So today is like day 19 of my creative experiment. And tomorrow will be the final day. So although I’m releasing these videos a week after I’ve recorded them. Tomorrow will be the final Friday in January, so it will mark my four weeks of doing this. And yeah, it will signal the end of the experiment.

And it’s really interesting because the closer I’ve got to this. Supposed finish line, I’ve noticed my energy shifting and changing and my relationship to this work changing because it’s kind of been like, Oh, I know. Not too much to do anymore to ideas. Can’t wait. And it just changes the the dynamism almost. I think before I was I didn’t know about this.

Nobody’s doing this. And I’m all about doing videos left. It’s all about Sunday. And then maybe Memorial Day reflections thing. And it’s just super interesting to observe. But what I want to talk about specifically today is starting before you’re ready, because prior to me hating that God put that record button, I had no clue what I was going to say.

And it was only in the process of bringing myself to the room, plug it in my microphone and record on my laptop, making sure the camera was angled correctly and pressing record. The idea actually landed with me. The idea of it’s important sometimes to start before you feel ready and in this case applies both to this video. Because before when I was, I was just on the sofa thinking about coming and doing this.

I was like, I didn’t really have anything interesting today to say. Maybe I’ll do it later. I’ve got like a grip call coming out. Maybe I got some energy of that, maybe inspirational, arrived with me later in the day, but I just let myself come and go through the motion of setting up, putting everything in place and sitting down and pressing record before I actually felt ready.

Because I know often for me the resistance I feel to starting is a false resistance. It’s an excuse. I don’t know what I’m going to say, but I believe so much of creativity is showing up before you’re ready, showing up before you have even fully formalized the idea in your mind. Because how ideas exist in here will never be how they manifest out here in the real world.

And I think the longer we spend in that state of trying to find something in our mind, the more resistance we will have to actually creating it, because we will have more preconceptions about what we want it to look like. So if I just kind of take this in a different direction, let’s say I was going to do I had an idea for a painting that I wanted to do or I had an idea for a the concept for a poem I wanted to write or something like that.

The longer I spend thinking about it out here and almost crystallizing it conceptually in my brain, the less likely I am to be able to recreate it perfectly. Because the world is imperfect. I will probably also doubt my own ability to create it in such a way that matches how I want it to be. But I will be more resistant to doing it because I’ll be scared about it failing.

I’ll be scared that it won’t materialize in the way that I want it to. And it’s the same with these videos. If I spent ages coming up with exactly how I want it to be. The concept rehearsing the script 20 times in my brain and then hitting record. Chances are I wouldn’t be able to regurgitate it in that way.

It would come out differently. It would come out in the moment. How it wants to be expressed. And so the longer I spend holding myself back and trying to theorize my way to perfection, the more resistance, the more dissatisfaction, the more potential for me to be disappointed and frustrated. That is, it might be the same with a business idea.

You have an idea for a new offer you want to bring out. You had this great idea for business and you play out in your head and you create the scenario where everything goes to plan. It’s a great success. It means this about you, X, Y, Z, and you’ve created this beautiful narrative in your brain of, Oh, this is what it could be.

And again, it creates that resistance because suddenly it’s like, if I what happens if I do it? And it’s not how I imagined in my head what then? And it’s a big old question mark, and I certainly know for myself less so now, but certainly towards the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey where I was creating content, found the world, these potential scenarios I would create in my head became more appealing to me than actually testing something out and experiencing the reality of it.

It was a safety in I have this great idea. I have so much potential. One day it’s going to be great. This is the reality of putting things out there imperfectly and not seeing them do well. That was uncomfortable and I think it can create this. The more we actually resist creating, the more that we wait until we feel ready, the more likely we are to not create and the more likely we are to experience friction and dissatisfaction with the work that we do create.

One of my mantras is Messy Action, which perfectly fits with this whole theme of starting something before you feel ready. I’ve done it with this video in particular. I did it with this whole set of videos that I’ve recorded. And you know what? It’s been great fun. Yes, I’ve played out two of my scenarios of how will look this to go and how I imagine people waking up with me every day watching my videos as they have their morning tea or coffee, but it actually doesn’t matter.

I’m kind of detached from the outcome, which is something that I had to work on for a long time. And the only way I’ve been able to actually detach myself from the outcome is by starting before I was ready. Putting things out there and really approaching every single thing I do as an experiment of which I am just gathering data, remaining in the spirit of curiosity.

How did this feel for me? Did I enjoy it? Did I not enjoy it? How was this received by. That’s interesting. Is there anything I want to take from that or am I not that bothered? Stay curious. Stay open. And if there’s an idea you’ve been sat down or if there’s a piece of work that you have been noodling with but not putting out into the world, start before you are ready and press publish before you’re ready to.

Because it’s only in that process that you will realize that ready is an illusion and it is a state of mind. And it is a decision that you have to make. See you tomorrow for the final one in this series. I’m so excited to see what happens next.