off so we know we’re perfectly prepared for what’s next.
You can’t have them. I can’t either. The map doesn’t work that way. And neither does life.
That’s like asking, “When do you become a man?” I really hope it’s not when you learn how to make furniture by hand. In the movie Red Dawn , it was when Thomas C. Howell shot a deer and drank its blood. Or in the remake when Zac Effron shot a unicorn and stole its tail (I haven’t seen the remake, but I’m assuming that happens).
The problem with trying to draw up really precise boundaries is that there’s too much overlap between the stages. They bleed into each other more like the colors of a real rainbow and less like the colors on a paint wheel at a hardware store.
Just when you think you’re out of one stage, you’ll find yourself stepping back into the previous one, and vice versa. For instance, I hope even when you’re in the land of Guiding, you won’t stop learning about your specific version of awesome. I hope if you have the chance to help someone else while you’re in the land of Learning you won’t say, “I’d love to lend you a hand, but I haven’t crossed into Guiding yet, sooooo . . .”
The easiest way to tell you’re in the land of Editing and no longer in Learning is with a math metaphor.
Learning is about addition. Editing is about subtraction.
In the land of Editing, you’re going to take the fifteen or fifteen hundred things you learned and see which ones seem to stick to you. What passions, dreams, hopes, and callings will you be carrying deeper into this journey with you? Which will you leave on the side of the road for someone else to pick up? They are not broken or ruined; they are simply not for us. They are part of someone else’s unique definition of awesome.
Editing is the phase of your journey where Michelangelo stands in front of the meticulously selected block of marble. Out of an entire quarry, this is the one he has chosen. And now, with a chisel and a hammer he will remove the pieces that do not belong so that David is finally revealed.
Cue the fog
My friend Tim in Atlanta often misses breakfast meetings.
He doesn’t want to. He is actually one of the kindest, most conscientious people I’ve ever met. He sends handwritten thank-you notes after he eats dinner at our house, the kind of notes that my wife holds up and says, “See? See? This is how to be a gentleman.”
But he has a hard time getting to breakfast on time or at all.
One morning it was because his iPhone battery was dead and its alarm didn’t go off.
Another morning it was because his iPhone was in another room and he didn’t hear it.
Another morning it was because he had the sound turned down too low and he didn’t hear it.
And still another morning it was because . . . well, you get the picture.
The solution to this dilemma is not very difficult. It is not complex. One must not call a brainstorming meeting to hash out possible fixes.
The solution is a $10 alarm clock.
It couldn’t be simpler. It automatically fixes all the issues he’s had with his iPhone alarm. So why didn’t Tim just fix the problem with that simple solution the first time his iPhone clock plan failed?
Because we love complex problems and are terrified of simple solutions.
We tend to add complexities to our challenges because if the problem is simple to solve, then we have to change. And change is scary. So when faced with a challenge we really don’t want to fix, we tend to
Similar Books
