Tools for the upstart: If a person in a higher administrative position overseeing your agenda pulls you in for questioning (see: naysaying), respond "yes" for things you agree with and "good point" for things you don't agree with. Practice neutral-face for 2 hours every day. Then go as far as you can before they realize what's happening. You won't learn what you have to any other way. But if you reveal your cause, you give them everything they need to shaft you.
Clarification: everyone has an ultimate goal. In cinema, one ultimate goal is to create the film. Another is to make an honest film. Another is to make art. One can also entertain or educate. Another is to just complete the damn thing. Another is to sell the film. Another is to make sure as many audiences see the film as possible. Another is make sure you collect as much from those exhibitions as possible. Another is to profit. Another is to share that profit with loved ones. Another is to pursue a life free from hardship other than what you choose to undertake in service of your fellow man. <that last goal comes with a qualifier we know as the golden rule cause if you're not careful, karma will make the best of you and there's not much value in a life where you have to look over your shoulder for vengeful people. Further, it binds the pursuits of all other tiers of effort and wraps it up in a nice bow. Let me reiterate: the golden rule is the only thing capable of balancing the interests of all of the above. It's the hardest work but absolutely wonderful once everyone is on the same page. I won't say what should happen to the people that aren't with it, but know they can do a lot of damage if their ultimate goal doesn't allow for anyone else's.
Some folks are tied to you through circumstance but have an ultimate goal so far outside their involvement with you that all they can muster is energy to reduce the demands you place on them. They might just want to get through the day. That's fine, but history saw fit to give them say over you. They resort to putting up conditions to protect themselves that, on occasion, thwart you. Some of it's worthwhile, some of it's just emotional undercutting.
If a person thwarts you with conditions that, once met, can make your endeavor more resilient: then "yes"
If a person thwarts you with conditions that ultimately are just conveyors of doubt (sans wisdom, criteria, facts, or an ultimate goal worth achieving as an evolved alternative to the goal you started with (trade up if anything): then "good point." It's polite at least.
Don't fight with them. Someone once told me there are conceptual people and literal people. The literal people who need to get in your way just suck ass. They can't see beyond their own eyelashes and you represent a change to the habits they've come to live by. They practically want to kill you by indirect abuse of your intent by tooling fear and doubt to coax you into willful submission. Don't fight with them. They put you in their own familiar territory and if you weren't stuck fighting them you'd be off winning somewhere. Plus it makes you vulnerable to the ultimate attack: conversion.
You don't want to be a hypocrite and be caught reverse nay-saying, effectively letting them turn you into an asshole you thought you weren't. Come to find out we're all guilty at some point or another, but that's no reason to kowtow to figures who overtly couldn't care less about your passion or success. Also, these figures are almost always conservative and they hate progress or anything else they don't understand. Being difficult won't make a difference. Outdoing and outliving them will.
Let's get what we came for with "Yesses" and "Good Points" and brutal flanking maneuvers,
C.M. Sanchez III
No comments:
Post a Comment