This line keeps coming back to me:
“I’m a millionaire, they just ain’t paid me yet.”
I’m not sure where I first heard it—a rap song, perhaps, or something I read—but it’s stuck with me for years.
In a recent podcast with April Vokey, she asked me about my goals and what I wanted to achieve through my writing. Something along the lines of: Do you want to be a bestseller? What’s your aim? Your next step? Your greatest ambition?
I responded:
Of course, I’d love to be a full-time writer. That’s inevitably what I want to do. That’s where I’ve set my aims, intentions, and goalposts. But things like getting published and becoming a New York Times bestseller are, in many ways, out of our control.
Instead, when it comes to “goals,” I ask:
What would my life be like if I were already a New York Times bestseller? How would I live and operate today, knowing that this thing outside of me was already well on its way?
The way I look at goals is this: How would I like my life to feel? What would my life look like if I already had whatever it is I most want and desire?
It’s as if I’m tuning my antennae to the frequency of that which I aim to be. I move through the static, and eventually the music begins to play.
I’ve lived my whole life this way. I’ve learned and experienced, time and again, that an elevated intention matched with an elevated emotion is how we begin to experience real change in the frequency of our lives.
If I live in that frequency now—one of joy, abundance, appreciation, wonder, whatever—it will not only perpetuate itself into the future; it will begin to show up now, today, in ways I could never have anticipated: meetings with people, experiences in nature, wild synchronicities and encounters, tiny wonders, poems flooding into my head in a dream or after a run.
And then, funnily—oddly—enough, whatever it is I want always seems to arrive.
A good question to ask oneself:
How can we truly live today if we are always waiting for tomorrow?
A trap.
Dream of being a professional in any field of play, whatever that means to you, but know that professionalism is not a millionaire’s paycheck. Professionalism in any domain has little, if anything, to do with money, publication, fame, ego, status, winning, or whatever.
More than anything, it has to do with consistency: painstakingly showing up, time and again, day after day, to the blank page, the field, the river, the pitch, the desk—whatever domain you reside, play, or hone your craft in.
Mastering your craft matters most.
Are you consistently honing it? Are you looking inward for the gold, or waiting on someone else to deliver the goods?
This essay is not about what a writer should write for, but what they could write for. We do things for all sorts of reasons, none of them inherently right or wrong. Subconsciously, many of us have little idea why we do anything at all.
But publishing and making money do not validate the writing process. The act of creation is enough on its own and always will be.
I truly believe this.
And yes, validation by publication—a writer’s win—is nice, but that’s all it is: a momentary wank, a little kick. Afterwards, you are still always left with just yourself.
Just as I don’t coach football (soccer) solely to win—or go fly fishing solely to catch big fish—hopefully winning is a byproduct of honing one’s craft: joy, passion, curiosity, cohesion, togetherness, teamwork, creative expression, an openness to learning, and a developmental process aimed at playing to human potential.
Winning for its own sake, without the aforementioned, is a disease—a bottomless abyss that, no matter what, always needs topping up and can never be filled.
Winning is a lethal drug.
A massive, short-lived dopamine rush.
Sole reliance on it will inevitably kill your soul, just like working a job to the grave for cash—becoming a waking, sleeping machine, a slave to the man.
Every man, woman, child, and dog loves to win, just as everyone seems to love money, sugar, alcohol, catching a big fish, instant gratification, getting published in a magazine, and all the things that, in the end, may do us very little good.
I’ve been there, where the only thing that matters is the drug—the money, the large trout, the big W, someone else’s approval of the thing I made.
It never truly sustains us. We have to continually, obsessively, maniacally keep coming back for it, asking for more.
So all we can really do is build a sanctuary for ourselves, mostly in our own minds and hearts, or we will fall victim to all the things that bring dis-ease, not peace.
Just as with writing, external validation does not truly fulfill us in the end. We must first learn to welcome and love ourselves, our souls, and our own creative spirits.
In a results-based business such as publishing, one can easily fall prey to the opinions and perceptions of others—the detractors, the wishes of an editor. We end up not writing our truth, but what we think someone else wants to hear.
We start creating not from the heart and gut, but from the head, and it all goes to custard.
Our words—we—become what other people want.
Have you been there?
A lost soul.
We must own our greatest vision for our lives boldly. Stake claim to our greatest aims, intentions, ambitions, and goals—and then let them go.
It is also possible to have the best of both worlds: to write what we know in our hearts, minds, and souls, and also receive the external reward—the goal, the millions, the recognition.
All we can really ask of ourselves is to do our best with our current level of skill, craft, awareness, and perception; with the tools we have at hand and the level of consciousness we have developed over the years.
So yes, I have written a New York Times bestseller...
They just haven’t published it yet.
It’s titled The Burn.
It’s the best thing I’ve written yet.
Perhaps you—and hundreds of thousands of others, or just one—will really get a kick out of it.
If not, well, I had a blast writing it.
And that—right there—is worth a million.
The Burn is available now at bennysip.com.
$12 NZD / $7 USD.
So, for the price of two flat whites—you have very little excuse not to.