Do

The biggest piece of advice I’d give to my younger self is this:

Stop talking. Stop thinking. Do.

It’s lovely to discuss with your friends or in your own mind all the incredible things you think you could do to make your life more adventurous, productive, colorful, lively…But often times, we say these things out loud, and the train stops when we get that dopamine hit of hearing, “Wow, that would be cool,” or “Yeah, I think you’d be really good at that!”

Not that I am any sort of success story, but I dreamt of starting a podcast for over a year. Dreamt…Tinkered with the idea, mentioned it to my friends, articulated how I’d go about it. I got a ton of affirmations about how my friends would listen to it and how they’d love to hear my voice on iTunes. But as Newton’s sixth law of Not Actually Doing Shit concludes, a year went by and I had nothing to actually show for it.

You have to just do, man. Once I finally swallowed my fear of imperfection (which never goes away when you create stuff), and just started putting things out there, the ball began rolling. I look back at the first podcasts I created and laugh at how unskilled I was. BUT I CAN ONLY DO THAT BECAUSE I HAVE BEEN DOING IT EVERY WEEK FOR ALMOST A YEAR. If I had never started, I wouldn’t have acquired any skills, any knowledge, and worse, I wouldn’t have ever experienced that deeply fulfilling feeling you get when you have a delicious conversation with someone, edit it for several hours over several days, upload it, and see it in your iTunes library and know that that is your creation.

It literally doesn’t fucking matter at all what you want to do. For the love of Allah, just shut up and starting doing it. You will suck. You will not gain the respect of those who are better than you right out the gate. But you will get better, (and if you keep going) much better.

Do.