The Nerdist Way_ How to Reach the Next Level (In Real Life) - Chris Hardwick [19]
You have the power to give those limitations zero credence and do what you want to do anyway. This may piss your brain off at first because it does not like being ignored, but after boiling a few rabbits in your mental kitchen, eventually it will bend to your Will. It’s like the ghost from that movie that can only haunt people when they give it attention, and when they do, it tries to touch their boobs. You know that one movie? No? Me neither. I think I made that up. Hang on [calling out of room]: “Denise! Get my agent Morty on the phone! I gotta pitch him a supernatural erotic thriller!” [returning to chapter] In any case, push past the barrier and you will hop right back on track. Be the boss of your brain! It works for YOU, dammit!
CHARACTERCIZE
Come up with the dumbest, hackiest thing you can think of. (And don’t say, “Like your book?! Heh-heh.” I got my eye on you, Trolls!)
How can you start tweaking it to make it your own?
Is there a project you’ve been putting off because of prejudgment? What is it?
What are some limitations you’ve imposed on yourself? Is it possible they’re not true?
CHOO-CHOO-CHOOOOOSING
I played tournament chess from fifth grade through high school. Before school, during lunch, and after school, I was on the other side of a chessboard from some other Nerd. Then many weekends there would be chess tournaments. (Ladies will be sexually aroused to know that I was the Memphis City Junior High Chess Champion of 1984.) What happens when you play THAT much chess (at least for me) was that I inadvertently taught myself to look for EVERY POSSIBLE CHOICE ALWAYS. Playing out ten moves ahead with each significant piece on a chessboard is GREAT for winning those sex-ensuring chess trophies, but it’s a bit of a hindrance in life. It made it somewhat difficult for me to make decisions about things, because I was (and still am sometimes) constantly in the mode of playing out scenarios and weighing options ad infinitum.
If you’re lucky, half of your decisions in life will be black or white: It’s clear that one choice is superior to the other. The truth is, most choices are gray—there are some great points and some crappy downsides to every angle. This leads to a lot of things not getting done for fear of making an inferior decision. Once, I wouldn’t refresh my Web site design for MONTHS because I couldn’t decide between two shades of gray for the background (this was LITERALLY a gray area: #666666 vs. #999999). Everything else was in place and ONE STUPID COLOR got in the way. A pointless speed bump. In my personal life, I have seemingly replaced watching a movie to stream on Netflix with trying to pick a movie on Netflix. I pop around “New Releases,” “Suggestions for You,” every little weird specific subgenre in their thorough suggestion engine like “Italian Vampire Films with Conjoined Twin Protagonists in an Aquatic Setting” . . . Finally, after eighty-two minutes of this, I turn off the TV and go to bed, having watched nothing but previews, descriptions, and 1½ star ratings.
We are so inundated with choices all the time that this abundance of options has actually made our lives MORE stressful. It’s easy to fall into a pattern of inaction as we are gripped with the fear of making an inferior choice; pretty soon you run the risk of avoiding decision making altogether because the process is so goddamn stressful. To this day it’s difficult for me to play a leisurely game of chess because I can’t help but take on the intensity I had when I was a kid. I haven’t really tried to rectify this because I don’t really care about playing that much anymore. So to Boris Spassky I say, “You are safe for now.”
PRACTICE DECISIONS
So how do you get over indecisiveness? Simple. Practice by making insignificant decisions. If I wanted a sandwich, for example, rather then agonizing over whether or not it should be turkey or roast beef, I would just force myself to say “turkey” without thinking about it. Then I would be resolved