Letting go

I was watching a clip from an interview the other day. The interview was with Samuel L Jackson and he was being asked to give advice to up and coming actors or want-to-be actors, and what he said made me think. I won't go into how he laid it all out, because I don't completely remember it, but what it boiled down to was 'give up on your expectations and do it for the sake of doing it.' I want to note that it was give up on your expectations, not give up on your dreams. Because a lot of people don't realize how their expectations hinder them in chasing their dreams.

Really what he was saying, echos something that I see in these types of interviews a lot and it centers on the fact that people, in all walks of life, have certain expectations about doing things and succeeding at doing things. And when reality doesn't align with those expectations it makes it easy to give up, or quit. Another actor I listened to talked about the actors that basically say, 'I'll give a try for a few years' and he said, if that's your attitude, save yourself the two or three years and figure out what you want to do. Now in these cases they were talking about acting, but it is true in a lot of fields ... art, writing, music, sports, business, investment, careers in general.

My script writing professor in college on day one had us go around the room, saying what we wanted, not just from the class, but from learning script writing, what was our ambition with the skill, and as people answered he wrote the answers up on the board. Some of the answers were, fame, wealth, have a script made into a movie, learn story structure, learn character development, finish a degree. (The story structure answer was me for the record). Once everyone was done, he circled Fame and Wealth and then crossed them out saying, 'If you're here for these reasons, do yourself a favor now and go find something else' and then he circled 'have a script made into a movie' and said 'if you want to do this, or want to learn to tell better stories, I'll be happy to teach you what I know.' He continued saying 'because if your focus is on becoming famous or wealthy it's much more likely that you will become discouraged and fail, but if you focus on the craft of telling a great story, then it's much more likely that you might find wealth or fame.'

 The problem with it is expectation, if your expectation is that you're going to be famous, if that is your focus, then every time you fail to live up to that your likely going to lose a little more drive, doubly so if you see someone else get a break ... more over when you are focused on fame or money, you're more likely to try and make what you think will sell or be popular, which likely means that what you create will end up just one of hundreds or thousands of others almost just like it.

In any creative endeavor, create to create. Create for you, write the story that's in your heart even if (possibly especially if) you can't imagine that anyone wants to read it. Write the music that you want to hear, the lyrics you want to sing. Paint what speaks to you, take pictures of what catches your eye and sparks your imagination. Because if YOU love it, if you love making it, you'll improve at it, you'll learn and get better because you want to make it better, you'll create and polish your creation and it will shine. Then the next one will be better as you take what you learned and start from a better place, and you'll learn and improve and polish. 

I won't say that if you do it you'll absolutely become famous and rich, but I will say that if you're doing whatever you do because you love it, you're more likely to stick with it through the hard times and, thus, increase your chances of coming out better on the other side than if you were just doing it for money. Because if I've learned anything it's that if you care about the result then nothing is ever easy, because things are only easy if you don't care about the result ... and if YOU don't care about the result ... neither will anyone else.