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Transcript

You Don't Need to Be Brilliant · The Daily Writer

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Daily Rider, where we share a lesson each day to help you cultivate the habits for creative success.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: We live in a culture that celebrates brilliance.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Everywhere you look, people worship the best and the brightest among us.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: The internet, magazines, movies, and social media, they're obsessed with people who seem to have it all.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to feel motivated when you compare your own first draft to the latest million selling book by a celebrity author.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: It seems like such a deep chasm between you and them, how can you ever hope to cross it?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a quick side note, many of those best-selling books were actually written by ghostwriters, and they also had a huge marketing push behind them.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: The popularity of a book rarely has anything to do with its quality.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, back to the question at hand.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: How do you ever hope to compete with all those so-called brilliant authors out there?
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, surprisingly, it's actually a question that doesn't matter.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And here are three reasons why it doesn't matter.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, you can't control other people's success.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: It really has nothing to do with your own success.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: We compare the two things in our mind, their success and our success, but in reality they're not directly connected.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Second of all, as they say, a rising tide lifts all ships.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: So when somebody else's book is brilliant or sells a million copies, that's actually good for every author because it means more people are reading.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And third, and most important, the definition of quote unquote brilliant is not really up to you anyway.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: What one reader sees as brilliant, another reader sees as silly or completely pointless.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've ever struggled with comparison, you are not alone.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Elizabeth Gilbert felt this way also.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: She said, one day, when I was agonizing over how utterly bad my writing felt, I realized that's actually not my problem.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: I never promised the universe that I would write brilliantly.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: I only promised the universe that I would write.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I put my head down and sweated through it as per my vows.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's pretty great advice, and apparently it works, since Elizabeth Gilbert's mega best selling book, Eat Pray Love, has sold millions upon millions of copies around the world.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: So it turns out that you don't need to be brilliant after all.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: You just need to be brilliantly consistent.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: For more, you can visit us at dailywriterlife.com.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, and I'll see you tomorrow.