We all want to be creative. We all want to be amazing at relationships. This guy, Benjamin Hardy, PHD, wrote an article on Medium exactly about that. It’s called “21 Behaviors that will make you brilliant at creativity and relationships.”
Basically, his article is saying that people limit themselves by defining who they are, what they can do, and what resources they have. This article is wildly popular with 31,000 likes, which means he’s made a ton of money off this point of view. And with over 19,000 Twitter followers, Mr. Hardy is pretty popular, too. He has posts that link to his articles like “10 Steps to Being a Millionaire in 5 Years (or Less).”
If you look at his twitter posts, you’ll find a lot of encouraging things about success and motivation and morning routines that guarantee success.
But we’re talking about just the first point in his article., which is that a goal must be wild and huge. It must be urgent with a time component. It must motivate you and he quotes Napolean Hill who wrote in the book, Think and Grow Rich, “Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.”
This is lovely.
He also quotes Marcus Aurelias, a Roman emperor. And also Canadian author Justine Musk, who he introduces as only, “Elon Musk’s wife.”
There are a lot of white men talking and quoting and thinking going on in the first few paragraphs of Dr. Hardy’s piece. It’s all about going after what you want and making no excuses about your situation or self because those things will make you fail.
There are twenty more points in Dr. Hardy’s article, but we’re only going to talk to the first one because it relates to writing and why so much writing falls flat.
He writes:
As with all things in life, you get what you want. If you prefer to make excuses and justifications for a lack of progress, then just admit you prefer your current station in life. Self-acceptance can be a beautiful thing.
However, once you desire progress more than convenience, obstacles no longer stop but propel you. As the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius is famous for saying,“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
Hardy, per Medium article cited above
You have to have your main character have a desire and they need to pulsate with it. Your main character needs to be passionate about something. They need to go after those passions. There needs to be a bit of urgency about them. The obstacles that happen are the ones that your character needs to smash through in order to get to what she wants.
What is it your character wants more than any damn thing in the world?
Who does your character have to be to get that?
Now, how about you?
What do you want more than any damn thing in the world?
Who do you have to be to get that?
Writing Tip of the Pod:
In life, Hardy says that our ambitious goals must be:
- Full of a motivating desire
- Hard as hell
- Tied to a timeframe to make them urgent.
Do this for your characters, too.
Dog Tip for Life
Don’t be afraid to remember you aren’t a solo show. Think about who can help you become who you want to be and achieve what you want to do.
Random Thoughts
If you listen to the podcast, you’ll hear:
- Us cooking hand pies and Shaun’s delightful name for a hand-pie take-out window
- Carrie ranting about articles
- Carrie worrying about meeting Shaun’s aunt
SHOUT OUT
The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Night Owl” by Broke For Free.
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IN THE WOODS – READ AN EXCERPT, ORDER NOW!
My new book, IN THE WOODS, is out!
Gasp!
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