Melissa Dinwiddie | Create the Impossible™ | Innovation Keynote Speaker & Consultant
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One of my big goals for this weekend was to get a new piece of art done. It’s a half hour before midnight as I type this, and I’m pleased to say I managed to do it!
Yay me!
Enjoy, and let me know what you think.
(And watch for prints, cards, T-shirts, mugs, magnets, etc. on my Zazzle shop soon.)
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!
—
(Which is late, because I let other deadlines get in the way.)
Theme of the week: time to reset. Again.
If this week has validated anything, it’s that change is the only constant.
And that includes emotional states.
Which is a very good thing, otherwise I’d still feel stuck, overwhelmed, lost, and somewhat hopeless.
Which is, in fact, how I felt for much of this week. But before I go there, let’s talk about:
• Mind mapping! I love mind mapping! It helped bust me out of my stuckness. (Note to self: when feeling stuck, make a mind map!)
• I made a video! About mind mapping.
• I was able to remember (mostly) that being stuck is usually the incubation ground for huge leaps and strides forward.
• I let myself cry, cry, cry, and reached out… a little. Which is way better than not at all.
• New ideas in abundance! Excitement! Enthusiasm!
• I overcame my stuckness and signed up for three new courses that I’m excited about.
• Writing for The Dating Queen was fun and flowing.
• A free coaching session with Sinclair, which:
– validated that my vision is “really doable” (so helpful to hear it from someone else!)
– gave me a tool for anchoring myself back to calm
• Girl-talk on Thursday night. (The cure for what ails you in most cases.)
• Feeling stuck, overwhelmed, lost and somewhat hopeless about ever getting what I want.
• Getting caught in the Comparison Trap (“Oh, they’re doing what I want to do, and are so successful, and so much younger, therefore I’m a loser.” Um, no. That would be not be a logical conclusion.)
• Feeling like I should follow my Plan B path, because that’s the more sensible thing to do. And feeling bad about myself for not bucking up and just doing it.
• Feeling a little paralyzed about writing here, because suddenly this blog has become more than a diary, and because my readers are not all entirely imaginary, I want my posts to be “high quality.” And then feeling badly that I’m feeling paralyzed, because this blog is first and foremost supposed to be a tool to help me follow my evolving Blisses and create the life I really, really want!
A note from my soul:
Dear Melissa,
This is your soul speaking. Remember me? I’m the one who told you to fly off to New York with two suitcases and audition for Juilliard, even though it meant doing the crazy thing and dropping out of Cal, because dancing was what you really wanted to do.
And several years later, I’m the one who told you not to fill out your PhD applications, because although it seemed like the sensible thing, it wasn’t what you really wanted to do.
Then a few years after that, I’m the one who tempted you away from your sad, frustrated attempts at writing and got you to procrastinate by making art, because that’s what you really wanted to do.
And later, I’m the one who encouraged you to keep making music when the business you created from your art wasn’t letting you express yourself (and feed me) to your satisfaction.
Now I’m telling you that, although I’m very proud of you for creating a business from your art, it’s time for you to refocus and get back to your Blisses.
I know you figured out how to make a living from your art the best way you could at the time, and it was good. It was great. But you get to reach for more, you really do. You don’t have to settle. You know you won’t be happy if you do. You know that unless you go after what you really want, I’ll always be hungry.
I want to gently remind you that you get to go after your true goals, not just your second-best goals. You don’t get to beat yourself up for not following the paths that other people might think you should follow. You get to go after what you really, really want.
Your job on this planet is to be fully yourself, to keep that channel open and follow your evolving Blisses.
Check in with me if your feel confused about this, okay? I am unwavering in my support and will validate you if you just take a moment to ask. We’re in this together!
I love you, and have complete faith in you and your abilities to create exactly what you want.
Love,
Your Soul
And some notes from me:
Yes, I figured out this week that I was indeed feeling pulled to settle. I figured out that the stuckness, the paralysis and overwhelm were at least partly due to the fact that I was in resistance to doing what I felt I should do. Once I let go of feeling like I had to follow the shoulds, some of the overwhelm just dissolved.
Magic!
Serendipity: Chris Guillebeau wrote last week that your backup plan is your plan. As Will Smith put it, “Your Plan B interferes with Plan A.”
Perfect timing.
It took me a week to realize that I was in fact letting Plan B keep me from diving into Plan A, but once I did realize it, something snapped.
If I keep putting energy into Plan B, it’s going to divert energy from Plan A. I have limited energy, and if Plan A is what I really want, then goddammit, just f*cking go for it!
Whew. That’s out of the way.
So. Time to reset. Again.
I will be gentle and forgiving with myself for only posting twice a week (my formal commitment) rather than every day (my informal – and unrealistic – goal).
I will create a new piece of art for my Irresistible Woman line this weekend.
I will allow myself to take things one step at a time, learning from my various teachers at my own pace, and gently steering myself back toward my big goals when I inevitably get diverted.
I will listen to my soul, which has never steered me wrong.
I will have patience.
I will have patience.
I will have patience.
And I will forgive myself when I don’t.
In which what is supposed to be Weekly Review #5 is instead a video that has nothing to do with reviewing the week that was, except in as much as the tip in the video was one that I finally tried for the first time this week, and did, in fact, affect my week greatly (the tip, that is). Got it?
—
Okay peeps, I’m running out to see a play, so this week’s full review will have to wait til tomorrow. But the big news is my first videoblog post! (Love the attractive expression on my face in the static image —not!)
Enjoy, and be sure to write your comments.
Happy Weekend!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So what happens when you’ve got multiple goals? How do you prioritize your time and energy? And when the goals require a continual stream of new ideas (blogging, making art, writing songs, for example), what do you do with the fact that ideas are flowing in one area, but maybe not so much in others, and not in the area you’re most interested in growing right now?
Welcome to my world.
Right now, the outlet I’m most excited about (and if you’ve been here before you know I’ve got a lot of them) if this blog, Living A Creative Life. Yet the posts I’m feeling most compelled to write are for my other blog, The Dating Queen, not LACL.
Since TDQ is a secondary outlet for me (I figure I’ll probably always have more to say about living my creative life than about dating, especially since, god-willing, I hope not to date forever), my publication goal is twice a week. For LACL, though, my goal is to publish as often as possible. Ideally every day, though that’s not always realistic.
So what do you do when what’s compelling you is not what you want to be compelling you?
You could follow the most compelling call in any given moment, which is historically what I’ve tended to do (and part of why I’m a Renaissance Woman now, in fact).
Granted, this tactic can be rather crazy-making, and is not always the most sensible choice from a financial standpoint. But it does have the advantage of capitalizing on the passionate fires that are burning right now. Momentum is nothing to sneeze at.
Or you could ignore the call of your currently dominant passion and just power through on the other stuff that isn’t compelling you as much. Which is pretty much what discipline is all about – doing something not because in this moment it’s what you want to do, but because it will help you reach a larger goal down the road. (Example: if a musician only played her instrument when she was utterly and completely excited about it, she’d probably never get very good at it.)
Of course the problem with this is that you potentially miss out on a bunch of forward momentum from hearkening to the voice that’s calling to you the loudest.
In this particular case, though, I found a middle solution:
Just blog about it.
