Create discomfort.
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Notes
The practice leads to a “room” with different rules, expectations, challenges. It creates the feeling that comes with a “dangerous leap”— “that feeling in your stomach when you’re in thin air, neither here no there.
Some avoid this (seeking recipes, reassurances), but the “practice requires you to seek out this experience of uncertainty and discomfort.
Thoughts
This is the last chapter of this section, “Generous.” It reviews that earlier, important insight that the work we do—at least, if it’s going to have the potential to create change—needs to embrace uncertainty (recognizing that outcomes may fail in many ways) and, especially, discomfort (both our own discomfort as creators, and the discomfort of our audience).
As I did at the end of the previous section, I’m going to pause to process what I’ve read so far, to consider what it all means, especially for my own work, before I dive into the next section: “The Professional.”
This series is meant to capture my thoughts as I work through Seth Godin’s The Practice. It’s a book with over 200 (very short) chapters, which I hope to work through and, I further hope, to implement over time.
If you’re interested in more of Godin’s ideas, or my thoughts about them, you can check out this collection of posts. Note that if you’re more interested in the former, you should probably get Godin’s book and read it yourself; my notes will be both incomplete and idiosyncratic, and my thoughts will relate to my own experience.
But if my thoughts resonate with you, or if you think I’m just silly, I welcome your comments.