Observations

This past weekend, I did a one-day “retreat” with my business bestie Sonja. We spent the day looking at the sticky areas of our businesses, talking about how to fix the problems we’re dealing with and brainstorming simple solutions that might make a difference. It was intense! But it was helpful.

Then last night, I had my personal mastermind group with a couple of friends. Essentially we meet monthly and do a mini version of the retreat, but for our personal lives. We talk about a topic that’s been weighing on us, and get feedback and support from one another. It’s a little like group therapy, but with more love and more opinions.

This week on a podcast I heard someone talk about the healing power of simple awareness and it struck me as incredibly true. So often, once we have awareness and language for what we’re struggling with, the intensity of the problem is diminished. It starts to be resolved on its own. Without even trying, in a few months’ time it’s usually a thing of the past.

I find this helpful to remember, especially when I’m feeling like I need to start applying every single idea and concept right away to fix the problem right now. I can stay calm by remembering that awareness is more than half the battle. When we know better, we do better. 

It makes me feel incredibly grateful for these spaces where I can share vulnerably about the not-so-pretty things. By bringing issues into the light and giving them a bit of focused attention, the healing process has already begun. The problem is already halfway solved.

I’m chuckling to myself as I write this, because of course the morning after I make a grand declaration about writing every single morning, I have an early appointment and start telling myself that “I don’t have time to write today!”.

Resistance is sneaky and takes many forms to keep us from doing our best creative work. One of the funniest is the laissez-faire, relaxed, casual attitude about work: “Nah, you don’t have to do that this morning. What’s one day? You don’t have a ton of time today to spare!” Because while it’s true that one day is not a massive deal in the grand scheme of things, it’s also true that a practice is called a practice for a reason. It takes time. The days add up. Skipping days just because I don’t feel like it means that I’m not taking my creative practice seriously. And once that starts, it has a snowball effect.

Planned breaks are different. When we plan to pause, we’re being proactive. When we’ve already decided to take a break, it means that we’re not falling prey to those voices in our heads that tell us (when we’re tired, or hungry, or rushed, or all of the above) to just slack off, who cares, c’mon! But when we haven’t planned a break, defeating those voices and getting your butt in that chair is the only battle worth having that day. 

By writing this, I’m defeating Resistance. I’m saying: You’re cute, but no. You’re funny, but I know I have enough time for this. You’re sneaky, but I’m sneakier. Thanks but no thanks!

As Steven Pressfield says, Resistance kicks in any time we’re trying to move from a lower plane to a higher one, which means it doesn’t just block us from our creative work, it also blocks us from our self-care, and our relationship-building, and all manner of good, positive things. I want to kick Resistance’s butt in every area of my life, but I’m starting with this humble daily writing practice. I’m hopeful that showing up here daily will help me beat Resistance in other areas too, like my daily exercise routine & eating more healthfully. It’s like a muscle, and I’m working it out.

I’ve been doing this daily writing thing for three months now. Each weekday morning, except Fridays, I sit down at my computer right after doing my meditation practice and I write a short reflection. Having done this since June, I now have 65 short pieces of writing that I didn’t have before, on all kinds of topics, especially creativity and resistance and habits and routines. As you can imagine, I love this feeling. As Dorothy Parker once said, “I hate writing, I love having written.”

Except that I’m finding that I actually don’t hate writing. I actually love writing, especially in the morning while things (including my own brain) are still quiet and peaceful. I like starting my work day knowing I’ve already had a win, that I’ve done something that I feel good about and that will add to my skills, happiness and awareness over the long term. I wasn’t sure whether I’d stick with this habit, but I’ve felt the benefits since the beginning and now it’s a self-perpetuating cycle.

In fact, I miss it when it’s gone, which it currently is about three days per week. Those mornings sometimes feel like I’m “playing hooky”, which is sort of fun at first. But I notice that I don’t feel as good those days, like something is missing. I try to make up for it by journaling, but it’s not as consistent of a habit and it doesn’t feel the same.

Gretchen Rubin often talks about the power of doing something every day. In this post, she quotes Andy Warhol as saying, “Either once only, or every day. If you do something once it’s exciting, and if you do it every day it’s exciting. But if you do it, say, twice or just almost every day, it’s not good any more.” And in this post, she notes that in her experience when you do something every day “it doesn’t make you nervous, it doesn’t feel intimidating, and it doesn’t feel like a special burden or extra credit.”

As I’ve mentioned numerous times, it’s long been an aspiration of mine to write a daily blog like Seth Godin or Austin Kleon or like Elise Cripe used to do. I always knew that the practice would be helpful and suspected it would be good for my mental health too. So with all that being said, I’m deciding to bump it up: let’s write every day. If I’m taking a holiday, I won’t *have to* write during those days, but otherwise: daily. I’m excited about this! Every day, or not at all.

In the past I’ve spent a lot of time bemoaning the fact that a lot of my family and some of my friends just “don’t get it” when it comes to my career. It’s not that they don’t love me or support me more broadly, it’s just that much of what I do is foreign to them. As with anything, without a context it can be hard to understand why something is important or meaningful. 

But it hurts to be misunderstood! It is painful to feel like your accomplishments don’t matter, because some of the people closest to you don’t understand why they’re a big deal. It sucks to come home from a year living in another country and have certain people not ask you a single question about your experience.

In the past I’ve often turned to Sarah Von Bargen’s genius concept of The Authenticity Tax to help me with the sting of this lack of understanding. She says that the authenticity tax is the price we pay for living a life that’s right for us. It’s usually experienced in the form of strange commentary, weird looks, lack of enthusiasm, or outright confusion at our life choices from those around us. Trust me: having this mental heuristic helps. A lot. It has been such a balm to me over the years.

Yesterday, I had another realization that helped: I can be a better advocate for myself. If my loved ones don’t have the appropriate context for the things I’m doing, I can give it to them. I can proactively announce things rather than waiting to be asked about them. I can celebrate my own achievements in a way that makes it obvious how I feel about them, and what the appropriate response should be.

Over the past year I’ve been noticing that my own uncertainty evokes uncertainty in others. My lack of confidence in myself seems to create a lack of confidence in me from others. My doubts cause doubts. I’ve seen it again and again in my work: the minute I put the fear and doubt aside and focus on confidence and trust, those are reflected right back to me. 

All this is to say, yesterday when this big project launched, which feels enormous to me but (naturally!) teeny-tiny to pretty much everyone else on earth, I advocated for myself. I announced it everywhere, and then I wrote an email to announce it to my entire family, proactively explaining why it’s important to me, why I’m proud of it, and why it’s such a big deal. And guess what? They were instantly there to cheer me on.

Maybe this is a secret of adulthood that everyone has learned already, but it bears recording for my future self: Advocate for yourself. Celebrate yourself. Explain yourself. Give people the benefit of the doubt. You will be far happier with the results you get, since people can’t read your mind.