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Melissa Dinwiddie | Create the Impossible™ | Innovation Keynote Speaker & Consultant

Empower your team to innovate on demand. Melissa Dinwiddie helps tech leaders Create the Impossible™ through playful, interactive workshops and keynotes. Unlock breakthrough creativity today.

On Headstands and Broken Hearts

Because ever since I read Susan Jeffers‘ book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, I’ve used that term as a mantra, the following:

—

In Giselle’s jivamukti yoga class this morning: time for headstands. I look around the room, and notice that, of those doing headstands, nobody is using the wall.

Okay. I’ve gone up into headstand many times without the wall, I know I can do it, but… it still scares me every time.

Committed to conquering this irrational terror, I set myself up, and slowly raise my legs, watching my reddening face in the mirror.

Feel the fear and do it anyway.

I could tell I wasn’t entirely straight, wasn’t balanced on my center, since it still required too much effort, but fear of toppling over backwards kept me from straightening any further, even though I’ve done it before. I stayed up for 11 breaths or so — in fear the whole time — then slowly lowered my legs and rested in child’s pose.

While I’m dealing with this fear of balancing upside down, this is my M.O: go up, come down, go up again. So pretty soon up again I went.

But this time I tried something new: going up one leg at a time. I wobbled slightly off balance, and for a split-second it felt like I was going to crash backwards onto the floor.

This time the fear brought me back down immediately, along with a flood of tears.

Well, actually, because I didn’t want to upset anyone (since people frequently get confused and think tears are the hurt, instead of the healing from the hurt, and then I feel like I have to take care of them when what I want to do is take care of me), it was more a quiet stream than a flood.

But it felt good to cry. To acknowledge my fear and let the feelings out.

Feel the fear and do it anyway.

And there were more feelings under the surface than just the fear of falling out of a headstand. I’d woken up this morning to a dream that upset me, a dream in which someone who betrayed me in real life was betraying me again, but in a somewhat different, only-making-sense-in-dreams way that I couldn’t quite articulate upon awakening.

It left me feeling hollow and out of sorts, like the hurt was fresh again, like I’d just had the rug pulled out from under me.

So here I was in yoga, now in savasana at the end of class, my mind unable to still itself.

I thought about how open-hearted I’d been with the person who hurt me, and remembered how during that relationship, backbends — heart-opening postures — suddenly became so much more open and available to me. And I realized how afraid I am to go there again, to open my heart only to have it broken into a zillion jagged pieces.

And I also realized that no matter how afraid I am, I want to open my heart again, and I will not let the fear stop me. It may take time, and that’s okay, but I know eventually I’m going to march back into the lion’s den, because I can’t imagine living any other way.

Feel the fear and do it anyway.

And I thought about the things I’m trying to achieve in my life, the life I want to create, the businesses I want to grow, and how terrified I am that I will never achieve them, create them, grow them, that I’ll always be just a wannabe. But I’m not going to let that fear stop me either.

Feel the fear and do it anyway.

So I’ll keep trying my headstands. I may use the wall as a crutch for the rest of my life, may still be in terror going upside down as an old retiree, but I’ll bet you that I’ll get better at it, and more confident, little by little.

And I’ll keep going after the open-hearted relationships I want in my life. My heart may have lots of stitching and scars, but as my friend Cosy Sheridan sings in Anthymn, “a heart without some stitching is hard to find.”

And I’ll keep trudging after the life I really, really want, despite feeling lost sometimes, and hopeless sometimes, and terrified much of the time.

I’m just going to keep feeling that damn fear and doing it anyway.

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The Week That Was: Weekly Review #4 (which is almost entirely about my email addiction)

Inspired by Havi (because she’s brilliant), and because looking back is a great way to figure out the best way to move forward, I’ve started a ritual of reviewing the week that was: what went well, where it got hard, what to take away, and next steps.

How was your week? Chime in if you like!

—

Geez, Louise, is it Friday again? How did that happen?

What did I do this week? I honestly can’t remember, because it seemed like I spent the whole damned time in my email box.

Yes, somebody’s a little testy today. Because somebody has finally faced the fact that she has an email addiction problem, and staring your issues in the face is bound to make a person cranky.

On the plus side, when you hit bottom, the only place to go is up.

To that end, I’ve taken the radical step of putting into place a couple of strategies to help me with my email addiction.

Strategies for dealing with email addiction

Much as I would like to be like Havi, and take an email sabbatical (which then turned permanent, if you can believe it – is the woman not some kind of superhero?), the fact is this is not realistic in my world the way it’s presently constructed. Email is kind of the foundation upon which my mortgage getting paid is dependent.

Or one of them, anyway.

So no email sabbatical for Melissa at this point in time.

However, I did take a page from my friend Debra’s book, and added the following to my email signature:

NOTE: I am attempting (with little success most days) to increase my efficiency by checking email less frequently, ideally twice a day at noon and 4 p.m. If you have an urgent matter, please call the studio and leave a message if I don’t answer. Thanks!

Which is strategy #1.

And even more significant, I’m actually making the herculean effort to follow this goal.

Which is strategy #2.

This is huge, people!

The open mail reader window on my screen is a comforting baby blanket of connection that I can pop over to anytime a file takes a long time to open, or well, just anytime, really.

But does it really make me feel better? No.

And is it really necessary? In almost all cases, no.

And because it’s constantly on in the background, it’s like a leaky faucet, drip, drip, dripping away, and before I know it, gallons of productivity have dripped down the drain and it’s another day wasted.

It’s a drug.

My previous addiction

But this is an addiction that’s not so easy to kick, because I can’t just eliminate it, like I could if I had the sense to have some kind of normal problem, like alcohol or drugs.

Which is interesting, because my other addiction (which I’ve done massive amounts of work around, and can happily say I’m 99.999% healed from) also involved something that I couldn’t kick by just eliminating it.

In other words, food.

(Which, if you think about it, pretty much all people are physically addicted to. But that’s another story.)

Somehow I managed to escape the substance abuse phenomenon, alcohol and drugs (thank god) holding no sway over me. I’m completely uninterested in gambling*, and I don’t even have the chocolate gene. (I’m kind of a freak that way – I have a sort of supernatural ability to remain completely neutral about chocolate, whether it’s in the room or not.)

No, my big addictive pattern was bulimia, an eating disorder that ran my life and made me completely miserable for several years in my teens and twenties.

And since I couldn’t just give up food (though in truth, I actually wanted to; when I was bulimic I always considered myself a failed anorectic), I had to figure out how to create a relationship with it (and more importantly, of course, with my body, which was the real issue) that worked for me.

I have much more to say about my experience as a bulimic, but this post is already getting long, and god knows I can go off on tangents of tangents ’til the cows come in, so that’s all I’m going to write about that right now.

Let’s just say that I’m amused at the parallels of my addictions, and glad I’m just a tad wiser and more mature now.

Hopefully taming my email monster will not be quite as traumatic as the journey to accepting and loving my body.

Progress Report

So how’s it going so far? Well, the results are mixed, but given that I only instituted the new “twice-a-day-only” policy yesterday, I guess that’s to be expected.

I definitely fudged one of my email sessions, which kind of extended into what probably should count as two or three sessions…

And I added an additional late-night session when I got home from my evening excursion…

Though this morning I managed to stay completely away from my email until noon. A miracle!

So all in all, I’d give myself about a C. Maybe a C+.

BUT, wiser people than I have made the point that screwing up can actually be very useful in pointing out how you can do things better moving forward. And this has definitely played out for me over the past 24 hours:

– I realized that certain correspondences I’m engaged in, while entertaining, are not going to help me achieve my goals, which made it easier for me cut them off. (Seriously, I planned to write a post last night, but got distracted by the absolutely ingenious email I was writing instead, to someone who literally means nothing to me. And then it was so late that I really had to get to bed. Um, that was a waste of time. Lesson learned.)

– Which made me think about all the demands on my time and energy, and that it might be useful (at least for now, as I’m working to develop habits of greater efficiency and productivity so that I can build my empire, follow [all of] my Blisses, and create the life I really, really want) for me to assess them according to whether/how much they will help or hinder me in my larger goals.

Huh. I mean, like duh, right?

I hate to go all Steven Covey on you, but I’ve been wasting time on sand and gravel, when I’ve got a bunch of big rocks to fit in my glass. And if I want those big rocks (which I do, in a big way), I’ve got to make sure I’m using my resources to fit them in the glass first. (If you haven’t read 7 Habits of Highly Effective People you may not catch the reference. Sorry.)

Which does make it a lot easier to choose between writing a stupid, pointless email for kicks, and writing for my blog. Or playing guitar. Or doing the work that I actually get paid for. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

So all in all, even if this was all I accomplished (and of course it’s not; I did manage to get a few other things done), I’d say it’s been a productive week.

—-

*Not entirely true: if there had been any actual slot machines, like, with slots, for coins, I would have happily tossed in a few quarters on my one and only trip to Vegas [for a conference], but the machines would only accept plastic. So I may be the only person in history who has stayed in Vegas and not gambled a penny. Freaky, I know.

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When is good enough good enough?

One of the valuable things I’ve learned in the past decade or so is the concept of good enough.

As a native of the Land of Perfectionism, this lesson did not come easily.

“Good enough” always seemed to me a poor excuse, a euphemism for mediocre, so-so or downright lousy.

Making a living as a calligrapher helped cure me of such nonsense.

The fact is, if you want to make a living at something like calligraphy, you have to let go of the idea of perfection, otherwise you’ll spend 5 hours on one $3 envelope, which is just not going to pay the rent.

You have to learn to accept good enough.

Making a good enough CD

Last fall I took on a big project I’d been wanting to do for years: producing a CD of my music. I’d been stuck for the longest time, for lots of reasons, but largely because I didn’t have the money. Jazz singer friends were putting out CDs that they’d spent $8,000, $10,000, $20,000 on, and I just didn’t have that kind of wad, nor did I have a patron willing to play Executive Producer and give me that kind of wad.

So I’d go out on my gigs, and sing my songs, and every time, people in the audience would come up to me, eager to buy my CD.

And I’d have to tell them that no, there was no CD.

Excruciating.

Eventually, something snapped, and I decided to hell with it – I was going to make that damned CD if it killed me.

No, I couldn’t do it the way I really wanted, but if I wanted to do it at all, I could figure out a way.

I could make a good enough CD.

Which, after all, is better than no CD!

So I called three of my favorite musicians and asked how much it would cost to hire them to play for a couple of sessions in the drummer’s garage studio. And after crunching the numbers for paying the musicians, mixing and mastering, and getting the CDs pressed, I figured that if I did a really quick-and-dirty, live-in-the-studio recording, after all was said and done I could get 1,000 CDs for about $2,000.

Which I totally didn’t have. But, I knew other artists who’d raised funds from their fan base, so I emailed my mailing list of about 500 people, and told them I was self-producing a CD and asked for their help.

And within a month I’d raised almost exactly $2,000.

Now $2,000 for a CD is dirt cheap. It meant just one or two takes of each song. It meant a garage studio with no isolation chambers, so no overdubbing bad takes.

It meant I had no other option but to accept good enough.

And you know what? I’m actually grateful for these limitations. Because the fact is, without them I’d still be working on that CD, like so many artists I know who’ve been working on theirs for years.

Am I totally happy with my CD? I’ll be honest: parts of it make me cringe*, and I wish I could redo them. But I’m damn proud of it. And I’m proud of me for putting out a good enough CD, rather than staying in stuckness and still not having a CD at all.

And onto blogging

Now I find myself in this new world of words and ideas and blogging, and butting my head into this whole good enough concept on a practically daily basis.

“Can I publish this? Why would anyone want to read it? Is anything I write good enough to put out there? Why am I even bothering?”

But everyone has to start somewhere. If my goal is to become a good writer, I’ve got to write. (And thankfully, you, my not-entirely-imaginary imaginary audience, are still, shall we say, an elite group, so I’m not making a fool of myself in front of that many people.)

And if nothing else, blogging is providing me a great opportunity to exercise my ongoing practice in learning to accept good enough.

Which is, perhaps, a good enough reason to keep doing it.

—-

*Truth be told, I burst into tears when I brought the master to my vocal coach, because I didn’t think one of the tracks was good enough to put out into the world. She listened to it, and told me I was insane and should go home and get some sleep. Reality checks are wonderful things.

Click here to hear the tracks from my good enough CD, Online Dating Blues (including the one – I’m not telling which – that made me burst into tears).

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In the Learning-A-New-Thing Discovery Phase

My overwhelming emotional state lately is, well, overwhelm.

Only yesterday it occurred to me why.

I mean, aside from the obvious fact that I have way too much to do and not enough time to do it, and that information is flying at me at a rate that’s way beyond what human beings have evolved to absorb.

Which, of course, makes me no different from everyone else I know.

No, this overwhelm has a different, more manic quality than the day-to-day so-much-to-do-so-little-time variety overwhelm. And when I sat still long enough to get acquainted with my overwhelm and ask it about itself, I finally recognized it.

Because it turns out this particular variety of overwhelm is a familiar state to me. It’s the I’ve-discovered-a-new-passion-and-am-immersing-myself-in-it-in-an-attempt-to-learn-everything-there-is-to-know-about-it-and-preferably-master-it-in-as-little-time-as-possible variety of overwhelm.

My latest Bliss to follow: Blogging

It seems that the world of blogging is my latest passion. I pick up a new Bliss every five or ten years or so, and every time I do, my M.O. is to dive in head-first, and inevitably get re-acquainted with this learning-a-new-thing overwhelm.

I only “discovered” this new creative outlet of blogging a couple of months ago, so although my insides feel like total chaos and like I’m going to explode, in fact it’s just part of my process, and all happening right on schedule.

What a relief to realize!

My Old Friend, The Learning-A-New-Thing Discovery Phase

My first encounter with this variety of overwhelm was when I discovered dance as a teenager. I fell madly, passionately in love, and within a matter of months I was dancing three to six hours a day, every day.

And spending much energy desperately wanting to be instantly really good at it.

And spending much energy lamenting that I wasn’t.

In fact, I did have a natural facility for dance, but unless (perhaps) you’re a born genius (another thing I spent much energy lamenting I wasn’t)(and the very existence of which is debatable, if Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers is to be believed), learning to dance well does not happen overnight.

Like any creative or physical skill, mastering the art of dance is a process that takes years. It’s the accumulation of countless tiny, baby step improvements over time.

Over time.

Years later I went through the same process when learning calligraphy. And later learning to dance salsa (which, it turns out, requires a somewhat different skill set, and has a somewhat different learning curve than modern dance). And later learning to sing jazz.

I have by no means achieved complete mastery of any of these skills, but I have, thankfully, gotten past the manic early phase of trying to eat it all up right now.

Because that’s what it feels like. Vegetarians, forgive the carnivorous simile, but this particular variety of overwhelm feels a lot like trying to eat an elephant in one sitting.

Impossible, of course.

And the key, I’ve found, to getting past the overwhelm is simply accepting this impossibility.

Just floating downstream… without paddling

So today I made a conscious effort to just allow myself to be where I am. To trust that I will learn what I want to know, and develop the skills that I want to develop, all in the fullness of time.

I decided not to read each and every blogging and creativity and build-the-life-of-your-dreams newsletter that I’m subscribed to.

I decided not to try so hard.

I decided to stop paddling for a moment, and just float downstream.

And most of all, I decided to accept and embrace and forgive myself for my sometimes frustrating, somewhat obsessive Renaissance Woman patterns (because, honestly, I think life would be a lot easier if I could just be happy focusing on one thing only, but that just ain’t likely to happen in this lifetime).

Just like every other Bliss I’ve chosen to follow, blogging comes with its own skill set and learning curve. And I get to enjoy exactly where I am right now, while I take those baby steps to move forward.

One.

Step.

At.

A.

Time.

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The Cost of Money and the Value of My Time

I think I just lost a sale. But you know what? I don’t feel bad about it at all.

As an ex-bf of mine used to say, some money is just too expensive.

Sometimes it’s too expensive because you can tell the client will be a pain in the neck.

Sometimes it’s too expensive because you’re so not interested in the project that you’ll hate every moment you spend doing it. And hate yourself for ever taking it on.

And sometimes it’s too expensive because, although it may represent a decent chunk of change on the face of it, the client’s budget won’t begin to compensate you for the amount of time you’ll have to put into the job.

That was the case here. The project, a custom ketubah, sounded benign enough – not a design concept that made me jump up and down with anticipation, but something I could enjoy doing, and possibly even sell prints of down the road (always thinking, as I am, of how to make as much money from my work as possible – a necessity if you’re going to make a living from your art!)

The problem was the clients have a budget of $X, and what they really want is a $3X-$6X ketubah. Lots of detail, covering lots of surface area. That adds up to a very expensive piece, and if they’re not paying me the full price that my time is worth, then I’m subsidizing them.

In other words, I’m paying for it with time that I could spend doing other things that are important to me.

Much as I would love to offer my work to people who don’t have a lot of money (hey, I don’t currently earn enough money to afford myself! I get it! This is why I offer ketubah prints, which allow people who can’t afford an original custom work of art to still buy my work), the hard reality is, if I charge less than my normal rate in order to make my work accessible to people with less money, then what I’m really doing is hurting myself.

That’s time I could spend creating new art (to sell!), or writing, or working on getting singing gigs, or all sorts of things that are important to me.

Do I really want to spend my precious time that way? If I’m going to effectively donate my time (and hence, my money), do I really want to donate it to them? I have charities that I give to (my favorite is Animals Asia), and if I “donate” my time/money to these particular clients, that means less to give to my carefully selected charities.

When looked at from this perspective, the choices are a lot clearer.

So I offered as many options as I could, while drawing my line in the sand. This couple likes lots of detail, which is one of my specialties. For their budget, I could use a lot of detail, but it would have to be limited to a small area, rather than surrounding the entire ketubah text.

Or, if they wanted the design to encircle the entire text, I could do that, but not with the same level of detail. It would have to be looser, more expressive, more abstract.

This was, of course, not what they wanted to hear. They want what they want, and they kept circling round and round, trying to figure out how they could get what they want out of me. And I just kept holding firm.

Yes, I’m sure they’re a lovely couple. Yes, I know they don’t have a lot of money to spend. But neither do I. I’m working on making a living here, and if it comes down to them or me, call me selfish, but I’m choosing me.

Does the idea of some money being too expensive resonate with you? Have you ever had a hard time drawing a line in the sand? Does it make a difference to think of it in terms of subsidizing YOU or subsidizing THEM?

xo, Melissa <3
PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

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