Creative Rebellion Essays: Write it down

The annual tabula rasa by John S. Couch

At the end of every year, my wife and I open a leather-bound book of our annual goals. First, we review what we wrote at the beginning of that year.  It’s always disconcerting and inspiring to realize that we average around 75 to 80% success on what we envisioned for that year. Things that we were pretty sure would be beyond the pale of what we could accomplish. It also sets the bar for what we think we should accomplish in the new year.

I’m convinced that there is something powerful, mystical even, in the process of writing. It requires you to focus and for a moment that blur of noise and visions and insanity that is your brain on a moment-to-moment basis is temporarily silenced. It’s sludgy work but even as I write this, in the throes of the worst flu I’ve had in years, I can feel the pistons of my brain start to fire, albeit creakily, as I type these words. 

Almost five years ago, as an experiment, I decided to try to suspend my analytical thinking for a moment and write down where I’d like to live -- in the mountains, in a forest, near a water source. Two months later my wife and I closed on a house with that exact criteria: the water source being the creek that runs behind our house, and which is, because of the recent rains, not bone dry as it has been due to the climate change-induced drought. Now, I’m not a subscriber to any new-age notion of The Secret but I do believe the brain is a miraculous bio-mechanical machine of intent and execution. If you “program” your mind to see it as if it were already true, then it tends to happen. Athletes do this all the time, visualizing every turn of the marathon in their minds or running through every play before game time. When I was a teenager, my judo instructor, Ishibashi Michinori, told me that he visualized every match the night before the event so that during the actual match, he felt that he was going through a well-rehearsed scene like an actor on stage. And he knew the ending ahead of time – he would win. And he usually did. He programmed his mind and body to the point that the execution of the plan was matter-of-fact.

Writing is the coding language, so to speak, that I use to program my mind and spirit to accomplish whatever it is that needs accomplishing. 

I find that the real question often is, What is it you want?  

Most people don’t allow themselves that freedom to think about what they truly would do if “reality” were set aside: stand-up comedy or climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro or running a marathon.  

After writing down your goals the next step is the crucial one – committing and habituating. I’ve written about this before, but once you’ve made the decision you must commit like you are committing to a marriage and then get into the habit of doing it daily.

Find one thing you can commit to, and do it every day. Something like meditation. Quantity begets quality. Commit and do. 

A watched kettle indeed doesn’t boil. Once you’ve written down your goals and set into motion your commitment and habit, then “set and forget” about it. The fun thing about revisiting the leather-bound book of goals is that my wife and I have often forgotten that we even had certain goals. And we were delighted to see that we also accomplished the goal, seemingly without effort. But there was effort – we just were in the flow of doing (commitment and habituation) to the point that we didn’t realize that we had arrived at the destination as we were enjoying the journey so much.

Enjoy your journey in 2020. Start with the first step: write it down.

John

What I’m watching:

73 Cows. Extremely moving short documentary on how a UK farmer, Jay Wilde, transitioned from beef farming to organic, plant-based farming.

The Morning Show on Apple TV+. I thought it might be a slow-moving show but I was pleasantly surprised to find that my wife and I were engrossed enough to binge it (while sick in bed).

Soundbreaking: Stories from the Cutting Edge of Music. Brilliant documentary series from the producer-engineer’s POV. 

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