"" Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living: The Buckminster Fuller Principle

Thursday, June 19, 2014

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living: The Buckminster Fuller Principle

Dear Fellow Writer,

Thanks to everyone who bought my latest writing resource, From Zero to Hero: How to Make a LIVING Writing Fictionlast week.

You made it #1 in two Amazon categories - for which I'm very grateful.

This week I'm not selling anything in particular. Just shooting the breeze with you.

Actually I've been writing a new thriller - a thoroughly absorbing activity, I must say.

Currently up to 20,000 words - about a quarter of the way through. My intention is keep going with this novel every day and finish the first draft without stopping for a break. Maintaining that kind of focus can be challenging but is not impossible. 

Clearly, lots of other authors do it!

I hope the following article will help improve your own motivation to write and follow your heart.

Keep writing!


The Buckminster Fuller Principle - Or, How to Stop Worrying About Money and Start Living
The Buckminster Fuller Principle


       Before I began the Easy Way to Write, I wasn't sure how to make the transition from nine-to-five employment to being a full-time writer. To be honest, I probably didn't know what I wanted to do, only that I didn’t want to work nine-to-five!
      On a whim, much to the chagrin of my then partner, I engaged the services of a career coach to help me find my way. Six sessions cost me a thousand bucks, which was a lot to me at the time but, really, it was money well spent.
      Among many other things, my coach taught me about what he called theBuckminster Fuller Principle, a concept that I now fully understand and can attest is a true phenomenon.
      Richard Buckminster Fuller was an architect, author and visionary inventor. Despite being expelled from Harvard twice for failing in his studies he was later given many honorary doctorates and was president of Mensa for nine years. When he was alive, he was full of great ideas, had a keen mind and like most of us, he hated working for a living.
      Indeed, he couldn’t understand why so many people in our society are seemingly obsessed with having day jobs, when the world is so plentiful and technology has moved so fast as to make many forms of employment largely redundant.
      Bucky was man ahead of his time. He believed thinking hard and coming up with solutions to fix the world's problems was what we all should be doing on a daily basis, rather than merely supervising each other in the rape of the planet.
      He loved nothing more than tinkering with inventions and solving problems from his home lab - whether he made any money or not. He believed that the universe was his employer, and he was happy to be its employee.
      During his twenties, Buckminster Fuller noticed that when he was poor, he was usually forced to go back to work to support himself and his family, a situation most of us can relate to. He noticed too that while he was at work, miserable and frustrated, unable to follow his heart, his monetary situation inevitably grew worse.
      However, as he grew older, he also noticed something much more intriguing. That when he was engaged in doing work that made him happy and fulfilled, circumstances invariably conspired to keep him in that good place.
      He noticed that, as long as you don't give up on your dreams, helpful events transpire just by "pure happenstance and always in the nick of time" (his phrase) to keep you from abandoning your mission.
      Most people don't get to experience this phenomenon because they tend to give up before they let this accidental good fortune kick in.
      I know that to some this thinking might sound a bit new age and unscientific, but you need to remember that Bucky was an enormously intelligent and practical man. He wasn’t trying to sell self-help books. He had no agenda in this regard. He was merely making an observation about how he thought the universe worked on a practical level. That to some spooky degree the universe can and does provide for its inhabitants, especially when they’re happy.
      The trick to harnessing the power of the Buckminster Fuller Principle, is to have blind faith; to develop an absolute certainty that your plans will come to fruition; to work on your goals without having a fallback plan and continue on regardless of what others say; or even taking any notice of what seems to be to happening to you.
      Because when you give up or falter, the principle seems to stop working.
      Basically, you have to believe that everything will work out for the best and stop worrying. Because worrying somehow creates the problems you’re trying to avoid.
      You need to have faith in your dreams and mentally remove the urge to dwell on any obstacles.
      Too many people over-think their goals, and over-plan their execution, to the extent that they visualize all the many hurdles to getting what they want and basically talk themselves out of even starting a potentially fulfilling and prosperous new life.
      I've known quite a few people like this and they're consequently still as frustrated and unhappy as they always were because they can't summon the courage to break away from their worrywart mentality. This keeps them working at their jobs, convinced they can do no better, deserve no better, thereby perpetuating the ‘we must all work for a living’ mentality ad infinitum.
      Better to be blissfully untroubled by any future problems and maintain a healthy positive attitude as you move forward. That way you'll be in a much stronger position to deal with challenges as they arise, instead of wasting energy on imagining the worst - which probably won't happen anyway.
      This last point may seem like a frivolous observation but it's really the crux of the matter.
      Yes, there can be problems associated with going all out to become a full-time writer. However, in my experience, they're never ones you could have imagined, or could even have planned for. Therefore using time and emotion on trying to foresee impending difficulties and imagine their solutions is a waste of your precious time and energy.
      In the future, you will need all the energy and focus you can muster just to write and to be a productive and self-sufficient, well paid writer.
      And even though that eventuality is perhaps further on down the road, you need to begin working on this mentality now: start getting your head in the right space to see yourself writing every day and enjoying the lifestyle.
      Worry has no place in your thinking.
      Worry is what your mother does.
       But you are a writer and writers write.


xxxxRob Parnell

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