To me, feelings are things that pop up and can go away just as fast.
Modes
Other things are longer lasting and stronger. They usually come about as a result of our effort – wallowing or affirming.
Depression, for example, in me can be the result of a chemical imbalance or of me trying to hold on to a narrative I don’t like. I’ve experienced a lot of it.
Feeling wheel edited
I’ve gotten good results from using this 6 feeling feeling wheel to identify my feelings. I’ve put stars on the things that I think are not usually feelings, but are usually closer to modes. Most modes can be escaped via a physiological state change and a mindset change.
How to…
We can have a state change using drugs, extreme temperatures, breathing, exercise and some other stuff.
We can have a mindset change with mental novelty (like watching a movie), meditating, journaling, talking to someone.
If I’ve got one of these, i usually feel in control of it.
Hosts / emcees are often obstaclized by trying to do the wrong stuff. The problem is that they…
are striving to make things go smoothly.
try to appear “professional”
mimic what they think they’ve seen other hosts do.
If the goal is to make the host look good, the best outcome will be the host will look not terrible. If the goal is to make the experience great for the audience, the host may be almost invisible.
In many situations, i will throw everything under the bus in order to maintain a good relationship with the audience. They need to trust me to lead them forward. If I tell them that the next thing coming up is awesome, they must be right along with me. When I tell them they had a good time, that is a ridiculous thing to tell people. They must 100% be psychically connected to me.
One of my trademark lines from Boobietrap was “This is what fun feels like!” It was true and I needed to say it so that people would recognize it. I could only say it once we were all completely connected and on the same page.
Hope is crucial if we want to make a change. If there’s hope that things can be better, there’s motivation to make the sacrifices necessary. Hope makes us want to invest.
Wishing is the opposite of hope. Wishes are a list of things that are impossible or things that only come from magic. Hopes are things that come from us doing something.
Once we blow out a candle on a cake, our wishing is done. We can check it off the list. When we hope for something, we are just beginning to look at how to make it possible.
Wishing comes from a scarcity mindset. The only way we can get what we want is by throwing a penny in a fountain, or breaking a turkey bone. We have nothing to work with. Hoping comes from abundance. We recognize the assets we already have. Eg: “we have this great team and this winning spirit. I think we can achieve everything we want!”
Hope comes from a gratitude inventory and desire. Wishes come from complaining and resigning.
Take action : listen to your daily speech. Anything you wish was different, turn it into hope, or skip it.
We can only do one thing at a time. The game is finding that important thing.
I have a bunch of people tell me the weird creative things they’re working on in the background. I ask them why. They say that it’s just a little thing that they’re doing because it’s creative and fun or exploratory.
The issue is, there’s no background project. If it’s taking up time, it’s taking up now.
I have this fantasy that if i stay up late doing something, it gives me extra hours. Logically, if I sleep instead, i can wake up rested and ready to pursue my main thing – my mission / my higher purpose. If i stay up, I miss out on the crucial work that i can do (sleep counts as work).
We keep coming back to finding a mission and sticking with it. Sometimes working on a bunch of creative projects is helpful to a mission. 99% of the time, there’s just one next thing to do.
Take Action: make a file for ideas. Write down all the ideas for side-quests and keep them there. don’t do them, just store the thoughts for later.
There’s a book : The Self-made Billionaire Effect. It talks about one of the superpowers of successful people is their ability to be motivated by the big picture; yet do the dumb, small work that’s in front of them.
This is a constant balancing act for all humans.
Make the mission big enough so that it matters.
Let the imagining go, so that we can complete the crucial next step.
In the book, they call this stage focus. It’s the ability to keep attention on the stuff that’s right here right now.
If we, as freelancers, don’t have stage focus, we get into dreaming. When the dreams don’t pay off, we get disappointed. When we get disappointed, we often start side projects / passion projects / procrastination type stuff.
Instead of trying to immediately call the president when we decide to be president, maybe we do some research to see how to be senator.
Stage focus is a great skill.
Working on the next thing is also different from working on busy work. Cleaning my desk can feel very rewarding and comfy when work feels daunting. Stage focus is humble work. It’s also courageous. There’s pressure. There’s effort. There’s discomfort.
We build the skill. Our ability to do stage focus is limitless.
Take Action : think of a simple thing that will have a big impact on your career. Write it down, complete it, put a check mark next to it.
When I start working with someone. I take inventory. I want to know what they have. I want us to be on the same page about what we have to monetize. If I were to work to sell pencils for a company, I’d want to know how many pencils they have in stock, ready to go.
This became really clear to me when I started working for a company that was in a major change. They had dozens of employees, yet had just had a major downsizing, so the CEO was in charge of a lot of stuff suddenly. I was trying to make marketing materials. While the boss was in charge of important meetings and big things at the company, I was also texting him to get the Youtube password. There was a ton on his shoulders because the organization didn’t have a clear organization of assets. They had a style guide, they had photos, they had lots of things, yet they weren’t organized in a way that a person like me could access them.
This happens with freelancers also. Sometimes a thing like a list of past clients has never been constructed. Sometimes it takes a year to get video files over to an editor.
I learned this lesson, and still, my employees get a message from me occasionally saying “Oh yeah, I did this thing a year ago…” or “I have this half-finished project”
It is worth our time sometimes to organize what we have. It helps us individually to see the value we have, and it helps us to scale and to be ready for outside help.
Take action : if you don’t have one, get a password manager app
In examining the lives and work of so many creatives, it’s obvious that human beings of all drives and ambitions and personality types feel most fulfilled when they’re being used. I mean being used fully. The more an activity exploits all aspects of a person, the more they feel valued.
It works the same from the outside. When a job position or a relationship requires someone’s complicated pile of assets, the person in the job position or relationship is more valued.
When Taco Bell hires someone to show up and follow directions, that person is using a very small part of themselves — mostly their presence. The work is not fulfilling and is not worth paying more than minimum wage.
When Ryan Gosling is hired, It’s the special cocktail that is everything Ryan that makes him get paid so much and that makes him enjoy his work.
“Exploitation” seems criminal
The problem with this word and words like it like “being used” is that they are often seen as one-sided. A person in power is exploiting a person weaker.
If we seek instead to have mutual exploitation, we can get more out of every relationship than the sum of the parts. We can have extremely fulfilling and productive collaborations that change the world. The best performances that I’ve had were because I there were parts of me used and energy in me used and discovery in me that was rare.
We can seek this rare gift of mutual exploitation with a generous spirit. Knowing that getting the best out of someone is also GIVING THEM the best of themselves.
An easy gig sounds nice. What’s really nice is a gig that feels easy because it comes out so naturally. A gig that taps in to our strengths and history in a way that flows.
Money is the same
maybe the question comes up when money comes into the picture… what’s mutual about getting paid? People really like to buy things that are great. There’s probably something that you can think of that you really like purchasing. It feels good to spend good money on something incredible. So, risking our money is just as much a part of this flow as risking our reputation or our knowledge of 18th century self-help in Poland. It’s a unifying of resources to make something great.
Take action : figure out how you can give more of yourself to your next project.
We wrap up our proposals with a request for action. We have nothing left to say except “do this!” The recipient already knows why and they have a picture of what will happen if they mobilize. Now, we put the button in front of them and tell them to depress it.
The call is simple.
A pill that can fix my back is better than a stretching regimen. How simple can we make this next step. Hopefully it’s only one thing to do. It’s easy and it’s fun.
The call is rewarding.
Hopefully, we’ve already clarified what’s going to happen and it’s going to be a dream come true. “just reply to this email saying ‘it is on’ and I’ll take all this off your hands”
The call is now.
We’re trying for the next step to be immediate. They can pull the trigger and we can give them something right away.
Take action: think of something you’ve asked someone to do — maybe a proposal that hasn’t gotten a reply – and ask them to do something in a better way.
In the LOOTERS format, we have already talked about the objectives and how we’re going to make it happen. The idea of getting back to the results is that the cost has been stated. We want everyone involved to focus on the results and not on the math. The math is not the important thing. Math is based on a highly distorted, cognitive view of our reality. Math carries the deception that it’s concrete and safe. If we put cost before desire, we’d get nothing and achieve nothing big.
So, the order of the way we think best is…
do i want a rad hat that makes me look cool, protects me from the sun, will make me look like i belong at Coachella, is easy to clean and pack?
it’s $76
I’ll be able to have a great time with my friends and have confidence to meet new people and dance
The results part of the proposal is a quick description of what happens at the end. It summarizes the objectives and reflects confident success. It’s a promise.
The scope of work / effort shows how it’s done. The results are what the customer gets.
Take action : think about a way you were misunderstood in the past month.
What was a promise you could have made that would have been exciting to everyone and fulfillable?
Most performers want a website that gets them bookings. The idea of a fan site is great for people / companies that pay their bills with ticket sales. I mean, that’s the actual source of income.
I’ll talk more about fan sites later.
When we’re trying to get booked for things, a public appearance calendar can show up as a lot of red flags.
outdated events listings – looks like we’re not able to maintain our business
events that might conflict with the booker
ethically / politically
timewise (like “we want to book you in idaho on june 3, but you’re in atlanta that week”)
industry overlap ( you’re performing for the other book shop in town! )
looking too exposed – if a rock club wants to book us, they may not want us performing the week before in the same city. It’s easier to sell tickets to a hungry following
gaps in calendar make us look unpopular
events that are off our brand : eg we’re labeled as luxury yet hitting up “Wacky Family Fest of Gorgia, TX”
The fantasies of the ticket calendar
makes us look successful
our fans are going to check our site regularly, then eagerly buy tickets
people are going to randomly find our site and buy a ticket
One gig or 20 tickets?
Realistically, are we gonna sell 20 tickets per show from our site? Maybe 3? probably zero? Then, we want to do whatever we can to get the gig. Keep our sites deliberate, to the point. Looking up-to-date (which means avoiding anything that’s perishable) and directly showing value, clarity, and call to action. Here’s more about how we don’t want our sites to be updatable
take action: remove the gig calendar / forget about ever adding one
