You do what you do

"You do what you do."

I'm tempted to crack the joke about the philosophers and Frank Sinatra - hang on a minute, lets see if I can find it. Here it is - apparently attributed to Kurt Vonnegut:

“To be is to do”–Socrates.
“To do is to be”–Jean-Paul Sartre.
“Do be do be do”–Frank Sinatra.

Well, I think "You do what you do" is more profound than any of those (sorry Frank and Kurt). And as far as I know, I made it up. Aren't I clever?

I know, I know, this sounds like one of things that is supposed to be profound but is in fact banal beyond all belief. But actually, in this case, I think it's the other way round. This is one of those sayings that is actually way more profound than it seems at first glance. And I so wish that someone had told me this when I was growing up.

What it captures is another piece of wisdom that I picked up from that great hero-shithead Richard Bandler. He points out, in one of his books, I can't remember which one, that the most powerful human urge isn't survival. Oh no. The most powerful human urge is to carry on doing what we're already doing.

That being the case, if you have any particular ambition in life, you should start doing the thing that you want to do, right now, this minute, and keep doing it.It means that if you get some idea in your head. You want to be a lion tamer, you want to be a belly dancer, you want to run the country. Whatever it is, you should do the nearest thing that you can to what you want to be, right now. You want to be a writer, get writing, you want to be an actor, get acting. You want to run the country get elected to something.

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly