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

May 15, 2010

Weekly Review #7 (the Saturday edition): Migraines, Idea Overwhelm and Help from Many Places

So how am I doing in my quest to re-invent my life, follow my evolving Blisses and create the life I really, really want?

Obviously I’m a bit behind, since I usually do my weekly review on Fridays, and it’s now Saturday. But perhaps this will become tradition, like the Christians switching the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday; jury’s still out.

First theme of the week: migraines.

As a migraneur, I’m always looking for patterns to my migraines, especially when, like this week, they strike almost every day for several days in a row.

Seriously no fun, even if, like me, your migraines tend to be on the milder side.

Perhaps my brain is exploding from having too many ideas and not knowing which ones to move forward with..?

Actually, it’s much more likely my migraines are linked to another theme of the week:

Staying up waaaaaaay too late

And insomnia on the rare occasions I got to bed early.

So that’s what was hard. Now let’s look at:

What went well

1) Noticing that I already have a really good life

Last week I listened to an interview with fellow ketubah artist Tsili Pines, the lesson from Day 29 of the Empire Building Kit. Tsili spent 8 years slowly building up her ketubah business while working full time as a graphic designer, and recently quit her job to focus full time on her own business.

For her, running her own ketubah business is living the life she really, really wants.

14+ years into my own successful ketubah business, I’m now looking for more. I want to create stuff that I feel like creating (visual art, yes, but also music, video tutorials, ebooks… the list goes on), rather than just creating what clients ask me to create, and I want to find the Right People who resonate with what I do. I want to spend more of my time creating new things, and not necessarily things for weddings.

What was great about the video interview, though, was that it reminded me of what a cool day job I already have. It helped me appreciate the wonderful things about being a ketubah artist, so that I can get back to fully enjoying it while I simultaneously create new things and new income streams to create a more fully balanced life that fits me better.

2) Learning some new things, reinforcing other new things

Monday marked the start of the $100 Business Forum, a 28-day online class and forum for folks like me who want to build, or grow, a Very Small Business. Although it took a few days for me to get the hang of it (a clunky ning.com interface doesn’t help; watch for a more in-depth review later), I’m starting to see what it’s all about, and excited about the connections that are beginning to form.

Plus the really cool thing is that the daily lessons are reinforcing principles and ideas I’ve been getting elsewhere. For someone like me (ie, with a brain that is not inherently wired for business and marketing), this repetition is exactly what I need.

Which brings me to one of my other teacher-heroes.

During an insomiac blitz the other night, I finished Naomi Dunford’s Marketing School, which I got as part of an upsell package (along with Art + Money and Working for Yourself) when I bought the Empire Building Kit.

Again, this book deserves a serious, in-depth review, which I promise to share with you later. For now, suffice it to say that insomnia sucks, but if it means reading Marketing School, well, at least it’s super-productive insomnia. With ninjas.

3) A coaching consultation/a direction/a client or two

On Wednesday I had an introductory consult with my yoga teacher, Susan, who has recently also become a life coach. It was brief, and no huge epiphanies emerged, but I might get a client out of it.

How?

I love to share what I know, and though I’m not a techie, one of the things I’m really good at is teaching what technical stuff I do know how to do in a way that doesn’t make people’s eyes glaze over and their heads spin. I absolutely love empowering people to do what they didn’t think they’d ever be able to do!

When I mentioned to Susan that one of the things I’m interested in doing is helping technophobes create a simple WordPress website or blog, so they can maintain and edit their website all by themselves, Susan said she was interested!

And in the meantime, someone else has expressed interest as well (indication from the Universe that this is a good direction, perhaps?)

The magic part: I came right home from my meeting with Susan and set up a demo site! (Amazing how the prospect of an actual client gets me off my butt and working on something.)

In case you’re wondering, no, building WordPress websites and creating tutorials on same is not creating my art, but it could be a new income stream that would also satisfy my desire to help people and share what I know, which is nothing to sneeze at. And creating tutorials will be fun!

Watch this space…

Takeaways

Sigh. Perhaps my biggest takeaway this week is that I really need to work on my getting-to-bed-at-a-reasonable-hour problem.

Yeah, I know.

Seems I’m not quite ready to tackle that one yet, since here it is 10:41pm and I have every intention of getting a few more things done before shutting down. (“My name is Melissa, and I’m a stay-up-late-aholic.”)

Plus there’s the reminder that when things are moving in the right direction, the Universe tends to send rewards.

Next Steps

Reviews! I’m dying to start writing my reviews! Plus a sales page for the WordPress website services.

And of course my mile-long to-do list…

Meanwhile, I’m trudging along with my marketing education, and perhaps most important of all, slowly losing the urgency around reading/studying/following everyone and everything out there.

Which is a blog post of its own waiting to be written.

Onward!

May 13, 2010

Headstands, Training Wheels and the Quest for Ever-Elusive Balance

Funny: although I have crazy fear of doing a headstand in the middle of the room, I can float my legs up no problem when I’m near a wall.

It’s psychological, of course, but that wall also serves a useful purpose: just knowing the wall is there to catch me lets me push further into an unknown space — the space of total balance.

The thing is, unless you’re perfectly vertical, headstand is a lot of work. Your arms really need to press into the floor to keep the full weight of your body up in the air. It’s tiring!

When you’re in balance, though, it feels effortless. Free. Like you’re floating. You could stay in headstand this way forever.

Training wheels

Remember learning to ride a bike with training wheels? My training wheels were always slightly off-kilter, so my bike (purple, from Sears, with streamers coming out of the handlebars) leaned either a bit to the left, or a bit to the right. Very uncomfortable. But oh, the stomach-churning panic when I first tried to ride the damned thing after the training wheels came off!

Getting to balance is scary.

Learning where perfect balance is — how far to launch your legs up without toppling over onto your back; how to make those two wheels go fast enough to keep the bike vertical and the skin on your knees intact — takes practice. It’s a learning curve, which for some people is easy and natural, but for others (like me with headstand), not so much.

Those of us in that second group might fall a bunch of times before we hit that sweet spot.

Which is where training wheels can help. For headstand, that might be a wall, or someone to spot you, or hell, just a big ol’ pile of pillows.

Some yoga teachers insist that headstand learners should start out in the middle of the room, the very first time they try, so that they never get psychologically dependent on the wall (like me!) There’s merit to that philosophy.

I, however, tend to be a gentler soul. If using some kind of “crutch” or “training wheels” helps you find that balance point and feel it in your body without hurting yourself in the process, I say more power to you!

This is not just about headstands and bicycles, of course

You may have figured out, 250-some odd words into this post, that the principles here don’t just apply to yoga, or riding a two-wheeler. Whatever your big goal is, when you’re in total balance, everything feels easy. Everything flows.

It’s getting to the balance that’s the challenge.

Where are you still looking for that balance point? Is there something big you want to accomplish, but fear of toppling over is holding you back?

Or are you struggling with something, working really hard at it and feeling like you’re not getting anywhere?

If so, maybe some training wheels are in order. Along with permission to use them. (That part’s key.)

Balance is the ever-elusive goal in every area of my life. Ever-elusive because the only constant is change, and since I’m always changing, what constitutes balance for me is always changing.

Right now the big area I’m focusing on is balance in my work and money spaces. I’ve been making huge changes, and since I’m tired of crashing my proverbial bike and scraping my proverbial knees, I’m making no qualms about the fact that I’m attaching some training wheels to get me going!

Here are some of my training wheels these days:

• Chris Guillebeau’s The Empire Building Kit and other Unconventional Guides

• Chris Guillebeau and Pam Slim’s $100 Business Forum (also an Unconventional Guides product)

• Johnny B. Truant and Lee Stranahan’s Question the Rules

• Dave Navarro’s The Launch Coach Library and workshops

• Naomi Dunford’s Marketing School

They’re making the transition from three-wheeler (my existing business life) to two-wheeler (my ideal vision of my business life) a lot more stable.

Specifics?

I’ve already written a preliminary review of the Empire Building Kit (preliminary only because the EBK is a year-long kit, and I’ve only been doing it about a month), and as I dig further into the other wheels of training, I’ll give you my honest opinion. (Or opinions, plural, because I’m not always of one mind.)

…And back to headstand

Because I feel a lack of closure if I don’t come full circle.

Cool thing: I have now experienced perfect balance in headstand a few times.

Near a wall, of course. (Which I have no plans to abandon anytime soon.)

You may be the Torpedoes-Be-Damned, Learn To Do Headstand In The Middle Of The Room type, but I, for one, am grateful for training wheels!

—

And yes, in case you’re wondering, those links in the bullet list are affiliate links. [With the exception of Naomi’s Marketing School, because I couldn’t find an IttyBiz affiliate program. Anyone?]

That means if you click through and end up buying something, I’ll make some money, and you’ll be helping to support me in my quest to create a sustainable life doing what I love. How cool is that?

Just one of the many tools I’m learning from my Business Training Wheels.

I’ll provide a more detailed review of each of these products later, but suffice it to say that I think they are all good products. I only sign up as an affiliate for products I can honestly recommend without feeling all queasy and gross about it. Just sayin’.

Will they be the right products for you? That I can’t say. But I will share a lot more details about each of them in the weeks to come, so watch this space.

May 12, 2010

S&M + Yoga = 5 Cool Life Lessons

Okay, it’s not really S&M, exactly… But still sorta edgy. Read on…

—

My jivamukti yoga teacher, Giselle, really knows how to push my buttons.

Giselle always structures her class around a theme of the month, and this month’s theme is Fear. Perfect timing!

As I move through what Pam Slim calls the Change Cycle for New Entrepreneurs (otherwise known as “Why do I feel so flipping crazy?”), facing my fears in yoga is exactly what I need to help me face my fears in my business life.

Right now I’m in Square Two of the Change Cycle, which Pam calls “Dreaming and Scheming.” Whereas in Square One (“Death and Rebirth”), it’s typical to feel spaced out, disoriented, uncomfortable and “not like myself,” typical Square Two feelings are excitement, a flood of creativity, openness and sometimes overwhelm from the range of possibilities.

Um, yeah. That would be me.

In other words, all hopped up and rarin’ for a yoga class to bring 90-minutes of single-minded focus to my otherwise scattered-feeling day.

So I got myself to Giselle’s class, ready to work on inversions — head stand, forearm balance, hand stand — all the asanas that bring up fear, that make me face the places where I don’t trust myself.

Bring it on, Giselle, I thought as I rolled out my mat. I may not lose my fear of inversions overnight, but I’m committed to showing up and making the effort.

(Baby steps, right? They’ll get me there as sure as huge leaps [if a little slower], so bring it on!)

But then Giselle had to throw something new into the mix:

Blindfolds.

What the – ?

That’s right, she brought a pile of bandannas, and instructed us to tie one over our eyes for the duration of the class.

Now, if you’ve ever taken a yoga class, you know there are a lot of tricky postures that can be hard to put your body into and hold. There’s a lot of balancing involved, a lot of precarious poses where just a funny look from somebody might be enough to topple you over.

And in a jivamukti (or vinyasa or Power) yoga class, there’s a lot of moving in between postures. It can be really challenging, even for someone like me, who’s done a lot of yoga and gone through intensive yoga teacher training.

And blindfolded?

If Giselle wanted to light up some fears, she chose a very effective way to go about it.

But she was so blithe and matter-of-fact about this blindfold exercise that I shrugged my shoulders and dutifully tied on my bandanna. And kept it on for the whole class, I might note.

I learned a few things from this crazy experiment, many of which apply to what’s going on in the rest of my life (isn’t life always like that?) Here’s what I came away with:

1) You can do more than you probably think you can

Yes, I’m here to tell you that it is actually possible to do yoga blindfolded. It’s even possible to do ardha chandrasana (half moon pose) blindfolded (though admittedly not very well).

Ya think this might be true of other things in life that I’m feeling a bit scared of trying?

(Um, rhetorical question.)

2) It’s okay to back off a bit when you add something new to the mix

Though I wasn’t able to achieve my fullest expression of many postures, I allowed myself to be a beginner and be okay with not reaching that fullest expression. For right now, my fullest expression of crescent pose, for example, is a lot less full when blindfolded than when my eyes are open. (Hey, I don’t want to bust a kneecap!) And I let myself be okay with that.

I was having a brand new experience, being challenged in a way I never had before. It’s good to take risks, but it’s also okay to be gentle with yourself.

A vocal teacher once told me that getting better at a new thing is like juggling. Maybe you learn to juggle three balls, and then someone throws another ball at you, and suddenly you’ve got to juggle four. For awhile, you’re going to drop one of the other balls until you get up to speed. Then when you get comfy juggling four balls and want to move to five, for awhile you’re going to drop one or two of the others until you get up to speed with five.

All part of the process.

Similarly, as I figure out my new business directions, I’m trying all sorts of new things. This is scary shit, people!

Blindfolded yoga reminded me that I can put myself out there and try things, but I can do it at my own pace. And it’s okay if I drop a few balls in the process. Yes, I want to push myself, and I don’t want fear to stop me, but I can proceed at a pace that feels safe. And I can forgive myself for other parts of my life that may be temporarily neglected.

3) It’s good to go “inside” sometimes

Now yoga is, theoretically, a lot about what’s going on inside. The best teachers (or at least the ones I like the best) will tell you that it doesn’t matter what a posture looks like from the outside, it’s what if feels like on the inside that counts.

The problem is that our egos have a tendency to get involved, and sometimes it’s hard to stay focused on the internal. Egos want to know “How high is my leg going today??” and don’t care so much about how a posture feels.

One of the reasons I love yoga studios without mirrors is that no mirror to look at keeps my ego quieter.

But if you really want to remove your ego one more level, try wearing a blindfold!

(Of course, the ego pops up in other ways, such as, “Oh my god, I’m falling over; I must look like a moron!” But because you can’t see anyone watching you, it’s easier to stop worrying about whether they are.)

What happens is, you really have to focus on what your body is doing, on what’s happening inside. No using the mirror as a crutch for your balance or placement! It all comes down to feeling.

And wow, how cool is that? (Giselle is f-ing brilliant.)

In my business life I’m looking at so many creative ideas, I tend to get stuck in a feedback loop of “I should do this… but maybe I should do this… or maybe this…” This is not useful.

What is useful at this stage is going inside, asking myself how each of these various possibilities make me feel. Put on the proverbial blindfold and listen to what my body and soul are telling me.

4) The more you do something, the more familiar — and less scary — it feels

A friend of mine used to say, “If you do something enough, it becomes normal.” Case in point: when I first started singing in public, I was terrified! Holding a microphone felt awkward, I didn’t know what to do with my other hand, my mouth felt like sandpaper, my breath support totally went away and so did my ability to think.

It was awful!

But the awfulness didn’t last forever. Little by little singing with a band, performing for an audience, became just something I did. So much so that now getting up in front of even thousands of people doesn’t phase me at all!

At the beginning of blindfolded yoga class today, not being able to see felt pretty damn scary. Would I fall over onto my neighbor? Would I even be able to stand up out of forward fold without falling over, let alone get myself into challenging asanas?

Although I wouldn’t say I was comfortable with blindfolded yoga by the end of class, I can say I was a helluva lot more comfortable with it. With each new posture I managed to do, I realized what I could do, and I got a little less scared.

Each and every one of my new business ideas are new to me, so they feel scary. But just like blindfolded yoga, I know with each little step I take it will feel just a bit less scary. And eventually I’ll be totally rockin’ it and it won’t be scary at all!

And then, of course, it will probably be time for a new challenge!

5) Sometimes all you need is someone else who believes in you

Would I ever have tried blindfolded yoga if Giselle hadn’t made me? No freakin’ way!

Honestly, it wouldn’t even have occurred to me. But if it had, I probably would have thought “Oh, that’s too hard; I couldn’t do that.” Period. End of story.

But Giselle brought in the bandannas and clearly had faith that everyone in class could do this challenging thing. She believed in me, so I believed in myself.

Everybody has people in their life who believe in them, and god knows there are always plenty of naysayers who don’t. When you’re doing blindfolded yoga, or when you’re launching some new business ideas, it’s pretty damn important to surround yourself with people who believe in you.

Wrap up

So there you go: one yoga class + blindfold = five cool life lessons. Not bad, huh? (Can you see why Giselle is one of my favorite teachers?)

I wonder what she’ll throw at us next week.

Comment love: if you’ve gotten some great lessons from something scary you tried (sky diving? flying trapeze? swimming with sharks?), I’m dying to hear them!

Now I’m off to find a bandanna and try blindfolded ardha chandrasana again.

May 10, 2010

Happiness vs. Greatness (and 6 reasons why you might want to choose the former)

I don’t know that there was ever a time I didn’t want, desperately, to be great at something. I’ve always been a woman of many passions, and there are many things I do well, but that never felt like enough.

I wanted to be a genius.

I wanted to be off-the-charts amazing.

I wanted to be the best.

Face it, I wanted to be like Mozart. But instead I always felt like Salieri in the play and film Amadeus.

I called it my “Mozart Complex.”

Why did it feel so important to be a genius? I’m still not entirely sure, but underneath it all I guess I thought it would make me happy.

The problem, of course, is that there are some flaws in this thinking. Let’s take a look at a few:

1. Genius/greatness does not necessarily lead to happiness

For starters, Mozart died young and impoverished, buried in a pauper’s grave. Although there’s no way to know for sure, I don’t get the feeling that he was very happy at the time he died.

And of course history shows us a whole bevy of other “greats” who led pretty miserable lives, drank themselves to death, committed suicide, etc.

Then there are the amazing savants who can do things like calculate multiple sums to five decimal places in their heads (ie, genius), but can’t carry on a conversation with another human being. That never seemed like a desirable way to be.

That’s not to say that greatness causes misery — there are plenty of examples of people who achieved greatness at one thing or another, and also lived happy lives. (See, for example, the life story of the sculptor Alexander Calder, who achieved phenomenal success with his art and lived a long, happy life.)

But it isn’t greatness in and of itself that leads to happiness.

2. Who’s “the best” is frequently hard to determine

How do you even tell if someone is “the best” at something? Unless you’re an Olympic runner, or your thing is something truly quantifiable, how do you know if you’re the best at it?

Even if you win an Olympic gold medal, say, or a chess match, there’s always the possibility that someone else who didn’t compete that day might have beat you had they been there. And there’s no guarantee you’re going to win next time!

3. Who’s “the best” is often highly subjective anyway

If your thing is something creative, determining a “best” is pretty much impossible.

Take opera singers, for example: just because Pavarotti (or whoever) rocks your world, doesn’t mean he’ll make even the slightest impact on mine.

Take painters: Picasso is lauded the world over, but there are plenty of other artists that I personally like better!

Take writers: I think Jasper Fforde is the absolute bees knees of humorous novelists and I worship at his altar, but I have friends who couldn’t get through one of his books if you paid them.

4. If your happiness depends on being “the best,” what happens when you fall?

Let’s pretend you’re that imaginary Olympic gold medalist. What happens when, the next time there’s a race, you don’t win the gold? If your happiness is dependent on being “the best,” that’s really going to suck for you. You’re pretty much going to be doomed to eventual unhappiness, because the reality is you’re not going to keep winning gold forever.

5. Genius/greatness is externally determined

The thing is, people whom the world declares as “great” don’t always see themselves that way. This hit home for me personally when I was eating lunch with a calligraphy hero of mine, John Stevens. The man is amazing. It’s like he emerged from the womb with a pen in his hand. Genius, truly. I wish I had a fraction of his skill!

And yet, he reminded me that there may be people who see me that way.

Huh.

John Stevens probably doesn’t consider himself a genius, or great. He just does his thing, and works very hard at it. He may have no idea that others have bestowed these titles on him, so they really have no bearing on his feelings about his work.

And think about this: if your happiness is dependent on being labeled as great, and if you wait for some external authority to bestow that label upon you, you’re giving power over your happiness to someone outside of yourself.

Never a good idea.

6. Genius/greatness is a moving target at best

If greatness is your aim, it’s likely that the better you get at your thing, the better you’ll want to get. As soon as you reach one level, your eyes are already set on the level beyond that.

I’ve experienced this with every creative pursuit I’ve taken on. The better I got at calligraphy, dance, singing, etc, the better able I was at seeing where my work fell short of the Platonic ideal I was aiming for.

Greatness is, then, forever out of reach, like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

So if greatness isn’t the key to happiness, what then?

I’d be lying if I told you I had no desire for greatness anymore. I still want to get really good at the things I love doing. But the key to (mostly) losing my Mozart Complex has been to figure out what really brings me happiness, and chase after that.

First off, I’ve figured out that the only thing I’ll ever truly be “the best” at is being me. So I might as well be the most fully-expressed me that I can. For me that means following several Blisses, not just one.

I realized that focusing singlemindedly on one thing has never made me happy, so I’ve learned to embrace my multi-passionate personality. I’ve learned that I need to follow what’s calling to me the loudest right now. I’ve learned, also, that the pursuit of mastery makes me happier than the actual achievement of it.

Yes, this means I’ll probably never achieve “the best” status in any of my passions, but I’ve (pretty much) come to terms with that.

Ultimately, I’ve decided that I’d rather be happy than great.

So what do YOU think? Do you think you have to choose between happiness and greatness, and if so, which would you choose?

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

May 9, 2010

Don’t just follow your bliss, do it and own it!

So here’s a funny thing: years ago, before I was a Renaissance Woman Multi-Passionate Creative Entrepreneur, before I even knew there was such a thing, back when I was lost and casting about desperately for something to be when I grew up, I decided to be a writer.

The only problem was I didn’t spend much time actually writing.

I thought a lot about writing. I read a lot about writing. But I didn’t actually write much.

Except in my journal (where I actually wrote a ton), and that didn’t “count.”

I was stuck in a box that said that writers either write fiction (my goal at the time) or magazine or newspaper articles. Personal essays, or sales copy, or blog posts? The first two just weren’t on my radar, and the last didn’t exist yet!

So I tried, half-heartedly to write fiction, but couldn’t seem to come up with any worthy ideas. And because I was young and impatient, it didn’t occur to me that writing might be a skill that could be developed over time.

As a result, I felt like an untalented loser who would never amount to anything.

Meh.

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that I started putting my energies elsewhere, “procrastinating” by doing art projects, in fact. Apparently, I wasn’t meant to be a writer (I thought); clearly I was supposed to be an artist. A calligrapher, in fact, which seemed especially fitting: I started out wanting to write beautifully, and instead learned how to do beautiful writing. Or something like that.

Fifteen years later, it’s all come full circle. I’ve been writing for my businesses for the past decade and a half, I’ve penned articles here and there, and I never stopped writing in my journal (which does “count,” of course).

And now, thanks to my blogs, I write (and publish!) on an almost daily basis. Plus I actually make money as a writer from my copywriting business.

Go figure.

The lesson here? (Because of course there is one!) Don’t let anyone, especially yourself, put you in a box or tell you what you can or cannot do or be!

If you write, you’re a writer, by golly.

If you make art, you’re an artist.

If you make music, you’re a musician.

If you do a whole bunch of stuff (like me), maybe you’re a Multi-Passionate Creative Artrepreneur! Or whatever.

You get to figure out your own title. I don’t care if you make money from it or not (though making money is always nice). You get to own it, and refine it over time, and polish up your multi-faceted self identity until it sparkles and shines!

Of course there’s one catch: you can’t just think about it, you’ve got to actually do the thing in order to call yourself a thing-doer.

It doesn’t matter if you do it in public or in private. It doesn’t matter if nobody ever sees the fruits of your labors. You still get to own it. You still get to call yourself whatever title you want.

So don’t just think about the thing you want to do or be (and I know you want it!) Get out there (or in there) and do it!

You owe it to yourself.

Me, I’m going to go write another blog post.