Keep your eye on the ball and let your mind go

The inner commitment to expressing yourself can’t be learned. It’s not something you’re conscious of. It’s just there. And the strength of that commitment will govern the speed and potency with which you advance your goals. 

Philippe, the world’s greatest hire wire walker, writes in his book that that there is no such thing as motivation in his world. He is not motivated to do what he does. As an artist, he is driven, he is compelled, he is thrust forward by a force so rooted inside of him, so convincing, that is seems futile to try and explain it. 

That’s the magic of commitment. When somebody fully ensconces themselves in their chosen craft, traditional challenges are immaterial. These people don’t struggle with focus and motivation and belief and productivity and resistance and inspiration. They’re professionals. Commitment trumps all of that. 

I’m reminded of a marketing seminar I once attended. The instructor spent an hour teaching us strategies for influencing customer behavior through body language, neurolinguistic cues and ingratiation techniques. But then, at the end of the presentation, he explained that when you’re known by your name, you can violate all these norms. 

And I thought to myself, that seems like the smarter path. Why kill myself trying to perfect a collection of manipulative strategies when I could just focus on being interesting before I opened my mouth? 

If I could just commit to doing that everyday, I wouldn’t have to waste brain cells trying to figure out what to do. Because I would have already made my own decision and met my own standards. And I could just start with commitment, and let everything else fall in line. 


LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you absurdly committed?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For a copy of the list called, “20 Ways to Make Customers Feel Comfortable,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2015-2016.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

Start your workday practicing your job

I begin every day with a creative act. 

Entering into the place where I was most powerful, my own mind. 

And so, instead
of checking email or reading the news or gluing myself to my phone first thing
in the morning, I just start putting words on paper. Reflecting on my feelings,
processing the night, organizing my idea inventory, updating my victory log,
fleshing out new concepts I’m working on and picking up where I left off from
the day before. 

That’s the first hour of my day. And there are myriad reasons why
I adhere to that schedule is, but mostly, I don’t want to start off my day from
a place of lack. 

That’s what noncreative activities do to the human brain. The
whole world is based on making you feel bad about yourself so it can sell you
things that will make you feel good about yourself. It wants nothing more than
for you to wake up and immediately begin flooding your minds with outrage porn,
living vicariously through and comparing yourself to others and seeking social
validation through the infinite dopamine loop of the internet. 

Sorry, but I’m
not interested in poisoning my brain with that kind of toxicity first thing in
the morning. 

I wake up creating. I start my workday practicing my job. Those
first sixty minutes are sacrosanct and nobody can take them away from me. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

When was the last time you began your day with a creative act?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For a copy of the list called, “35 Things You Simply Can’t Do,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2015-2016.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

Expanding your sense of who you are

When I finished writing, producing, directing and scoring my first independent documentary, what I was most excited about was the opportunity to call myself a filmmaker. 

Even if my movie wasn’t the greatest thing since indoor plumbing, all that mattered was, after two years of hard work, I had finally earned the right to put that label after my name. 

That was deeply satisfying for me. Because there’s nothing I love more than adding a new meaningful facet to my identity. Strengthening my status as a multihyphenate. And not just to satisfy my ego needs, but also strategically as an entrepreneur. 

Being a multihyphenate creates more diverse options for employment, gives my name more vehicles for discovery, keeps me engaged with multiple projects simultaneously, leverages the entirety of my talents, raises my value so I can command a higher fees, and most importantly, creates a new context from which to relate to the world, one that affords me the freedom to try other approaches to success. 

It’s a choice every creator has to make. 

Do I hammer one nail all my life, or do I hammer lots of nails, one way, all my life? 

If we want to expand our sense of who we are, it’s best to choose the latter.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

How will your work evolve as the constellation of your identity expands?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For a copy of the list called, “7 Ways to Out Attract Your Competition,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2015-2016.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

Moments of Conception 170: The Planning Scene from Up In The Air

All creativity begins with the moment of conception.

That little piece of kindling that gets the fire going. That initial source of inspiration that takes on a life of its own. That single note from which the entire symphony grows. That single spark of life that signals an idea’s movement value, almost screaming to us, something wants to be built here.

And so, in this blog series, I’m going to be deconstructing my favorite moments of conception from popular movies. Each post will contain a video clip from a different film, along with a series of lessons we can learn from the characters.

Today’s clip comes from the planning scene in Up in the Air:




Stare into the mouth
of panic and see possibility.
The hard part about dreaming is, once your dream
comes true, you have to learn to live with it. You have to exist in the world
that you created. You actually have to do
something with the idea that you killed yourself for. And it’s kind of a
bittersweet symphony. Because the pride and joy and satisfaction of achievement
is quickly replaced by the fear and vulnerability and pressure of reality. Just
ask anyone who creates for a living. The moment you wrap on a new project, kick
out the press release and announce to the world that your new brainchild has
finally arrived, you’re immediately gripped with quiet panic. And you starting
asking yourself these strange new questions. Are you sure you’re ready for the
world to see you as you really are? What if you can’t afford to follow this
dream anymore? What if you’re not the same person as you when the dream
started? And if so, does that mean you have to readjust your dream so it reflects something that satisfies you when
you step away from it? Campbell explained that the final stage of the hero’s
journey was bringing the elixir back to the ordinary world. Turning back to help humanity
along the difficult path that you yourself have just walked and conquered. But
what if that’s not enough for you? What if you sense the beginning of a different and more courageous dream?
It’s highly neurotic, but it’s also human nature. And nobody seems to want to
talk about it. So we have to confront this reality. Because not facing the fire
doesn’t put it out. Can you answer all
the questions about your dream?


Create positive tension for yourself. When my wife and I decided to relocate across the
country, I wrote apress
release
. Mainly because it was
funny, but also because I didn’t want to lose momentum. I didn’t want another
reason to back peddle on our dream. What’s interesting is, the moment we shared
that press release with the world, plans started to align. Not because we
earned a ton of headline impressions, but because we had created positive
tension for ourselves. The press release painted us into an accountable corner.
Not through distress, buteustress.
Constructive conflict. Intensity through total involvement. That was our
strategy to increase motivation, adaptation and reaction to the environment.
And it worked. Within four short months, we had downsized, combined, relocating
and restarted our lives. Best hundred bucks I ever spent. Proving, that when
you lose momentum, self propulsion is the only thing that will move you
forward. It’s like printing business cards for a company you haven’t started
yet. That commitment device creates social pressure and positive tension. By
virtue of physically handing them out to people, you’re forced to reckon with
the infallible judgment of reality. A place with enough social pressure to make
sure failure isn’t interpreted away.How
could you increase your commitment by creating unacceptable consequences of
failing?


Shake off the shackles of expectations. Natalie is overflowing with plans and ambitions and
deadlines for her perfect life, complete with a perfect career, perfect
community, perfect husband, perfect car and even a perfect dog. But she’s
discovering that life can be wildly underwhelming. And that people will thwart
your expectations every way you can imagine, and in many ways you can’t. This
movie reminds me of my twenties, when I had enough goals to keep god busy. And
I accomplished every one of them. But the strange part is, I wasn’t any
happier. I just had a thicker resume. And so, I started to realize that I
didn’t need a goal, I needed a process. A system. A set of practices I executed
on a regular basis to increase my odds of happiness in the long run. As my
favoritebookstates, only reasonable goal in life is maximizing
your total lifetime experience of something called happiness. So I focused on
that. And life got a lot happier. Because when you prioritize achievement over
contentment, burdened by the belief that you haven’t done enough to be okay
with yourself, happiness has a hard time bubbling to the surface. You have to
roll an awful lot of rocks up an awful lot of hills, just to get a taste of
that sweet air. But when the anxious part of you is finally resting, no longer
suffocating under an avalanche of expectation, it’s amazing how freely the
vomit of happiness spews out. Lesson learned, goals are overrated, deadlines
are jokes and plans are procrastination in disguise.What if you allowed themes to emerge in your life, rather than force
your own expectations upon it?


LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What did you learn from this movie clip?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For a copy of the list called, “11 Ways to Out-Market the Competition,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2015-2016.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

Broken vessels aspiring to a lost wholeness

I once heard a startup founder say
that the best way to get funding is to act as if you’ll never get it, and to
make a plan that doesn’t need it. 

What a brilliant way to work. 

Why
hang your sense of success, the fullness of your heart, and the stability of
your soul on the fickle whims of external validation? Successful people don’t
view themselves as passive organisms meant to be maneuvered by external forces
and conditions, they attain an inner posture that finds its own equilibrium.
They don’t wait around for a sugar daddy to greenlight their desires, they
create a sense of self so complete that external influences have no authority
within their consciousness. Because they know if they wait to be funded or
rewarded or even recognized before they start doing the work, they will
probably wait forever. 

And so, they trust that what they already have and who
they already are is enough to get started. I’m reminded of a brilliant book I read about breakups, and how important it is to feel
complete on your own. The authors advised heartbroken lovers to run headfirst
into life. To project an image to their exes that says, look, despite the
heartache and loss, the reason you’re not hearing from me is because I am too
busy taking care of myself and moving on with my fabulous new life. 

That’s the
kind of wholeness each of us should seek, in our businesses and in our lives.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Which values give you a sense that your life is complete?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For a copy of the list called, “11 Ways to Out Google Your Competitors,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2015-2016.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

The capacity for delayed gratification

Seinfeld once said that comedy takes a lot of talent, but an equal measure of temperament. 

It’s a fascinating insight that can be applied to many career paths. Because somebody might have the talent to do great work, but the real question is, do they have the discipline to continue working without seeing any results? 

That’s the line of demarcation between professionals and amateurs. The capacity for delayed gratification. Ask anyone who’s spent a few years trying to make a living by their wits, that path will cause them to tap reservoirs of strength and patience they didn’t even know they had. 

Having played music for more than twenty years, I was forced to develop my patience muscle early and often. But although it drove me up the wall as a kid, little did I know, that spirit of incrementalism would come in handy as an adult. 

Because now my job is create art on a daily basis, never knowing if I will get recognized for it or not, much less paid for it. 

And I’m perfectly at peace with that. I’ve trained myself to be okay winking in the dark, singing to the wall and writing into the ether, never convinced that the world is blind to my talents. It’s all part of the temperament that comes with the creative territory. 

And it’s not a prerequisite, but it certainly makes the slog more tolerable. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you seeking long term fulfillment or short term gratification?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For a copy of the list called, “26 Ways to Out Brand Your Competition,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2015-2016.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

Conserve your best energies for your creative efforts

There’s an inverse relationship between feedback and creation. 

I have an artist friend who said once she let go of how the world validated her art, she gained a tremendous sense of creative freedom, and that lifted a weight of expectation that allowed to start creating more. 

Hallelujah. 

Deciding to permanently affix your fingers into your ears is a breakthrough moment for any artist. Because let’s face it, feedback is completely overrated. It rarely bears any resemblance to your inner creative reality. 

Dilbert said it best when he suggested that constructive criticism was really just an uninformed opinion about things people don’t understand. I’m sure most creative people would agree. 

And so, next time you put something new into the world, instead of chewing up valuable time listening to confusing and disruptive feedback that you’re just to get defensive about and ultimately ignore, just move onto the next thing.

Aim for volume, not accuracy. Practice a little selective indifference. Be discerning enough not to dwell on meaningless matters. Conserve your best energies for your creative efforts. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

If you weren’t still giving people’s opinions more weight than they deserved, what might you create?LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For a copy of the list called, “38 Ways to Make Customers Gasp,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2015-2016.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

You don’t have to justify want

We’ve always been told that it’s easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission. 

But isn’t the ultimate freedom refusing to explain yourself to people? Isn’t the goal to get to a place where you don’t feel obligated to explain and excuse and defend and justify and apologize for everything you make? 

It’s such a colossal waste of energy. And the worst part is, it never makes you feel better. Backpedaling only makes things worse. 

I’m reminded of my favorite comedian, who unapologetically said that he only did comedy for himself. Carlin said the fact that his work involved other people was great. And that it amused them and gave him an income was great too. But he did it just to have a chance to sing his song. George actually used to come right out and tell his audiences, you’re here for me, I’m here for me, and nobody’s here for you. 

And people loved it. They just ate it up. His productive selfishness didn’t require explanation. 

Which only proves the point further, begging for forgiveness is wildly overrated. Enough with the disclaimers. Just do the work and move on. Any attempt to make grand claims about what the work is, what it’s supposed to do, why you deserved to make it or what people should think about it, is a waste of time. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

How much of your energy is devoted to explaining yourself?LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For a copy of the list called, “7 Ways to Out Attract Your Competition,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2015-2016.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

Turn that story upside down

Manhattan is a city of achievers. 



People move here because it’s the place where things happen. Where the lights inspire you and the streets make you feel brand new, as the song goes. 



And so, everyone has an agenda. Everyone has eyes full of dreams. There are eight million centers of the universe scrambling around town, building their personal real estate, froggering their way to the front of the line, so obsessed with success that they barely smile. 



No wonder people walk so damn fast. 



What’s interesting is, I moved to this city with an uncommon posture. Prior to living here, I was already making things happen. I had already made a name for myself. I had already found a life companion with whom to do so. And that posture completely changed my experience of living here. 



Because once I let go of the need to prove myself, no longer gripped with quiet panic and tight anxious hands, I suddenly felt much lighter. Instead of running around making it all the time. I was just floating along blissfully despite the chaos around me, liberated from the burden of expectation. 



What a glorious relief. What a serene reminder. 



Turns out, we don’t have to buy into the narrative that every merchant of mass delusion tries to sell us. We can be intentional about doing it our own way.



As my mentor once told me, we can make the choice to turn that story upside down. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you willing to gamble on an unconventional life?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For a copy of the list called, “8 Ways to Move Quickly on New Opportunities,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2015-2016.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

Moments of Conception 169: The Concert Scene from Greetings From Tim Buckley

All creativity begins with the moment of conception.

That little piece of kindling that gets the fire going. That initial source of inspiration that takes on a life of its own. That single note from which the entire symphony grows. That single spark of life that signals an idea’s movement value, almost screaming to us, something wants to be built here.

And so, in this blog series, I’m going to be deconstructing my favorite moments of conception from popular movies. Each post will contain a video clip from a different film, along with a series of lessons we can learn from the characters.

Today’s clip comes from the concert scene in Greetings From Tim Buckley:


To love at all is to be vulnerable.
Buckley possessed a tenor vocal
range that ranged between three and a half to four octaves. And those natural
endowments, mingled with massive amounts of courage and pain and tenderness,
allowed him to sing with a soulful vulnerability that could make even the
toughest man tremble. Few people could stand within his radius without being
burned to a cinder. In fact, when I was in high school, I remember reading a
review of his debut album. The critic wrote that the singer’s voice was the
single most moving goddamn instrument he’d ever heard. What a compliment. What
a way to be remembered. And, what a great reminder that when we’re courageously
vulnerable, showing the more tender aspects of who we are through our work, we
offer a gift to others. We deliver value that has never been delivered before.
The scary part is wondering if our gift will be returned to sender, or, worse
yet, not even opened in the first place. Yikes.
Because this isn’t a blender, this is our soul. Poured out and served up on a
silver platter. And the existential rejection of our gift being met with
crickets is the most terrifying thing in the world. Powell, whose groundbreaking books on identity had a
profound influence on me, wrote that I am afraid to tell you who I am because
if I tell you who I am, you may not like who I am, and that’s all I have. No
wonder disclosure is so difficult. Have you reclaimed your right to be vulnerable?



A place where your voice can take flight and travel. Jeff had the most ethereal falsetto voice in the history of rock and
roll. Listening to his music as a teenager was a religious experience. And so, in
the mid nineties, directly against the cultural backdrop of apathetic, angry
grunge music and narcissistic, violent rap songs, his gentle, gender neutral
stylings earned the world’s attention. Because nobody saw him coming. Buckley’s
father may have been mainstream folk icon, but his son came through the side
door and delivered catharsis. And he influenced an entire generation of singers. I was reading one of his
old concert
review
s
, in which the critics says he sings
like a man with more than a few exposed nerves, given to wild shifts in volume
and hysteria, delivering messages of isolation, romance and other urban
ailments to uncomfortable extremes. No wonder his debut album became the
definite album of the decade. Because twenty years ago, nobody was singing like
that. Nobody even had the guts to try and
sing like that. Popular culture put too much of a premium on cool. Proving two
things. First, that timing isn’t everything, it’s the only thing. And second,
if you want to get to the next level, you have to break the rules. What
alienates you from your true voice?



Study the anatomy of other people’s talent. Buckley transformed the way I sang. Listening to his records gave me
permission to hit falsetto notes whenever possible. And not because it was
popular, and not because girls liked it, but because it made me feel free. Like
something was escaping. Like my soul was purging. Interestingly, I heard in an
interview that he was emulating the vocals of another singer. Buckley credits
his performance style to Nusrat. He said that that the first time he heard the man’s voice, he felt a
rush of adrenaline in his chest, like he was on the edge of a cliff, wondering
when he would jump and how well the ocean would catch him. Wow. So I started listening to that guy too. And the first time I
heard the voice that influenced the voice that influenced my voice, my jaw dropped to the floor. It’s a surreal experience.
Almost like you’re traveling back in time. Or trying on the head of your hero.
Wild stuff. But it’s something every artist has a responsibility to do. To go
to the source. To listen to the people who influenced the people who influenced
them.  What do you and your role models have in
common?

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What did you learn from this movie clip?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For a copy of the list called, “11 Ways to Out-Market the Competition,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2015-2016.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

Sign up for daily updates
Connect

Subscribe

Daily updates straight to your inbox.

Copyright ©2020 HELLO, my name is Blog!