Trickster Universe and the Truth About Being Enough

In honor of April Fool’s Day, a post about Trickster Universe that’s no joke.

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The Universe can be a real trickster.

Sometimes this comes in the form of whacking you upside the head with a 2×4 when you haven’t listened well enough to the whispers (and later louder statements, then shouts) it’s been telling you.

Other times there’s no 2×4, just the same message over and over in different forms and from different messengers.

We call this serendipity.

This past week has been a brilliant example of this (much more fun) side of the Trickster Universe.

One of my three words for 2012 is Self-Compassion. One way I’ve been practicing self-compassion is by making an effort to take care of myself physically. Like sleeping in til after noon on Friday to try and nip my cold in the bud. (Which made a huge difference, by the way.)

Being the gogogoGOGO sort (my top Strengthsfinder 2.0 strength is Achiever, so I come by it honestly), learning to slow down and take a nap is not easy for me.

Way harder, though, is the self-compassion to accept myself as enough, just as I am.

Turns out I’m not alone.

Brené Brown’s book, The Gifts of Imperfection, and her viral TED videos on shame and vulnerability, have made me much more aware of something I kinda already knew: we all feel like we’re not enough.

Something must have opened for me recently, though, because this week the Universe showed me, for the umpteenth time, that who I am, what I bring, really is enough, is good, is of benefit to others.

Yes, the Universe has tried to tell me this many times before. The difference is that this week I finally started to get it.

Here’s just some of what happened:

The Message of the EBook Cover

I wrote earlier about how my wonderful subscribers helped me see that my belief that my art couldn’t possibly make a good-enough ebook cover was a just my Inner Critic Gremlin talking. With their encouragement, and brilliant art direction from Seth Watkins, I threw out bland and generic, and went back to my drawing board. I worked through the hard, and found the real.

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VERY LONG TANGENT!

Here’s a bit of the progression, in case you’re interested.

My publisher’s suggested design:

Lovely, but a young white woman on the cover felt to me like it might inadvertently make anyone who isn’t a young white woman feel like the book isn’t aimed at her.

So I decided to try my hand at some designs of my own. Still, the Inner Critic Gremlin had me convinced my own art wouldn’t work well. Stock photos — that was the way to do it right (I thought). These are what I cam up with:

Again, basically inoffensive, but still (except for the sticky notes design) implying a limited audience, whether by race, gender or age. And though I do find that happy toes image delightful, it doesn’t really fully express me and my message.

When your fans and followers ask you why your art isn’t on the cover, it becomes easier to unmask the Inner Critic Gremlin for the liar it is.

Back to the drawing board…

That’s when the brilliant and talented Seth got involved. Here are some of the images I sent him, this time using my own artwork (but still not “it” yet…):

Seth, that clever monkey, sent me a PDF paste-up of covers from a multitude of creativity-themed books, which helped me see what I like (rainbow colors, a “handmade” look). And he also included some art and graphics from my own site, which helped me see that, contrary to what I believed, I did have some very graphic art in my catalog! Namely this piece:

Aha! Back to Photoshop I went, where I created this mockup, combining my artwork above and rainbow colors (the handmade look I would do later at my actual drawing board — this is just a concept sketch):

Closer! We’re getting closer! And when I sent this to Seth, and he sent back this modification:

Eureka! He took my concept and made it exponentially more interesting! I knew we had it!

I then pulled out my calligraphy pens, watercolor paper and a cheap, Prang watercolor set and got to work. I scanned the resulting artwork into Photoshop, and (after much tweaking) this was the happy result:

Much better, no? So much more ME! Read my Facebook page and profile for some of the responses that validated what I felt.

Now back to our blog post already in progress…

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Message from the Universe: your art, your unique expression, Melissa, is good enough. Is, in fact, better at expressing the unique message of your own writing than any generic stock photo design that you, or anyone else, could brew up.

(AND, a good art director can take what you already do well and make it waaaaaay better.)

Bonus Message: What your Right People want from you is what YOU naturally bring to the table.

 The Message of the Group Coaching Call

My partner, Cory, was out of town on a well-deserved vacation, leaving me on my own to run our monthly group coaching call for our online course and community for artists, ArtEmpowers.Me. Surely people would feel cheated not to have his technical wizardry and marketing expertise on the call! Yes, I bring my own expertise, but my expertise is not his expertise, and he brings so much to these calls, I thought for sure a call led just by me would be a massive disappointment.

What happened instead was that the call serendipitously seemed to draw people with mindset-related questions (my genius zone), and I facilitated what turned into a really interesting, more philosophical, more mindset-than-marketing kind of discussion.

Which the people on the call really loved. (One even said it was the best call yet.)

Message from the Universe: What you naturally bring to the table is actually enough.

The Message of the Online Class

My other partner project, Playing Around Online, had its 3rd class meeting the following morning. My co-teacher and fellow Poobah of Play, Kelly Hevel, allowed the energy of the class to determine the class plan, veering from our intended curriculum when the conversation seemed to want us to do so. We allowed ourselves to be in the moment, to be in flow, to improvise — just bringing our full selves to the table and being fully present.

The response from everyone there reinforced the following…

Message from the Universe: What you naturally bring to the table is actually enough.

The Message of the Hangout Idea

This past week was also when I officially announced that I’m bringing back my free monthly telephone chats, but in a new, turbocharged, totally remodeled format — as video hangouts!

I emailed my peeps to let them know what was coming, and invited them to sign up on the special hangouts mailing list, if they want to get the login info for the hangouts, and access to the recordings afterwards.

What are these hangouts? Nothing more than me, a special guest-of-the-month, and everyone participating at that given hangout, bringing ourselves to the table. Sharing our creative process. Sharing our art, or music, or poetry. Sharing our thoughts, our tips and techniques for keeping Resistance and the Inner Critic Gremlin at bay, and getting to the important work of doing our creative thing(s).

No Get Rich Quick schemes. No Secrets of Instant Success.

Just real people, embracing our creativity and being real.

The response kinda blew me away. What had been my telephone chat list (and is now my hangouts list) increased by 37%, just like that.

Yep, people are hungry for this. (If you are too, please join us! You can sign up right here.)

Message from the Universe: What you naturally bring to the table is actually enough.

Wrapping up

There was more. The inspiring recordings inside Jennifer Louden and Michele Christenson’s truly amazing course, TeachNow. Which led me to subscribe to Susan Piver‘s newsletter. Susan’s video of this week. The conversation with my best friend in which I realized that there might possibly be some shades of grey between running myself into the ground and being comatose.

All of these and more drove home the same message from the Universe in gentle, powerful ways.

Message: I am enough.

Confession: I’d be lying if I thought my deep feeling of not being enough was permanently liquidated from this week’s serendipitous messages from the Universe. But I am starting to believe that perhaps I really am enough.

And that’s a great start.

Where can you see that you are truly enough, just as you are?

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!