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

September 13, 2012

When to Quit and When to Get Out the Leash

Recently, a coachsulting client came to me struggling with guilt feelings.

Several weeks before, she had landed on a brilliant idea for a creative business, making beautiful, meaningful objects that excited and inspired her. She loved the idea of creating a business from her creative thing, and she was thrilled with the notion that what she was creating could inspire other people, bring beauty and meaning to their lives, maybe even help them accept themselves just as they are.

The very act of creating, and sharing her creations with the world, could make an impact, and for this generous soul, nothing could be better.

Except that now she wasn’t so sure she wanted to go forward with this idea.

Hence the guilt.

As she had moved forward with her idea, she found herself less and less compelled by the creations she had planned to create, and more and more compelled by totally different creations, that had nothing to do with this grand business idea.

What to do?

Was she copping out, she wondered? Should she force herself to keep trudging forward with this idea, which had seemed so perfect a few months back, but now left her feeling uninspired?

A voice inside her said “Yes, absolutely, you must keep going! You said you were going to do this! It doesn’t matter if you’ve lost interest! You’re a quitter if you stop now! Don’t be a flake!”

Another voice said “Darling, follow your heart.”

Which voice was the Voice of Truth?

Here’s the thing: sometimes the voice that tells you to quit is the Inner Critic Gremlin, disguising itself as the Voice of Truth in an attempt to keep you safely in your comfort zone.

If your reasons for quitting are fear-based, or a feeling that you’re just not ready yet, you can bet it’s the Inner Critic Gremlin.

But if you want to quit because something else is pulling you more powerfully, don’t be too quick to label yourself a flake.

You might be a honeybee

In Refuse to Choose, Barbara Sher’s wonderful book for Passion Pluralites (she calls us Scanners), Sher compares those of us with a multitude of interests and passions to the humble honeybee.

The honeybee flies from flower to flower, collecting pollen. It doesn’t stay on one flower for its whole life — as soon as it gets what it needs from a particular flower, it flies off to the next one. It’s what honeybees do.

Nobody calls the honeybee fickle! Nobody calls the honeybee a flake! Nobody calls the honeybee a quitter!

When you’re compelled by multiple passions or project ideas, you’re like a honeybee. As long as you’re stopping because you got what you needed, you’re not being a flake, you’re being true to your wonderful Passion Pluralite nature.

The notion that you have to stick with a project forever just because you were super-excited about it at one time is a lie that your Inner Critic Gremlin loves to tell.

You might be a Leonardo

Another lie that our gremlins absolutely love is the idea that you have to act on every single idea you have.

Balderdash!

Look at Leonardo da Vinci, the granddaddy hero of Passion Pluralites everywhere. Leonardo filled notebook after notebook with ideas. Grand ideas, crazy ideas, sketches for ideas, notes about ideas.

Very, very few of these ideas did he actually go on to create.

Do we look down on Leonardo as a flake? No, we do not! We canonize him as a genius.

You, dear creative, have your own, unique kind of genius, made up of your unique worldview, your unique ideas, your unique perspective. Enjoy it! Let your ideas bubble and flow. Capture them in your own notebooks (in Refuse to Choose, Sher prescribes keeping a Scanner Daybook, to do just that), and revel in them.

You do not have to build all of your ideas out in the real world!

If there’s a voice telling you that you do, guess what, that’s the Inner Critic Gremlin, too.

Bring that Gremlin voice to heel

After several questions from me, my coachsulting client realized that the voice telling her she must keep working on her business idea was not the Voice of Truth, but the Inner Critic Gremlin. It was the voice that wanted her to work on something “conventional” that would gain family approval — callings of the heart be damned!

Once she saw whose voice was telling her not to quit, she was ready to leave her business idea aside, to liberate her creative energy to flow where it most wants to go right now. She may choose to go back to her idea at some point, or she may not. Regardless, it had served a useful purpose already, by getting her excited and getting her creating!

Thank goodness for gremlin-training techniques! Without an ability to recognize the Inner Critic Gremlin voice, our heroine might have been stuck in the rut of her original idea forever.

Gremlins are sneaky. They come out in all kinds of ways. Sometimes it’s the more-easily recognizable voice of “You suck! You’ll never be good enough!” Sometimes it’s something more subtle, like “You can’t quit! You’ll be a flake if you quit!”

Thankfully, there are tools for learning to recognize your gremlin when it shows up. I’ll be sharing my repertoire of gremlin-training techniques at my upcoming Gremlin Training Lab on Wednesday, September 19. Click here for more info and to join me!

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

September 8, 2012

Gremlins Overlooking the Ocean

I’m away from home as I write this, away from normal life, on the very left edge of the United States, perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

I’m at a 4-day writing and performing workshop with Ann Randolph, in a truly glorious house (where I plan to run my own creative workshops and retreats sometime in the not-too-distant future, btw), and it has been an amazing day-and-a-half so far.

A dozen of us spent three hours on Thursday night, three hours Friday morning, and three hours Friday afternoon, playing improv games, writing in mad bursts, and then reading what we wrote out loud for the group, all under Ann’s facile direction.

Why improv games? Not everyone here is interested in performing, but the improv games are potent tools for everyone: they get us moving and playing — into our bodies and out of our heads.

It’s amazing what flows out in your writing when you get out of your head and into your body first.

Can’t think of what to write? Ann always offers a plethora of prompts, and if you ever draw a blank, Ann instructs to simply write “what’s next, what’s next, what’s next” until a new idea comes.

It always does.

There’s no editing in these writing sessions. This is stream-of-consciousness, folks. And yet some of the readings astound me in their cohesiveness, clarity and just plain brilliance.

“Wow, YOU can’t write like that!” the Inner Critic Gremlin taunts me. “They’re all so much better than you are!”

“You’re right, I can’t write like anyone here,” I acknowledge. “I can only write like me.”

“Which sucks,” the Gremlin pipes in.

I know better than to get into an argument with my Gremlin — Inner Critic Gremlins love arguing, and it’s an argument I will never win.

But thankfully, I also know that my Inner Critic Gremlin is full of shit. (To put it bluntly.)

Even when part of me believes that maybe my Inner Critic Gremlin is right, the fact that I’ve unmasked it as the Gremlin robs it of its power. Although it tries to convince me that its voice is actually the Voice of Truth, I know my Inner Critic Gremlin is lying.

I’ve learned the trick of discerning when my Gremlin is doing the talking, and though I may not be able to shut it up, I have learned to persevere regardless, which is the important thing.

“I see you, Gremlin. I know that’s you,” I say. “I appreciate your concern, but I’ve got this one covered.”

Sometimes my Inner Critic Gremlin throws a bit of a tantrum at this point, but just like throwing water on the Wicked Witch of the West melted her away, unmasking the Inner Critic Gremlin shrinks it from 8 feet tall to about 2 inches. Small enough for me to put it in my pocket. Or flick it off the balcony into the Pacific Ocean.

Don’t worry — lest you’re concerned for my the little bugger, it never gets hurt in the process. Inner Critic Gremlins are hardy, resilient creatures, and always come back in full regalia. Maybe not the same day, but just you wait — it’ll be back.

Which is why it is so critical to learn to manage the damn thing.

An untamed Inner Critic Gremlin is like an untrained German Shepherd: it’ll jump on you, knock you down, run around and chew up the furniture, and poop all over your stuff.

But just like the wild German Shepherd, the Inner Critic Gremlin has good (if misguided) intentions. It may be hard to believe when you’re on the receiving end of its jabber, but it’s only trying to help.

And just like with the German Shepherd, the answer isn’t to kill it, or try to stuff it in a closet, but to train it.

And just like with dogs of all breeds, 99% of the training is actually training the person.

Sure, you need to teach your dog what you want it to do, but if you don’t stay consistent with your demands and limits, all the money you spend on training is going down the tubes.

And well, okay, maybe it’s really 50/50 person/dog, and since the Inner Critic Gremlin is your own voice of self-doubt and self-criticism, it’s really 100/0 person/Gremlin, but hopefully you get my point.

My point being that you can learn to manage that Inner Critic Gremlin of yours.

And since it is not going to ever completely leave you alone, don’t you want to learn whatever techniques you can in order to bring it to heel?

I’ve learned a lot of tools for taming that pesky little monster, and I’m sharing all of them in my upcoming Gremlin Training Lab on September 18.

Because I believe that getting the voice of self-criticism and self-doubt under control is absolutely core to living the fully creative life that is your birthright. If the Gremlin has you cowed, there’s no way you’ll make what is calling you to be created. And if you somehow do manage to create, there’s no way you’ll ever share your creation with the world.

You’ll stay stuck, and quiet, and blocked, your creative spirit locked away in a closet, because the Inner Critic Gremlin convinced you that everyone else’s work is better than yours, so why bother?

Or that your ideas are lame.

Or that they’ve already been done, better than you could possibly do them (so you might as well give up).

Or that you have no talent (and who do you think you’re fooling, anyway?)

Or that you’ll never be able to accomplish your dream (and who do you think you are to have such big dreams?)

And in this world that so desperately needs — is so hungry for — each and every totally unique, creative output from each and every one of us, believing the lies of your Inner Critic Gremlin would be a shame.

So let’s bring those pesky little critters to heel, shall we?

Watch for an announcement this week of how to get in on my Gremlin Training Lab on September 19. And sign up on my mailing list to get early-bird pricing.

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

Photo credit: fergie_lancealot at Flickr

August 31, 2012

Aoede: An Interview with a True Muse

It’s interview time! I’m delighted to share with you a truly inspiring fellow creative, San Francisco alternative pop rock folk indie female singer songwriter, Aoede.

Aoede will be my special guest at my September hangout, this coming Wednesday at 10am PT (sign up here — it’s free!), and today I have a little sneak-peek.

An appetizer, if you will. A 10-minute audio interview with me and the muse herself.

Pronounced “A-E-D,” Aoede is named for the muse of song, one of the three original Muses of Greek mythology. And as you’ll see (or hear) in this interview, her choice of a stage name has proven to be… prophetic.

I met Aoede some years back at a seminar on guerrilla marketing for music artists (you knew one of my creative passions is music, right?), and we’ve kept in touch since then, cheering each other on via email. I’ve watched with delight as she’s won award after award, and put out fabulous albums, despite some pretty serious physical challenges.

A few months ago, Aoede released her latest album, Skeletons of the Muse, and I had the great pleasure of opening for her at her CD-release extravaganza. (I’m not sure what else to call it. It was way more than a CD-release concert or a CD-release party. It was a multi-media event! Aoede doesn’t do anything by rote.)

Aoede inspires me because she puts her art first. Similar to my own 15-minutes a day challenge, Aoede made a commitment to herself to put at least an hour a day into her art.

What that means, though, has turned out to be more fluid than she expected, as you’ll hear when you listen to the interview. Click to have a listen (or right-click to download):

Aoede Interview mp3 audio (10:47)

Join me and Aoede at the Living A Creative Life monthly video hangout on Wednesday at 10am PT! When else will you get such a golden opportunity to convene with the muse?

And be sure to visit Aoede online: you’ll find links to all her online haunts at aoedemuse.com.

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

August 26, 2012

Bike Crashes, Unicycles and the Secret of Balance

One summer, when I was maybe 21 years old, I rode my bike to my job as an assistant teacher at a nursery school.

Cruising down the sidewalk (on the left side of the street, I confess), I sped toward an intersection when I saw a car zip up along the cross street, about to take a right turn, directly in my path.

The driver was looking to his left as he rolled right into the crosswalk that I was about to ride through. Since I was approaching him from his right, he never saw me, and I was too close to the cross walk to stop.

I remember a feeling of stubbornness and spite (how dare this driver not look to his right before turning right!), not to mention a fair dose of youthful stupidity, as I thought to myself, “The hell with it, I’m crashing into this car, and it will serve him right for not looking!”

And crash I did. My front wheel slammed right into his right fender, and I flew over the handlebars and landed smack dab on the middle of his hood.

For what seemed like minutes (but was probably a few seconds), I remember being perfectly balanced on my left hip. Seriously — I could not pull myself out of balance! Or at least that’s how it felt. As if the world has ceased turning on its axis in order to keep me stable.

In the adrenaline-charged mental slow-down of those few seconds after the crash, while perched so perfectly on my hip, I remember thinking that I wished I could balance so well doing pirouettes in dance class!

For that brief moment, my body was utterly, perfectly in balance, and nothing could throw me off. Looking back across more than four decades on this planet, I don’t think I’ve experienced another moment of more perfect balance.

There are three important things to note about this:

1) Balancing on one’s left hip on the hood of a car, no matter how perfectly, has limited usefulness in life.

2) In order for my life to proceed in any useful fashion, I had to come out of that state of balance, get off the car, and move on.

3) Even if I had tried to stay in perfect balance on the hood of that car forever, at some point the car would have moved on, and I would have had to move.

The moral of this story

The thing about balance in life is that it’s continually moving. As I was saying in my Time to Glow session the other day, trying to find balance is like riding a unicycle. It just doesn’t work to be stock still — you’ve got to keep moving.

If you’ve ever seen a unicyclist, they’re always in motion, even when not traveling through space. Even the most experienced unicyclists are continually shifting their weight, the position of their limbs, which way they’re leaning. Maybe just in tiny little micro-movements, but movement nonetheless.

Life is like that. It needs continual adjusting to feel “balanced” and good at any given moment. What felt right yesterday may feel totally out of whack today, so it’s no good sticking with yesterday’s plans, strategies and tactics just because they worked at one point.

It’s a moving target, baby.

The other thing to keep in mind is this:

A balanced life — a life of overall balance — is naturally going to include periods of extreme imbalance.

Think about kids. If your dream life includes having a baby (mine doesn’t, but stick with me on this), your life is going to be turned upside down for a time after that baby comes. It just is. Where your energies might have been spread among a zillion other things before, when you have a kid suddenly all of that energy is diverted away from those other things and toward your new baby.

Which is how it should be.

If kids are part of your life plan, then that time of extreme imbalance is part of your overall balanced life.

I’ve kept this truism front of mind over the past couple of weeks as Life, and my “baby” (that being my business), conspired to pull me down off of my Wagon of Balance.

First, MB and I flew to Alabama to visit his parents (and can I say what a treat it is to actually LIKE my boyfriend’s parents! I mean, like, really like. Like truly enjoy spending time with them. This is a Very Good Thing.)

Travel always throws me off my regular routine, of course, but the road to Alabama was paved with good intentions for getting at least a little writing done, maybe on the plane and/or in the evenings. MB even charged up his spare netbook computer for me to bring along. (I, alas, being so impoverished [1st World Joke] that I do not have a laptop or tablet of my own [and if you’d happen to wish to provide me with one, I’d like a MacBook Air, please].)

But the netbook crashed immediately upon boot-up. Every time.

The Universe apparently decided that being on a computer was not how I should spend my time on this trip.

At least that’s what I took it to mean.

So although I did manage to meditate every day, and I even got a tiny bit of exercise (walking Fritz, MB’s parents’ Miniature Schauzer), I did not get any work done.

I decided to be fine with that.

Then after we got home, I found myself in a bit of a work triage, as not just one but three websites required quick conversion from Headway theme (affiliate link)* to Genesis theme (another aff link) as I migrated them from BlueHost (yep, aff) to Synthesis+Genesis premium hosting, and in the middle of this, the admin side of my main e-commerce site, Ketubahworks, suddenly broke and needed urgent rebuilding-from-the-ground-up.

Which I’m still in the middle of…

I’ve been in intense OCD Geek Mode ever since, my butt conforming itself to the outlines of my computer chair as I gnash my teeth over technical gremlins, trying to Get This Done.

It’s crazy. I’ve fallen totally off of my Great Bedtime Experiment wagon, I didn’t get a lick of exercise for two solid days, I’ve been sleeping an average of about 5 1/2 hours a night (due to adrenaline-induced insomnia) and I’ve even kinda forgotten to eat.

Face it, I’ve kinda forgotten I have a body!

I’m exhausted, I’m playing chicken with the migraine fairies, and I am supremely out of balance.

I also feel keenly alive, and intensely happy.

I’m living the life of my dreams, I’m stretching and learning and growing, I’m moving forward.

Balance, my sweets, is not the be-all-and-end-all.

Is it sustainable? Hell no! And I sure as hell don’t want to still be in OCD Geek Mode two weeks from now! But these periods of being supremely out of balance are part of an overall balanced life.

The secret of balance is that it’s an ongoing game of continual adjustments. When you know this, you can enjoy the game.

It also helps to know that staying up til 2am is not the way to treat myself with self-compassion, no matter how much I want to solve out the latest puzzle of website creation.

It’s now 10:07pm, and I am shutting down to get some shut-eye. I’ll be back at it tomorrow, when the balance-target to aim for will no doubt have shifted.

Wish me luck.

xo, Melissa <3

* If you click through one of these links and buy something, I’ll make some money. You have been warned. If you want to buy the something without sending a commission my way, DO NOT CLICK ONE OF THOSE LINKS! I’ll never know the difference, so I won’t be offended.

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

Hey!

Looking for a little help bringing some balance into your own life? Check out my one-on-one coachsulting. I’ve got just a couple of openings at the moment, and am having a sale until those spots are filled. Click here for more info.

August 12, 2012

A Jazz Camp West Reminiscence (My Hiatus, Part 2)

Jazz Camp West. It’s almost impossible to explain it to somebody who hasn’t been before. Watching the video above might give you a taste. (And you may recognize the first speaker.)

More than a month has gone by since those blissful days in the Santa Cruz mountains. It feels as if it were only a dream.

Here’s what happens:

You drive up a windy road into the mountains, through canopies of redwoods, and for 8 days you are removed from normal life entirely. Your world becomes music, dance, nature, and human connection. Every day is an adventure in letting go, creating, improvising, learning, pushing the envelope, pushing your mind, pushing your body.

You maintain your still-relatively-new, 10-minute sitting meditation practice in the mornings (right after trudging back to the cabin from the restroom/bath house and layering on the day’s clothes, cross-legged on the bottom bed of your bunk, where you sleep at night in a cocoon of draperies improvised from sheets, towels, and your long, down winter coat, a soft cave to retreat to, the only real private spot outside of the bath house).

This is the only ritual/routine you bring with you from the outside world. Instead of sitting in front of a monitor and behind the wheel of a car, you walk through redwoods every day, several times a day:

…to and from the restroom/bath house, to the dining hall for breakfast,

…to your first period class (Beginning Improvisation, which you’ve taken before as a vocalist, but are doing this time with your ukulele), to your second period class (Trombones and Other Cool Instruments, which is really mostly a theory class, but has the added benefit of earning you honorary membership in the trombone section at Indian Bowl on Wednesday night [it’s a Jazz Camp thing… hard to explain if you haven’t been there…]),

…to your third period class (your one vocal class this year, an incredible adventure with the amazing Rhiannon, Spontaneous Composition, which you find yourself referring to as Spontaneous Combustion, because it feels like that, in the best sense of the phrase),

…then back to the dining hall for lunch,

…then to your fourth period class (in which you, with your ukulele, actually play with a jazz combo, though really it’s mostly a theory class),

…to your fifth period practice spot (having wisely figured out — finally, after six years of this — that taking a class all six periods is TOTAL OVERLOAD and doesn’t allow any time for integration or practice),

…to your sixth period Dance Improvisation class (heaven!),

…to Open Mic (Open Mike?), where 8 campers are chosen by lottery to perform every night during the hour before dinner,

…back to the dining hall for dinner,

…all the way across the gully back to your cabin to gear up in your warmest winter clothing for the evening concert in the outdoor amphitheater, where the California summer gets down into the low 40s, Fahrenheit,

…and finally back to the cabin and restroom/bath house for bed.

Sometimes with an extra trip to the dining hall where there’s company, jam sessions, and dessert (of which you wisely do not partake — yay you!)

The days are highly ritualized — a veritable treasure trove of what Jonathan Fields calls “certainty anchors” — which no doubt helps you “lean into” uncertainty in class and on stage. It’s a beautiful thing. No phone calls or email poking at you, making demands. You get to focus 100% on learning and having fun.

And the community is beyond supportive. Family, in all the good senses of that word (plus, because it’s only eight days, there’s not enough time for people to really start to get on each other’s nerves…)

And you wonder why it’s hard to come home?

It’s surprisingly hard to remember how much you love your amazing and wonderful regular life, and truly you wish you could live in a setting like Jazz Camp all. year. long.

But of course you can’t. Reality bites, as it is wont to do, and at the end of eight days, you load up your car with your gear (much dustier than when you arrived) and, bleary-eyed, rather wistfully make the drive home.

In fact, you come home to a jumble of mad scrambling to get just enough of a handle on everything so that you can leave again for the World Domination Summit just four days later.

Which is hard, because for some reason coming home from Jazz Camp feels a lot like flying home from Europe, complete with jet-lag-that-isn’t-really-jet-lag for close to a week. (You’re learning to build in some downtime, setting autoresponders and voicemail to say you’re away from the computer and phone, even when you’re not, but WDS throws a wrench into the works. And saying no to that just isn’t an option at this juncture.)

So you come home, needing a vacation from your vacation. Wrung out, yet energized. Physically drained, yet inspired. And longing desperately to return.

Only 357 more days to go…

xo, Melissa <3

Here’s the truth:

There’s nothing like getting away from home for a week to focus on your creative spirit in community. We need these kinds of recharges. That’s why I’m co-leading a creativity workshop/creative immersion vacation this fall, in one of the most inspirational cities in the world: Istanbul! (Note: Playing Around Istanbul is not a music camp — we’ll be writing and painting and doing other kinds of creative play — but I will have my ukulele with me! ;)) We’ve still got some spaces available. Click here to join me!

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

Which voice was the Voice of Truth?

You might be a honeybee

You might be a Leonardo

Bring that Gremlin voice to heel

The moral of this story

Hey!

Here’s the truth:

Would You Like Some Cookies?