How You’re Hindering Your Potential (with your stuff)

There’s a good chance that your life’s work is holding you back

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

From an early age you’ve been indoctrinated into a society that values things above people.

We are what we own, or so you’ve been told.

They all told you that you wanted the two-car garage. They told you to fill one side with stuff you couldn’t fit inside your house. Indeed, one quarter of all Americans have a two-car garage in this condition.

The stuff just sits there. You walk by it, and wish that it would disappear. Secretly you wish someone would burn your two-car garage down, so you won’t have to make the decision to get rid of that clutter.

We find so many ways to keep us from reaching our potential. Stuff is just one of those ways. We don’t want to deal with the harsh reality of our lives, the fact that we haven’t really done anything important.

So we refocuse all of our attention on the endless burden of resorting our stamp collection.

A friend of mine, the brooklyn hip-hop artist D.O.V. of Verbal Graffiti, repeatedly loses his life work every couple of years. In 2003 his house burned down. In 2009 his laptop was stolen from his living room without a trace, containing years of un-backed-up recordings.

The loss is always devastating to him. He tells himself that this is the end of his career and he’ll never make another beat again.

But this wasn’t the case, there was no devastating repercussions. Six months after the loss of his computer he had a new album on the streets.

The beats weren’t on his computer, they were in him. By clearing away all the years of junk on his computer–all of the beats that never had any potential, but he continued to mess with,–he was able to free himself to create a new album.

A clean slate can be a powerful drive to create.

What if you were able to harness this ability for a lifetime?

–

D.O.V. is DJing a dance party in Bushwick Brooklyn on Saturday (tomorrow, Jan 23. 2010 10pm-4am) night. If any readers are in Brooklyn, the details are here. I’ll be there and I’d love to meet you.

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  • In 2007 a tornado destroyed 95% of our town, including our home. While my husband and I rejoiced in the fact that our family was safe and didn't worry about the "stuff" we'd lost, I was amazed at the number of people who's very identity seemed tied to the "things" they'd lost.
    I felt free after losing most of that stuff... and have refused to replace it... which has become a "bickering" point between my husband and I because he is refilling our house with stuff as fast as i can get rid of it while he's not looking, lol... it may take another tornado for him to learn this lesson...
  • "Secretly you wish someone would burn your two-car garage down, so you won’t have to make the decision to get rid of that clutter."

    Everett, this is exactly how I feel about the back half of my basement, my kids' rooms and every closet in my house. (Luckily, we have the "if I have a garage, I'm damned well parking a car in it" rule, so that part is okay :~)

    I can't change other people (SO and kids) so I am resigned to this condition for a while, but it does seem like a refreshing idea to just have it all gone and start over with almost nothing.
  • Sorry for the delay in replying! I took a minimalist weekend to rejuvinate myself. Working on this e-book on being minimalist has been slightly draining, but it will be worth it.

    Alejandro, exactly! Or maybe just put them away on a harddrive in a closet somewhere. I do that with all of my old photographs, just in case. I only allow myself to source from work from the last couple of months, so I don't spend endless hours reliving old memories.

    Charlay, that's awesome. There's nothing like burning a poetry book in order to start over. I bet burning poetry books can inspire more poetry. Thanks for reading and for comment!
  • Very interesting post. I did this a few weeks ago in one area of my life. I too had a hard-drive full of riffs and snippets of partially finished songs and a notebook full of lyrics. It was all destroyed as part of my clean slate exercise.

    I'm not on the level of your DJ friend, and I haven't really spent any time writing music since, but I expect that it will have the same effect of making peace and saying goodbye to the past.

    I've done this with poetry books too. If it wasn't good enough to publish and I haven't revisited in a year to edit it, then I'm done with it.

    - Charley
  • Very interesting post. I wonder what kind of results could I get if I just get rid of all my code snippets. I may be able to produce new techniques.

    I will give it a try during this weekend. After all there is work that is just waiting for me. I really love how you sum it up: "A clean slate can be a powerful drive to create." Wonderful words if you ask me.
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