Get yourself into the arena
Being a critic is easy. Stepping into the fray takes balls.
Gary Bloomer | SHAKING THE TREE # 195
These days, everyone has an opinion.
Everyone has something to say—good, bad, supportive, negative, useful, hateful, and sometimes, downright horrible—EVERYONE with access to a keyboard and an internet connection can be a critic: no experience required.
We’ve become a society of Monday morning quarterbacks.
Every tweet, every post, every shared article, video, message, and opinion carries with it the potential for peer judgment, social critique, and public and professional dissection by someone, somewhere.
It’s relentless.
We've become a society of voyeuristic spectators, ever happy to review, analyze, and criticize from behind our computer keyboards.
But here’s the thing: it’s easier to be a critic than it is to be a producer.
Take newspaper critics of cinema, art, and literature as prime examples: most of them have never made a film, or published a novel, or created anything artistic. Meanwhile, there's a profound and lasting difference between being critical and being out there, in the open, in public, putting your heart and soul and blood and guts on show and being there, in the spotlight.
It's the difference between existing and truly living.
When Theodore Roosevelt delivered his iconic "Citizenship in a Republic" speech at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1910 as part of The American Presidency Project, he spoke for countless people and he captured this sentiment of action, risk, courage, and optimism with startling aplomb and with unparalleled clarity.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Roosevelt brilliantly contrasted the specter of this lone, brave individual with "the cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
You can sit on the sidelines, or you can step into the arena.
It’s a stark choice, isn’t it?
It’s easy to sit it out. But it takes guts and grit and balls to stand there, to run the risk of getting knocked down again and again. And it takes never to get back up again.
It takes chops and stones to be the one whose face is marred by dust and sweat.
Or is it better to be the one who sits in judgment, untouched by the struggle?
Me? I’ll take my chances in the arena, thank you because even if I fuck all of this up, even if it comes to nothing and my articles don’t help a single, solitary soul, at least I’ll know I stood my ground and gave it a go.
In our hyper-connected age, the temptation to remain in the stands is immense.
It’s safe, doing nothing, isn’t it?
That’s why most people on LinkedIn have never written let alone published a single article.
Piping up on other people’s efforts is easy: we’re safe and free to offer our trite opinions and our useless advice without recourse and without consequence, we’re free to critique and judge without experienced and often without the slightest bit of responsibility, judging remotely without risk.
But what are we truly gaining?
We're trading the potential for profound fulfillment for the illusion of control and safety. We’re play acting, puffing out our chests, safe in the knowledge that we’re not going to be held to account.
Getting into the arena isn't about being perfect.
It's about being courageous.
It's about being shit scared and doing it anyway.
It’s about accepting that failure is a possibility—or a distinct probability or even a absolute certainty—and thinking FUCK IT! I’m doing it anyway!
Steeping up and standing tall in the area is about understanding that the only way to truly learn, grow, and make a difference as a creator, as someone worth their salt is to take the leap, to put ourselves on the line, and to get on with it.
And yet, often, we freeze. We falter. We hesitate. We second guess ourselves.
Or worse, we don’t try at all or we quit before we get started.
But we don’t do this on purpose, do we. No, Far from it. Or so we tell ourselves.
We kid ourselves that we're waiting for the perfect moment, or that we’re just waiting for the perfect opportunity, or the perfect skillset, or the right tool.
But those moments seldom arrive because they’re not really moments, they’re piss poor excuses because we’re too afraid to accept that the perfect opportunity is the one we create, is one we jump on, even if we’re not fully ready.
The perfect skillset, ability, and outcome is the one you develop through action.
Consider the entrepreneur who launches a business despite the fear of failure, or the artist who shares their work despite the risk of criticism, or the activist who speaks out against injustice despite the potential for backlash.
These are the people who understand the power of the arena.
These are the people who fully grasp that the true measure of a person is not their ability to avoid failure, but their willingness to face failure and to act on their impulses IN SPITE of the fear.
So, how do we step into the arena?
It starts with a shift in mindset.
We need to embrace and cherish our vulnerability; we need to accept that we won't always get it right, that we’re bound to screw up, and fall, and falter and that it’s not how many times we fall or how hard, that it’s how often we get back up again.
We need to realize and recognize that our greatest rewards probably won’t ever come from playing it safe, from keeping our heads down and our mouths shut, that our best outcomes are more likely to come from the greatest risks we’re willing to take.
We need to stop waiting for someone else’s bless and for someone else’s permission and we need to start giving ourselves the green light to act.
Don't let the fear of failure, the fear of criticism, or the fear of the unknown keep you in the stands.
Your voice matters.
Your actions matter.
The world needs your courage, your passion, and your willingness to step into the arena. We need to ditch the cheap shots of the critics because we were all made to do better things. We all belong in the arena, not in the stands
Stop being a spectator.
Start being a participant.
Your life, and the world, will be richer for it.
As always, thanks for reading.
Feel free to follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn
If you’ve like what you’ve seen here, why not share this post with a friend?
P.S. Next time on Shaking the Tree … There are no shortcuts
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Originally from the U.K., Gary Bloomer is a writer, branding advocate, marketing specialist, and an award-winning graphic designer.
His design work has been included in Creative Review (one of the UK’s largest design magazines). Since 2009, he has answered over 5,000 marketing and business questions in the Know-How Exchange of MarketingProfs.com, placing him among the top 3% of contributors. He lives in Wilmington, Delaware, USA.