You're Not Starting With A Blank Page, You're Starting With Experience

And then once you've taken away the bits that you don't need, you can then more clearly visualize the gaps and say, okay, this is what I need to do. This is what I need to learn. This is who I need to reach out to. And it becomes more manageable to start to fill in those gaps than it does to sit there looking at a page and thinking, oh, my God, how the hell am I going to fill this page and the rest of the pages? You're listening to the Circle CE Project. Welcome to the Triple CE Project, the podcast that helps you gain clarity, boost confidence, build courage, so you can live lifeless. I'm your host, Ryan Spence, the big law dropout, life coach, author, speaker, lover of hoodies, hip hop and big hairy, audacious goals. If you're tired of living the life you think you should want and ready to start living the life you want, this podcast will help you get from where you are to where you really want to be. So now with friends, I invite you to grab a drink, take a seat, allow me to guide you towards living a life that's lit. Hey, welcome to episode 71 of the Triple C Project. Now, as you listen to this, if you listen to this, the day that it comes out, which is a Friday, I'm another year older. Yes, it was my birthday yesterday, but as I'm recording this, I'm actually recording it the day before my birthday. Little bit confusing. We're in sort of a different space and time, which I guess we kind of always are when I record these podcasts, because obviously they're not live live, but I think having a, having a milestone, having a marker like my birthday, sort of in between the recording day and the release day, makes it a little bit more poignant, a little bit more more relevant. So, yeah, just thought I would, I would mention that, but I also mentioned that to. Just to talk a little bit about birthdays before we dive into today's episode, I'd love to hear, what do you like to do on your birthday? Seriously, tell me. Send me a email, hey, Im Ryan Spence.com or get me on Instagram or LinkedIn and tell me, what do you like to do on your birthday? You see, because I made a decision, I think three years ago that I was never going to work on my birthday again. And I was actually going to spend the day alone, reflecting on the previous year. Because I feel that we can get so busy with stuff, catching up with people, the things we have to do and our birthdays, at least when I was younger, can kind of go through in a haze of drunkenness and frivolity, which is, which is all good, but it's probably a sign of getting older. It's just. I like to take that time to reflect on how much has happened and where I'd like to be in the. In the next year, a year from. From the day. And I really like that. I know some people don't get it and think it's weird, but it's a very introverted thing to do. And, and I. But I'd love to hear from you. What do you like to do on your birthday? How do you like to spend it? Let me know. And yeah, it'd be. I think it's just a really interesting conversation to have. Okay. So last week I talked about being at the self publishing publishing show down in London, which was, which was fantastic. And one of the things about a show like that is being in a room of people all doing the same thing that you do. There's a lot, a lot to take away from that. There's a lot of inspiration. And you've probably been to conferences, events like this as well, where you go and you. You feel inspired and you take a load of notes, you pick up a load of free goodies, and you leave with all of these ideas. But how often do you follow through? I know for me, not that often. And it's related to what I talked to you before. That IIA loop where we acquire all of this information, we get inspired by all of that information, but then we fail to take that final step. The final step, which is action. And knowing that I'm very cognizant of this whenever I get into these situations. So when I left the conference, I knew there were things which I wanted to implement and I wanted to implement quickly. And the first thing that I wanted to implement was selling my books, getting my books available directly to readers. So not just selling through Amazon and other bookstores, but actually allowing readers, clients, people who are interested, to head to my website and get the book direct. And why I wanted to do that was a couple of reasons. One, obviously, it's more money for me, which is great. And that money then helps to fund the next project, which I'll talk about. But it also means that I can then build a relationship with readers, because when you buy direct from the website, I get to know who you are and we then kind of get to stay connected. That means I can keep you up to date on what's going on and what's coming next. You can tell me what you liked, what you didn't like about the book that you currently have or what's currently going on and start to kind of build that community. And community is a real big thing for me, as you know. And another segue. There's actually a lot I'm going to talk about today. Another segue is with community coming to the end of the it's not just you community, which has been a great, a great experiment. And I sent out the feedback form this morning to the participants and already I've had one back and I'm really pleased with with what's been said, what the person in question has, has got out of the experience because it shows that there is a need for a community like this and it shows that bringing people together to share their struggles, share their wins is a really powerful thing beyond the additional coaching and training that I share within the community. So we'll see what the other feedback's like. But I'm considering running it again, maybe for a little bit long longer next time, who knows. But if you've been listening along and you think that this community sounds like something you might be interested in, then the best way to hear about it first is to get on my email list. If you head to im Ryan Spence.com and you yeah, download the confidence journal or just fill in the little pop up with your email and that will get you on the list and then you'll be one of the first to know about when I do this again, the format that it'll take and all of the deets. Cool. And who knows, maybe I'll bring some people on to talk about their experience in the community at some point. Just an idea that popped into my head and I realized as I was giving you that link that I didn't tell you where you can get the book. Head to iamrinespence.com book and you can grab the audiobook or the ebook of the triple C method from there. And hopefully at some point I'll also start to sell the paperback. But if you listen to the end of this episode you might hear about how to get a paperback for free signed one too. But anyway, stick around and you'll find out. All right, so a few segues there, but what I'm going to talk about in today's episode is something a little bit different, although still related to books. So I hinted at there being another project in that slightly long intro there and it's true. I am about to start work on my second book and the second book is going to be a follow on from the Triple C method. I haven't written it yet obviously, but the idea is there and I've set up a skeleton document to start working in. But what I wanted to do with this book is may go a bit deeper into how you can get clarity, confidence and courage. And I mean, not just in those terms because I talked about that in the Triple C method in the first book, but in terms of some of the things I've talked about on this podcast. You know, I've talked about procrastination, I've talked about perfectionism, I've talked about building your squad. But I felt, always felt that there was more than I could say. And also sometimes, if I'm honest, felt that I could say or talk about some of those things in a slightly more eloquent way. Because this podcast is very much freewheeling and although I have ideas and bullet points, it's generally, I generally like to treat it as a conversation between me and you, as if you were set a bar, just, you know, just shooting the breeze, just having a few drinks and just, you know, kicking things around. And I really like that vibe and that format of the podcast. But by writing a book, it gives me the time and space to go a little bit deeper and to kind of just tighten it up a little bit and to make it even more actionable. And also, as I know from various people I've spoken to, some people just learn better from reading from having a physical book and being able to scroll and scribble in it. I know I do. And some people just like to have something they can listen to on the go when they're doing other things. And that's how they absorb some people like both. So this book is, if you love this podcast, this book is basically going to allow you to have that in, in written form, in a more in depth form, in an even more actionable form. So that's the general idea of the book. Working title is the Triple C project that will probably stick. We will see. So yes, I'm very excited to get started, even though when I wrote the first book I said I would never do it again. I'm actually quite excited to, to get started on, on book two, but I'm talking about that not just to plug the fact that I'm writing a new book, but because of something that came to me as I started to just create this blank skeleton document. So as I created the document on the screen, so effectively took the draft of the old book, deleted stuff and kind of Just tidy that up. It struck me and reminded me of that kind of almost anxiety slash nervous excitement of that fear of sitting down and looking at a blank screen or blank page. There is this, this page there, and you have an idea, but it's hard to imagine that idea coming to fruition when what you have in front of you is a blank page. And so initially that got me to thinking that, damn, everything starts with a blank page. And it's so hard. And I was going to talk about how hard that can be, but then I caught myself and I was like, actually, that's, that's not true. And that's what I'm going to talk about today. So I'm talking about this obviously in the context of writing a book, but that can really be a metaphor for any change that you're trying to make in your life, anything different that you're trying to do, any obstacle that you're trying to overcome. Because you see, on the one hand, yes, there was this blank screen, this blank page in front of me. But then as I checked myself and became more aware, I was like, but that's actually not true, because although it's blank now, I actually have a whole lifetime, a whole wealth of experience with which to fill that page. And so I'm not starting from scratch at all. What I need to do is just take everything from my head and dump it down on the page or on these pages. And then it all becomes a little bit more manageable. You can see things a little bit more clearly because once you have something to work with, it's far easier to start to take things away than it is to add things to a completely blank canvas. At least that's how I feel. I remember when I was still in big law and you work a lot with precedent documents. At least you've got something to work with. Then you can change party names and other informations you need to that's relevant to the deal that you're on. But occasionally you would, you would need to draft something from scratch because there was no precedent and most lawyers just hated sitting there with a blank page. So this, talking through this reminded me of that. And I hope that as I'm going through it, it reminds you of something similar where you were faced with what seemed like a completely blank script and you had no idea where to start. Because again, this is a reminder that you have likely done something like this before. You will have had some experience. You would have built up some experience of resilience, you know, built up experience of fighting through Obstacles of dealing with challenges, of pushing through fear, of building courage, and all of that experience can be dumped on that page in front of you. And then once it's all there, you can then look at it in the context of what it is that you're trying to achieve. And you can start to take away the bits that you don't need for this particular situation, for this particular mission that you are on. And then once you've taken away the bits that you don't need, you can then more clearly visualize the gaps and see, okay, this is what I need to do. This is what I need to learn. This. This is who I need to reach out to. And it becomes more manageable to start to fill in those gaps than it does to sit there looking at a page and thinking, oh, my God, how the hell am I going to fill this page and the rest of the pages? And this created a shift in me. And suddenly I felt quite excited again about writing this second book because I went away and I took things that I'd already written that were on the kind of subjects I thought I wanted to cover, and I just started cutting and pasting them into this document. So then, rather than looking at all of these blank white pages with a word count of zero or probably about 10 or so because it had title and a few other things, I suddenly had a word count of. I don't even remember, actually, but considerably more than that. And so now when I look at it, there's a load of words, and a lot of that stuff is going to come out. I know that. And there's going to be a lot of editing to do. But again, it's this process of looking at what's there, taking away what doesn't serve the mission, what doesn't serve the purpose, and then looking at the gaps and then filling in the gaps, and that becomes a hell of a lot easier to look at, a hell of a lot easier to deal with. So, again, this isn't just about writing a book. That's what I'm talking about. But I want you to relate this to anything that you're going through. And I want you to think the next time you come up against an obstacle, there's something that you want to change. There's something that you want to do differently. And you are sat metaphorically looking at this blank page and thinking, I don't know where to start. I haven't been here before. I don't think I can do this. I want you to take some time to just sit, breathe Allow your mind to run free and then just start to dump everything out of your head onto paper, everything that is related to what is happening now, what it is you're trying to do, all the experiences that you've had, all the times you've overcome challenges over, the times you've had those difficult situations, difficult conversations, all the time you've had to dig deep and push forward, all of the times you had to just figure things out as you go along. And when you do that, you're going to be amazed at what you see there and amazed at what you can use for this next trip that you're on, this next mission that you are pushing on for. So that's what I want to leave you with this week. Take the evidence of what you've done, the experience of what you've done, and apply that each time you move forward to do something new. Don't try to start with a complete blank sheet of paper again and rewrite things that you've already done. Use what you already have. Repurpose what you've already done. It's going to make your life a hell of a lot easier. And even better than that, it's going to boost your confidence to believe that you can do the thing you're trying to do, because you already have done similar things to that before, or at least parts of that. Okay, so I invite you to stick around to the end and here's what I'm going to do. So to mark the fact that it's my birthday and also to mark the fact that I'm about to start writing this new book, I'm going to give some books away. So I'm going to give away three copies, three paperback copies of the Triple C method. I'm going to sign them and if you like, I can also dedicate them to you as well. So write your name or a short message to you. Also, that is my gift to you on my birthday and to mark the release of the new book. So what do you need to do to get this book? So here's what you need to do. If you're listening to this podcast on Apple Podcast, head to the review section. If you're not, head to ratethispodcast.com cccc and leave a review for the podcast for the Triple C project. Once your review is live, take a screenshot, share it on social media and tag me. So on Instagram, I'm @iamrinespence or LinkedIn, just Ryan Spence and the first three review screenshots that tag me that I see, that I receive. I will get in touch with you, get your details and I will send you a free paperback signed copy of the Triple C method. So that's it. It's as simple as that. My gift to you. So even if you have already bought the book, read the book, keep the signed copy and give you the copy away to a friend, somebody who you feel could benefit from the message in the book, from the tools and strategies in the book that are designed to get you from lethargy to lit. And I will keep you posted on the book writing journey for book number two and hopefully you'll join me over on my mailing list iamrinespence.com fill in the pop up box and get on the list so you can hear what's going on with the progress of the book. You'll find out when I run the next it's not just you community and all the deets about that and just anything else that's going on. I've been neglecting my list a little bit lately, but I'm going to be back strong sharing a lot more tips and tools and strategies and funny stories and just just things that I think you might like. Awesome. Thanks as always for being here. All birthday messages and presents are welcomed if you so please and I will catch you next week here on the Triple C project. Until then, stop living a life of lethargy. Start living life lit. Thanks for tuning in to the Triple C Project. In the spirit of the Triple C, here's three things that you can do to support the show. Head to ratethispodcast.com cccc or over to your favorite podcast app and leave a review. Reviews really help people. Checking out shows to see what they can expect and how they should show can help them. Second thing you can do Share Share this episode Share a previous episode with a friend. Someone who you feel could benefit from what I'm throwing down on this here show. And number three, head to iamrinespence.com get on the mailing list. I'll be sharing news about the show, news about what I'm up to, my new book. Start writing soon. So to be the first to be in the know you need to get yourself on the list. Really appreciate you being here. And until next week, stop living a life of lethargy. Start living life lit.