Get Off Your Keister: A Motivational Message from Enabran Templar

At least once a week I see people despairing that one thing or another is beyond their grasp and outside of their capacity for accomplishment.



No, god dammit, that's the wrong attitude! It's too hard? Learn it because it's hard! You'll be that much stronger than those who don't want to do it.



Then you must succeed! You must prove the others wrong, you must blow away the sayers of nay!



Who cares if it doesn't work? You're never going to find out if you don't try! What if it does work?



To hell with Linden Lab's help! Do it yourself! Find comrades to assist you. The success will be so much sweeter since you got there on your own.



Too damn bad! Work harder, get better. Failing that, align with someone who is amazing at doing whatever you cannot do.



BEAT THEM. Be better than they are! Compete! Drive them out of business by being the best you can possibly be. Share the market by providing complimentary products or services! Be different!



Then don't be sad when others succeed while you wallow in boredom.

Or..pin all your hopes on winning the Lottery like I do...

Do you do motivational seminars? You sound like that tall American motivational guy who barks at you until you're motivated (I cannot remember his name, for shame)

Either way, that was a fun read

Whoa. There's a new business idea.

Glad I could be of entertainment.

Yeah! And you won't end up living in a van by the river!

Seriously though, thanks for the pep talk. Does this mean I have to actually get off my butt and start learning how to use GIMP to design clothes, instead of whining about how I'm no good at it?

Enabran lives in a van... down by the river.

I need to make a wallpaper out of that so I can read it everyday. It's good to give some tough love. The way I like it.

It means exactly that! One of the designers I respect and admire most had taught herself GIMP within a month of joining SL. Her initial creations were some of the most attractive (and classy!) ladieswear I'd seen in SL. Anything is possible when you really want it.

Enabran, as much as I admire your intentions here, and even agree with them to a great degree, the painful fact of the matter is that each of us has strengths as well as weaknesses.

The trick isn't so much in forcing ourselves to do something just because we think we oughta. It's in finding out what our real strengths are, and pursuing those areas. In other areas we need to be able to recognize when we really are out of our depth. I, for example, will never be an astrophysicist no matter how much I love looking at the stars.

However:

Too often I (and others I know) limit myself through self-perception. I don't perceive of myself in a certain way and thus don't even entertain an idea. What I usually learn is that there are a lot of things I really CAN do if I'm motivated, and that most of the resistance I felt wasn't a lack of talent so much as keeping myself in a box and resisting change.

My most recent discovery in that area was in creating SL animations. It's half the work and twice the fun I expected

Mom?

That was just too long to read.

My intent isn't to encourage people to start doing things they don't want to do. I'm just making the point that anyone can do amazing things if they're dedicated to the cause of success. Success requires the elimination of excuses and the obliteration of self-imposed obstacles.

For example: I knew nothing about scripting when I introduced my first products. What did I do? I bought a few blocks of L$ on GOM and paid someone handsomely for what was some excellent scripting work. My return on investment was significant, but only because I stuck to my guns and made the product great. I had paid myself back in my first week of sales.

*looks all teary eyed* Does that mean even I could learn GIMP...even though I failed stick figure drawing last week at school.

Seriously, have you ever thought about having regular events to give these kind of talks? Imagine the good it'd do for newbies who see all the fabulous creations here and are intimidated, and think they can't do that! Not to mention people like me who've gotten into the habit of buying things, rather than learning the skills to make them...

True. There's a big difference between difficult and impossible.




The dirty secret of many (if not most) creators (be they artists, writers, muscians, inventers etc..) is that much of what they create is flawed (doesn't work). The trick is discarding the failures (perhaps learning from them) and revising and polishing the stuff that does work.

Really nice post Enabran!!! *cheers*

Pity you are not on my list of people to stalk yet. Oh well, I hope we at least get to meet in world some day.

Brilliantly stated. I've learned a lot more from stuff that never saw the light of day than from my most successful products. In RL, too, where I did a lot of video editing, screwing up was a great learning tool -- taught me the quicker, slicker ways of doing things.



I think the service would be a good one to render for newbies. I'm so strapped for time that I couldn't organize it myself, but perhaps one day I'll have more opportunity to do that. I think it's worth doing and not enough bother to do it. SL could be such a leg up for people who wouldn't otherwise get to learn skills like these.



I'm a bit of a hermit lately -- I seem to spend most of my time up in my sky laboratory working on stuff. Occasionally I do venture out of Kaili and meet people, though.

Very true - I've often told people that out of 20 ideas I have, I'll have time to make 10 of them..

for every 20 things I make, only 10 will work, the rest will get deposited in the trashcan

for every 20 things that work, 8 will never be foolproof enough for anything other than my own and my close friends enjoyment...

If I'm lucky -- one of the 2 things left will be something someone else will actually want

Compound the above with the fact that I find doing the same thing over and over boring as crap - and that SL is mainly for my entertainment.. if I'm not doing something new, I'm just not happy.

Plus - I live to hear people say 'oh thats f*cking cool!' -- that just makes my day... moreso than any amount of L$ can..


Siggy.

At least I did one thing this week! got off my Keister and snagged me a 6 pack ab'ed old friend of mine,


if that doesn't count I did build a asian monument somewhere,

Moved to Off-Topic.

But the thread is to help people who are afraid that Second Life is too hard to learn. It doesn't really have anything to do with anything but Second Life.