I've been working on lots of new stuff in my life lately- both for my store and in my personal ventures. As well, there have been many around me starting to take the dive into new endeavours. The common denominator with all of these things is a trepidation of things failing, or decision paralysis.
In these moments when undertaking a new project or idea, it's too damn easy to get stuck wondering what would be the best way to start, or to overthinking potential hurdles, or even wondering if its worth it to start the project at all for fear of failure or judgement. One of the biggest things that has stuck with me ever since I was a kid was a quote from (apocryphally) Teddy Roosevelt: "In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing. "
After I first read it, it really got sucked into my soul, and has since been a beautiful guiding light for moments of paralysis in my life. No matter what you do, even if you start something and it fails horribly, its still a step forward. You have made more progress and learned far more than you would have hemming and hawing about what ifs. If you succeed, fucking great, keep it up and let your confidence guide you forward. If you fail, that's just as much a blessing, as you know now what NOT to do, or what you DON'T like doing. This failure too is momentum, as its still a step away from where you were when you started, and something to be proud of.
Its exactly this realization too of knowing what not to do that is another guiding star that has come in exceedingly useful in many a situation. It comes from Adam Savage (one of the mythbuster guys) on his youtube "Tested." During one of his One Day Builds, he hit a moment of not knowing how to paint an object, and instead of thinking long and hard about it and losing momentum, he went and painted it garishly in neon stripes- something so completely away from any semblance of what the goal was. His explanation was something along the lines of keeping the creative juices flowing, whilst doing something so horribly wrong, can kind of kickstart ideas on how to do it right, or inspire ideas you never would have considered otherwise. This has come in useful so many times, and especially in regards to painting models. If I don't know what scheme might look good, I just grab random paints out of my bin and start applying them to the model.
Then by the time you're at this point, the Teddy quote kicks in- you're either painting right in a way that will look cool, or you're painting it wrong in a way that's making you see what you don't want, but either way you're still stepping forward and not getting stuck in a pit of nothingness.
Another good bit I picked up from Adam Savage too that's fairly germane to this post is doing something three times. Especially when it's a new skill or technique. The quick version is: Do something the first time just to make progress and get out there and wrap your head around it. Do it a second time, now with everything you learned the first time to do it quicker. Then a third time to learn consistency and speed with everything learned the previous times.
Writing it out now, it seems like such a "no shit sherlock" thing to say, but when combined with everything else above, it kinda helps reframe things into a perspective where you can literally never truly fail. Either you start off doing the right thing or the wrong thing, either way its progress. If you end up doing the wrong thing, you now have learned from that process, and know how to better proceed. If you do it again with what you learned before, you'll just keep iterating a better process until you reach whatever goal you were aiming for.
I hope that this helps even somewhat! It's been a process that has been in use a lot more lately in my life and I thought others could get some use out of it!
