We often hear people telling us “Oh! You can learn from your mistakes.” For me, it was like “seriously, what does it mean?!” kind of surprised reaction. I also believed that when you learn from your mistakes it only makes you more confused. No single person has made mistakes that are similar. Only through an intense self-reflection you can find the similarity in the two mistakes.
Since, my reality was that I found myself unconsciously repeating my mistakes but not recognising the similarity. Does that mean I didn’t learn from my mistake. It is very much so socially. But then, it led me to realise that some lessons of life have reason to teach lack of missing discipline in the experience. The moment you recognise the similarity you are a knowledge seeker.
Lessons Martial Art Form of Bruce Lee
People who speak about Bruce Lee’s mentioned in their interviews, that Mr. Lee was not afraid of facing any opponent who has learnt 1000 martial moves; but he was sure frightened of an opponent who has practiced one move 1000 times!
I was fascinated by the quote and wondered, if there were any take aways in it for me. In Martial Art form, the prerequisite happens to be that the mind, the body, and the human soul all culminate at bringing down the opponent with minimal strenuous moves.
Our eternal opponent Life brings us down with such minimal and obvious moves too. But human reaction is one of surprise. Later follows the denial that this couldn’t have happened to me, followed by justification to support the improbability of the state of being brought down vaingloriously!
We need to recognise that the true strength of a true fighter lies in getting up every time you are brought down on your knees. Our grit in life is tested by repeat pain in life-or-death duels. There are many times when Life gets the better of us. Being determined not to give up getting up every time you fall and getting right up on your feet after the phenomenal bashing, is an acquired skill learnt on the laps of failure.
Single Activity Repeated Multiple Times
This is where the Martial arts students learn the best lessons of their lives. Repeating one single move multiple times relentlessly means that the person is now creating neural network path that converts into muscle memory and later a strong reflex neural network gets triggered in the brain.
Present-day psychology practices spoken in self-help books states that learning and challenging keeps the mind re-tuning and the subconscious fine-tuned. Our internal narratives that are played in a loop all the time. The narrative of failures or setbacks is ceaselessly replayed undermining our inner strength.
Here is where the vicious cycle of challenge, thoughts of downfall, failure, and pre-emptive humiliation must be broken by stern resolve and discipline. Disciplined subconscious can drop that negative narrative and switch on viewing them as process of doing our best in the tasks ahead of us.
Positives and Negatives in my Personality
Over many years maybe since 1997, I have been trying hard to get published through the traditional process of searching for Book publisher who would accept my poetic works. It was a daring challenge for me since I was dead against vanity publishing. Yet it kept getting hard to stick to a singular plan and complete the draft.
Some of my personal hurdles are:
- I easily get distracted
- My writing is not a churning of articles or essay on a regular basis
- I fear the editing process
- I believe my works are not good enough
- I only write when I am inspired
- I need instant gratification and lack patience
Some Positives on my personality are:
- Despite all fear I still enjoy the act of writing
- I know if I keep writing everyday then, the writing will naturally show improvements
- I have unique way of writing
Given the above points of both negative and seemingly positive, I have often felt that something was amiss, and I needed to fix that attitude of mine in the best way possible. To ensure that I am around to see my book published when alive and not posthumously is a challenge for me.
21-Days Challenge and My Fears
So, in the month of July 2024, I took up a challenge of writing 21 poems in 21 days and contest stated that the challenge included publishing the book as an eBook and/or On Demand paperbacks.
I found myself finishing them much before the deadline. My mentor Professor Judith Serin helped with suggestion to edit for secular audience. There was such a huge satisfying experience for me. I could have reworked the old poems and submitted them. But I stood by my dream to write fresh ones which were never shared publicly.
22 Villanelles in Five Days
22 Villanelles were created in the space of five days but the editing of it took the patience guidance from my mentor who was doing it for love. That is when I realised that my lack of discipline can be countered, if a determined goal is set, and a desire to meet new challenges in my writing life.
DM Team’s Disciplined Feedback Loop
For, while as a full-time onsite SEO Content Writer, I handled all channels of Digital Marketing contents. It gave me the stringent rules to write every day. I found the job so satisfying, but I didn’t learn much about improving my articles for my target audience or the trajectory to plan for them.
I had to simply work based on assumptions of understanding. I got to know that an article written by me was successfully imbibed by the Wiki How webpage after three months or so. My How-to Article became the base article.
It shows clearly that lack of communication among DM team was harmful and degenerative in the long run. Now this is scarcity syndromed team that it did not believe in transparency in its working style.
The team that I was working with did not share vital feedback information to the content writers at all. The frequent mocking of the content used to downsize the motivation for the writers too! This meant that I didn’t know which articles were popular and which were unpopular. To make the best choice article in the future content plan.
One more thing that I found that the team was doing wrong was the lack of planning and merely focusing on the keywords. I never like stuffing the article with keywords. I believed in the quality of the article to make people understand was more important than Google’s approved tag.
Have That Difficult Conversation
Of late all social media’s conversation is about to be outspoken about the unspeakable topic. It is now allowed and encouraged to explore and to discover a new all-inclusive solution. To have that difficult conversation and to be able to figure out as a team, which would be the best course of action going forward is important empirical decision.
I felt the team lacked this skill since none in the team wanted to work as a unit. They brutally refused to see and to explore being better together. The joy in seeing a team pull down each other was heart wrenching for me! A man eat man situation prevailed and that showed the lack of good leadership at the top tier of company.
Discipline for Writing | An Ongoing Process
I found that if I could write in the same strict submission deadline then, the right side of the brain is happy, but the left side of the brain annihilates my right side for being whimsical if I failed. There is much that is happening these days with me, I am serious about being published and thinking strongly about Self-Publishing. But I lack discipline which needs to be my priority.
For that to happen, then, I need to discipline myself to regularly write and keep writing not for instant gratification, but for a sustained reason of my personal why I want to be a writer in the first place. I want to share those fancy made-up fairy tales which I love to read some much. If at all I set a discipline to write regularly, then I will be writing for self-pleasure the most!
Itinerant Storyteller 