Holy Ship!

You have to ship
To reach your dreams, you’re going to have to produce something as opposed to just thinking about it. You’re going to have to ship.

Between you and where you would love to be, there are obstacles. They don’t clear out just by thinking about them and you don’t move forward by having good ideas. If we never get to the point of acting on what’s in our head, we won’t move at all.

However, it’s more than just acting, we actually have to finish stuff. We have to complete stuff and get it out the door.

We have to ship.

“I want it to be perfect”
Perfect is the enemy of shipping. We can spend forever trying to perfect every detail and every little feature, but if we do that, we’ll never EVER finish what we are working on.

Regardless of how noble you think it is to wait until something is perfect, that mentality is venom to your dreams.

Now, in no way am I suggesting that we ship a bunch of garbage just so that we have something we can point at. What I am saying is that perfect is often times an illusion we chase because we are afraid of how people are going to respond to our effort.

Ship.

“They’re all gonna laugh at me”
You’re right, people are going to respond negatively. They are going to look at what you create and call your precious baby crap. They are going to tell you that what you are doing is a waste of time. They will criticize every imaginable thing you come up with.

Not everyone though.

There will be other people that will love what you produce. THEY are going to look at your creation and call your precious baby treasure. THEY are going to tell you what you are doing is inspiration and art. THEY will take what you create and use it to change their world in ways you couldn’t possibly imagine.

The only way to avoid the first group is to avoid both of them at the same time and not not ship at all. So ignore the first one if it keeps you from producing your art.

Ship.

“I’ve got this great idea”
Just starting something is not enough to change people, we have to actually finish our somethings and put them out there. Constantly working on developing your idea in your head or chasing after the “perfect idea” won’t get you one step closer to your dreams.

You can spend all day working on your idea, but it will never be strong enough to stand on its own as an idea. If you don’t put legs to it, it won’t go anywhere. Dreaming alone is not enough to change your life.

You have to start taking those scary steps and doing something with your dream.

Ship.

“I’m going to mess up”
Yes, you are.

You’re going to get things wrong. You’ll plan something forever and then it will flop right on top of you. Everyone will see it. You’ll be embarrassed. Things will suck.

Then you’re going to get excited about an idea and think everyone else will too…but it won’t even get a second glance. You’ll wonder what you did wrong. You’ll get frustrated and want to give up. You’ll question everything and have angry conversations in your head at imagined groups of people. Things will really suck.

And you’ll learn.

You’ll learn what NOT to do next time. Your plans will change and you might get it right. (You might also flop again which will cause you to learn a new way to not do it.)

Then one time you’ll get excited about an idea and get lucky enough that others will too. More common though, you’ll have a passing thought and act on it (because you’ve gotten in the habit of shipping) and people will think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. It will drive you crazy until you make sense of why that passing thought was so well received. Sometimes you’ll figure it out; sometimes you won’t.

But you won’t experience any of that magical stuff unless you ship.

So ship.

How do I know this?
I told someone tonight that I waited almost a year and a half after getting the idea for this website before I ever started it. There are no success stories from that time. No one can say that I impacted them with my idea. No one learned anything from what I wanted to say online since I wasn’t there.

So why did I wait so long? All those crap reasons I just listed above.

I wanted to come up with the perfect subject and product. I wanted to have a stellar website design. I was afraid that if I didn’t people would laugh at me. I wanted to edit my idea to DEATH so that no one ever saw any flaws.

In the end, I’ve only regretted not shipping sooner.

The only way to completely avoid all those negative situations is to never ship at all, but then the chances of your dreams coming true drops to just above zero. Act on your dreams and ship. You will be amazed at the positive outcomes that you never ever dreamed were possible, even in the beginning and learning phases. Things you never knew existed will present themselves on your doorsteps.

Yes, things will be a imperfect. People will laugh and criticize. Your ideas will get scorned or, worse, ignored. And yes, you will absolutely make a disastrous mess out of things sometimes.

So what? If that’s the worse that can happen, is it really that bad? (Hint: it’s not really that bad.)

You tell me which is worse:

• Imperfect and messy ideas that people laugh at or ignore OR
• NEVER seeing your dreams come true

SHIP! Consider it a sacred duty to your dream…

Holy Ship!

PS – I’ll be collecting results for my Free Stuff Survey soon. Submit your request before it’s too late: I want free stuff