SAM ELSNER

⍉ Writing One of One
✧ Learn like a kid: play first, plan later
✧ Make something real this week with the skills you keep saving

[SAM ELSNER @samelsner]

https://t.co/fV1E7lvQVr

[SAM ELSNER @samelsner]

https://t.co/fV1E7lvQVr

[SAM ELSNER @samelsner]

I spent years performing a version of myself I never chose.

I spent years performing a version of myself I never chose.

I spent years performing a version of myself I never chose.

I was raised not to show emotion, and punished when I spoke up or had my own opinion.

So I learned to do the show, and I can't stop, because I'm afraid they'll leave if they see the real me.

I paid for a ticket to a performance I never wanted to go to, and I'm center stage with a mask on.

So please. For your own sake.

Drop the mask.

[SAM ELSNER @samelsner]

@INFLUENCESUBCON It’s something I’m still working on.

[SAM ELSNER @samelsner]

I spent years performing a version of myself I never chose.

I spent years performing a version of myself I never chose.

I spent years performing a version of myself I never chose.

I was raised not to show emotion, and punished when I spoke up or had my own opinion.

So I learned to do the show, and I can't stop, because I'm afraid they'll leave if they see the real me.

I paid for a ticket to a performance I never wanted to go to, and I'm center stage with a mask on.

So please. For your own sake.

Drop the mask.

[SAM ELSNER @samelsner]

@kimiabuilds You’ve gotta get over the fear of failure.

[Justin Welsh @thejustinwelsh]

A warning to all soon-to-be entrepreneurs:

Once you make your first $1,000 from something you built, a paycheck never feels quite the same again.

[SAM ELSNER @samelsner]

Children are not braver than you. They are only more interested.

When a small child comes upon a puddle, the whole child goes in. That is all that play is. There is nobody left standing at the edge to wonder how it looks.

You and I, on the other hand, have grown a second person, who stands at the edge with folded arms and watches the first. And this watcher has a perfect horror of being seen to splash badly.

So the watcher sends us off to get ready. We read about puddles, and we save the very best advice on puddles for later. Most of what we call preparation is simply stage fright that has learned to read.

And you can't get rid of the watcher by trying, you see, because the watcher is the one who would be doing the trying. You can no more decide to forget yourself than you can decide to be surprised.

But you can be interested, and that is something the puddle does to you. All it asks is that you look at it instead of at yourself.

A mind, after all, is exactly the size of whatever it is looking at. Turn it on yourself and it is the size of a worry. Turn it on a puddle, and you'll notice that a puddle has the whole sky in it.

Then you look round for the one at the edge, and find you are both standing in the water. There was only ever the one of you.

[SAM ELSNER @samelsner]

@INFLUENCESUBCON Worst thing you can do when you wake up is open your phone.

[SAM ELSNER @samelsner]

Children are not braver than you. They are only more interested.

When a small child comes upon a puddle, the whole child goes in. That is all that play is. There is nobody left standing at the edge to wonder how it looks.

You and I, on the other hand, have grown a second person, who stands at the edge with folded arms and watches the first. And this watcher has a perfect horror of being seen to splash badly.

So the watcher sends us off to get ready. We read about puddles, and we save the very best advice on puddles for later. Most of what we call preparation is simply stage fright that has learned to read.

And you can't get rid of the watcher by trying, you see, because the watcher is the one who would be doing the trying. You can no more decide to forget yourself than you can decide to be surprised.

But you can be interested, and that is something the puddle does to you. All it asks is that you look at it instead of at yourself.

A mind, after all, is exactly the size of whatever it is looking at. Turn it on yourself and it is the size of a worry. Turn it on a puddle, and you'll notice that a puddle has the whole sky in it.

Then you look round for the one at the edge, and find you are both standing in the water. There was only ever the one of you.

[SAM ELSNER @samelsner]

@MentorSynthesis

[SAM ELSNER @samelsner]

@INFLUENCESUBCON This is so true because our ego wants to protect itself and never wants to be told that it's wrong.

[SAM ELSNER @samelsner]

You have been walking through a world that went invisible.

The night sky did not shrink. Sunlight on a stranger's face is still as strange as it ever was. You are here because of a highly improbable chain of circumstances that produced a conscious animal on a living planet. Your mind just learned to edit most of it out.

Robert Greene writes, "We have inherited a brain with a consciousness of limitless dimensions, and with it the desire to expand and connect it to everything around us." He treats that desire as a need, as basic as food, shelter, or companionship. Starve it and the cost shows up as restlessness, boredom, a life that feels narrower than it should.

When you were little, almost nothing got filtered. A puddle could hold you. A bug could hold you. Then the planning part of the brain got stronger, cut anything that was not immediately useful, and the picture of the world went flat.

The thought you keep pushing away, that you will die, is the thing Greene says can open the picture again. Move toward it and ordinary life starts to look new.

How much of your one life have you actually been seeing?

[SAM ELSNER @samelsner]

A guitarist, a Magic player, and a strength coach walk into one résumé.

It's mine.

> Guitar taught me my hands learn before my head does.
> Magic taught me to build for a board I can't predict.
> Seven years of coaching taught me people learn fastest when they try, miss, and adjust.

The thread is learning through play.

This week I could turn that into a one-page guide. Learn any skill the way you tune a deck.

Play a game. Lose. Swap one card. Play again.

Your turn. Reply with your three things. I'll find your thread.

[SAM ELSNER @samelsner]

Before she taught America to cook, Julia Child typed 10,000 names onto note cards for a spy agency.

Nothing on her résumé said "chef."

1. She wrote advertising copy for a furniture store.

2. She joined the OSS, the agency that came before the CIA, and kept its files in order.

3. By her own account, she was a disaster in the kitchen.

4. At 37, she enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris.

5. She tested every recipe again and again, then wrote each one so a beginner could follow it.

6. The result was Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the book that put French food in American kitchens.

A copywriter's clarity. A filing clerk's patience. A late student's hunger.

No one else had that mix. So no one else could have written that book.

You have a mix too. Let's find it.

Reply with three things you've done, loved, or obsessed over that don't seem to go together. Jobs, hobbies, strange phases. All of it counts.

I'll reply with two things:

1. The thread that ties them together.
2. One thing you could make this week that nobody else could.

I'll answer as many as I can.

[SAM ELSNER @samelsner]

I've been copying great copywriters. One Ogilvy fact stuck.

He didn't get great by specializing.

Before his agency, he cooked in Paris, sold stoves, polled for Gallup, joined British intelligence, and farmed with the Amish.

None of it was advertising.

All of it was homework.

[SAM ELSNER @samelsner]

Kids skip the manual.

Adults read it twice.

We save the tutorial and wait to feel ready.

A game won't let you wait. It hands you the controller, kills you in three seconds, shows you why, and gives you one more try before pride talks you out of it.

Play first. Plan later.

[SAM ELSNER @samelsner]

@TheMonkai Very true! Just gotta keep trying

[SAM ELSNER @samelsner]

In the first level of Super Mario Bros., an enemy walks straight at you before the game has told you a single fucking thing.

No manual.
No tutorial.
No lecture.

That Goomba is a better teacher than most teachers.

Here's the trick every great game uses, and how to steal it for anything you’re trying to learn:

[SAM ELSNER @samelsner]

If you want help doing this, I built a course for it.

It's called Sum of One. It shows you how to play first with the skills you keep meaning to learn and turn your weird mix of interests into something real.

Check it out here: https://t.co/kS6ulssP1Z

[SAM ELSNER @samelsner]

So here's how to steal it. Set up any skill like a game:

1. Make failure cheap
2. Make feedback fast
3. Add one more thing when the last one clicks

Play first. Plan later.

What game taught you the most without ever explaining a thing?