#3. Feeling the need to be perfect does not make you perfect.
David Sedaris is the funniest humor writer in the world.
What sets him apart from others is his brutal honesty about his life. David never tells you what to think. He writes things as he lived them and leaves it up to you to judge the facts.
And that doesn’t leave him in a perfect place most of the time, but that’s part of his charm.
The fact is that reading his books, doing his Masterclass, and watching all his interviews and readings, I have been compiling over the years some ideas of this author, which changed my way of seeing the craft of writing and the world in general and I hope they will help you too.
Let’s start
1. “The audience will always give you what you need.”
Over time, I’ve realized that whatever you do for a living it’s true.
Your customers, in my case, readers, are the ones who have the information you need to make things go right for you.
When things go wrong for you, you’re not listening.
What do your customers need? What do they complain about? What problems do they have? How do they feel inside?
Life is not about you; it’s about others. Reread it.
I had a professor who always told me, “AG, the most important thing in life is work. If you don’t have a good job, most of your time will be spent doing something you don’t feel fulfilled at; when you do have free time, you won’t have money to take advantage of it, and it will rob you of sleep at night, and destroy your family bonds.”
Moral: people/clients are your work. Better your work, and you’ll better your life.
To do that, you need to listen to your customers more than you listen to yourself. It’s about them, not you.
2. “If you spend all day online and leave the house walking around while texting. Then, you go to the grocery store and continue texting. No story will come to sit in your lap.”
If you want things to happen to you, you need to be engaged with the world.
We often feel bad because of over-connectedness to the digital world and under-connectedness to the real world.
I watched a video of the New Year’s countdown in Paris the other day. And when 2024 started, no one embraced. Everyone started recording the fireworks with their smartphone. Sad.
There comes an age when you must stop watching so many series on Hulu and shoot your own movie.
The hero’s journey only works if you are that hero.
You don’t need to be Batman; you need to be you, and the world will not make it easy for you. But only by genuinely daring to live and engage with the real world around you can you feel fully realized as a human being.
3. “Feeling the need to be perfect does not make you perfect; it only paralyzes you. You will be fortunate if you learn to be yourself.”
David Sedaris spent 15 years writing his díaro every day before he got the chance to publish something. But he didn’t let that long desert period kill his dreams.
He focused on improving his writing. And as he says, “When you’ve been writing for three days, your writing sucks. That’s normal. But then it gets better if you persist.”
Writing in his journal was vital for David because a journal is like a friend to whom you confess all your dirty secrets.
I started doing it following David’s example, and the truth is that at first, you feel embarrassed to write certain things even though you know that the only person who will read them because it’s your private diary is yourself.
But as you do it every day, you lose that resistance, peel off layers that you didn’t know you had, and eventually, you write your truth and uncover all your lies and false beliefs.
Writing a journal will help you be yourself more than any other tool in the self-help world.
And don’t tell me you don’t have fifteen minutes to write every morning because, as David says, “If writing means that much to you, you’re going to find the time to do it.”
So, if you want to change your life, write every day in your journal; you won’t regret it.
A virtual hug
AG
Leave a Reply