What it is:

Giving your gift
Doing your best work
Creating substance
Helping define an experience for others to enjoy
Opening opportunities for those who deserve it
Sharing and collaborating
Breaking the mold
Doing the impossible
Defying the odds
Testing the limits
Enjoying, Being
Finding who you are
Improving the game
Getting out what is within

What it isn’t:

Ego
Approval from others
Validating your worth
Being Safe
Guaranteed
Yours
Self-made

I watched the movie Comedian released in 2002 featuring Jerry Seinfeld, last night. WOW, what a movie! It’s a real raw look at giving your gift and doing the work. No matter what you’ve achieved in your career EVEN if you’ve “made it” – it’s one of the best articulations I’ve ever seen.

Two things I want to share that really stuck with me while I watched the movie last night:

My favorite scene is where this aspiring comedian (Orny Adams) who hasn’t yet “broken through” is asking Jerry how he felt when he was struggling in his twenties while all his friends were “doing well” in their lives – some of them are getting jobs on Wall Street, getting married, having kids — (Jerry’s reply mid sentence, “YUCK”) – The vibe from Jerry the whole time Orny was talking is comical, because Jerry knows this guy just doesn’t “get it.” (I like to think, he was feeling and thinking the same thing(s) I feel and think when I hear someone say, “this business just isn’t working for me”)

Orny Adams says, “I don’t know how much longer I can do this… I’m getting older (29)” and Jerry replies with, “What are you running out of time? You have something else you’d rather be doing?”

And then Jerry follows it up with a perfect story to illustrate the point. If I were to summarize the point of the story it would read like this: Real artists do the work to give their gift. Real artists look at other people living “normal” or “good” lives and think, “wow, who would want to live like that?” A Real Artist doesn’t care what others think of them or their work – they do the work because they must.

And last is an exact quote from Jerry about what changed things for him in his career.

You know when I was starting out I used to sit down and write a couple times a week and then one day I was watching these construction workers go back to work. I was watching them kind of trudging down the street, and it was kind of a revelation to me. I realized that these guys don’t want to go back to work after lunch but they’re going cause that’s their job. If they can exhibit that level of dedication for THAT job then I should be able to do the same… Just trudge your ass in.