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When to just do it, and when to just not

Just do it

Remember Nike’s famous ad? It tapped right into America’s Puritan work ethic. We seem to love to make stuff happen. To power through.

At least I sure do. I’ve got more going on than most people I know, and when I set my mind on a goal (or more often, goals), I’m driven to make it (them) happen.

The problem is, the “just do it” mindset can make it very hard for me to let go and just be.

I’m still coming off of last week’s “work fugue” (deadlines up the wazoo, culminating in my parents’ 50th anniversary celebration over the weekend), and the compulsion is strong to get back on track with all of my goals that had to be set aside while I fought more urgent “fires.” Plus I leave on Saturday for a week making music in the woods, so there’s no time to dilly-dally.

Now there are all sorts of Puritan work ethic voices rattling around in my head:

“If you want your blog to be taken seriously, you must post consistently, on the same days every week.” (Ack! I must be a total failure!)

“You really need to be writing (and posting) every day.” (Ack! Again I’m a total failure!)

“When you have a goal, you must put it first at all times, and even let everything else slide in order to accomplish it.” (Loser! Loser! Loser!)

Because last night I did not put my big goals first. I’d been invited out to dinner, and instead of following my usual Stay-Up-Late-and-Power-Through M.O, I decided to go.

Not such a big deal, right? Except that I’d made a commitment to myself to publish a blog post, and I’d also made a commitment to myself to get to sleep by midnight. Dinner out would make it impossible to achieve both of these goals; I’d have to pick one: either get to sleep by midnight, or write a blog post.

Oh, how I tortured myself!

“A serious blogger would skip dinner and just write.”

“How can you be out enjoying yourself when you have so much to do?”

“You don’t deserve this R&R until you’ve accomplished more!”

Oh, for God’s sake!

It took the entire first half of dinner for me to let myself relax and enjoy myself. (Some good red wine seriously helped!)

The overarching goal: happiness

It also helped to remind myself that, regardless of my current goals, commitments and deadlines, happiness is my overarching goal.

And part of happiness is taking time to enjoy life, just because, even if that doesn’t help me meet my current deadlines.

Yes, I have a ton of things I’m trying to accomplish, and I’m okay with working hard (for awhile) to make that happen. But it’s important to remember that working hard and burning the midnight oil is not the ultimate goal, just the means to an end.

Don’t I want to have time to relax and just enjoy? It seems like I’ve almost forgotten what that feels like!

Maybe tipping my toe into that pool every so often isn’t such a bad idea. Maybe I do deserve to have some fun, relaxation time, even when I’m powering toward my big goals. Maybe it won’t actually mean total disaster to take a little time for me.

I sound like a psycho workaholic, don’t I? Clearly it’s time to reset the foundation. Thank goodness I’ll be in the woods all next week, away from work, away from my regular routine. Even away from internet and phone.

Ha! No powering-through for me!

Except that instead of lying around reading for a week, I’ll be fully immersed in music classes. Powering through again, just in a different part of my life.

Huh. I even wrote about the importance of not always powering through just a week ago.

Apparently, I’m incurable.

Musings (in the style of Montaigne) on why doing Your Important Work is sometimes so hard

Artist and blogger Michael Nobbs recently wrote an excellent five-part series on Getting Your Important Work Done, which got me thinking.

One of my big goals (what Nobbs would call My Important Work, what Havi would call my thing) is to be creating art every day. Yet I resist making art.

On the other hand, one of my other big goals is to write every day, and this, at the moment, feels easy and fun. Even if I don’t post every day, rarely a day goes by when I don’t write.

So the question: Why is it so much harder these days to get myself to make art than to write?

Understand I make art for clients on a fairly regular basis – just last night I finished a custom ketubah commission. But making art that I want to make just because I’m curious and compelled and interested and I feel like making it, that’s a lot harder for some reason. These days I’d almost always rather write a blog post.

What’s going on here?

The newest Bliss wins

It occurred to me that for one thing, writing is my newest Bliss. And kind of like a New Best Friend, or a new love, I want to hang with it all the time.

It’s been the same with each of my Blisses: Modern dance. Calligraphy. Salsa dance. Singing. Argentine Tango. Writing. Each one of these has been Passion Number One at some time in my life. And just after first discovery, I can’t not do my new passion.

New passions take me over. They “run me.”

I remember when I first started as a calligrapher and artist, and was astonished to hear other artists and calligraphers complain about needing a push to get to their studio and make stuff.

Huh?

How can anyone need urging to get to their studio and make stuff, I wondered?

Maybe a year or two later I was disheartened to discover that same resistance had settled on me.

What’s going on here?

Why is it so easy to do the (admittedly hard) thing in the beginning, and so much harder to do it later on, when it’s ironically somewhat easier to do?

The benefits of being a beginner

For one thing, when I’m a beginner, the stakes are low. I don’t have to make any money from it, nor do I have to maintain any kind of reputation, because I don’t have one yet. Part of the challenge that drives me is proving myself and establishing a reputation. And precisely because I am still proving myself, the only high expectations I have to fill are my own.

In other words, I’m still in the exploring phase, still pretty much in Beginner Mind.

When I achieve a certain competency or success level, however, that’s when the resistance starts to kick in.

The challenges of a modicum of mastery

You’d think that when the thing itself gets slightly easier that I’d only be more glued to doing it. But in fact, the opposite seems to happen.

At first, the hard part was in mastering the skills, and perhaps getting some recognition (which I’ll admit, I do crave). But it turns out I thrive on this sort of challenge. It’s precisely the pursuit of mastery that drives my engine.

With a modicum of mastery under my belt, though, the game changes. Going from “total beginner” to “pretty good” is relatively easy. (Not easy, understand; just the easiest part of the journey.)

Pushing beyond this, over the hump to the next level (to what? “remarkable?” “damn good?” “excellent?”) it turns out, is the harder part. It takes a lot more effort, and a lot of focus and commitment to get to each successive level of mastery. (Maybe it’s even exponentially harder?)

Plus there are now expectations to meet, potential to fulfill.

Back when I was still a pretty new calligrapher, I received enthusiastic encouragement from several Big Name calligraphers who seemed hugely impressed with the quality of my beginner work. For a moment, I felt on top of the world from their praise, but then suddenly the prospect of making anything new was fraught with expectations.

I felt like everything I did had to be a masterpiece.

This is not a recipe for fun, play and experimentation!

What’s the solution?

I don’t profess to have The Answer. Reams of books have been written on the subject, and people much more experienced than I have created wonderful courses, such as Julia Cameron’s The Artists Way and the like. And certainly a commitment that feels attainable is a good tactic. (20 minutes a day, say, which is the commitment I took on a few weeks ago to great effect, and also what Michael Nobbs suggests with his 20 minutes a day challenge.)

What I have figured out, though, is that as a Multi-Passionate person, it behooves me to not totally discount where I’m feeling pulled to put my energies. I realize this means I’ll never be The Best at anything, because I’m simply not wired to focus all of my energy on one thing forever. But as a Multi-Passionate Creative, I seem to be happiest when I allow myself to follow whatever’s drawing me forward.

You may be very different (and god knows I used to want greatness way more than happiness), but in my old(er) age I’ve weighed in for happiness over greatness.

(This is in no way meant to discount the value of discipline, of committing to doing My Important Work, of just showing up. Just to acknowledge that as a Multi-Passionate person, I can expect to be buffeted around by continually shifting priorities. It’s part of who I am, and I’m learning to embrace that.)

In addition, I know a huge piece of this puzzle is related to finding my voice (which is a topic for several posts of its own). It’s been so long since I consistently made art just for me that I don’t even know what my art is anymore. I’ve “lost” my voice, and the prospect of looking for it again, of “refinding” it, feels daunting. I know I need to go back to Square One, back to letting myself “suck” for awhile.

Oy. I’m in for a ride.

And you’ve got a passenger seat view.

Weekly Review #10-11: from hating my life to loving it in 4 months

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?

It’s been two weeks, not one, since my last review post. (And if I were Catholic that would sound like I was sitting in a confessional.) Being in Vegas last weekend with no internet access made doing a review pretty much impossible, but I have to admit I’m one person who kinda likes not being constantly accessible.

I want my away time, thank you very much!

(Though given my druthers, I’d take my away time in a quieter and more natural venue than Vegas…)

But back to the question at hand (I do have a tendency to go off on tangents…): How am I doing?

Rather than list all the “what’s going wells” and the “where it get hards” of the past couple of weeks, I’m going to tell a little story.

The Universe whacks me with a 2×4…

Here’s the thing: 4 months ago today, my life hit a major snag. I’d been seriously stressing for a couple of months about money (or more accurately, about the lack thereof). Then two days before Valentine’s Day the man I thought was my life partner, the man with whom I shared my heart and soul, who lived with me and shared my workspace, announced, out of the blue, that he was moving out.

In fact, he’d found an apartment already and was signing the lease on Monday.

Whoa! [cue screeching of brakes and fast-rewind of audiotape sound]

Not only did I have to reshape my entire view of my life, but I also had to immediately make up for the loss of his share of the rent. At a time when my biggest stress was money.

It was not pretty.

…and that 2×4 finally got me to pay attention

The thing is (and of course hindsight is 20-20), I’d been less than 100% satisfied with my life for quite some time.

I was frustrated that I was spending 99% of my time doing uncreative admin and drudge work for my art business, and only 1% (if that) actually creating art. And I’d had some niggling doubts about my relationship as well.

But things weren’t uncomfortable enough for me to make any radical changes.

Face it, things weren’t uncomfortable enough for me to even see outside my little box to envision what else might be possible!

That’s the beautiful thing about the Universe hitting you with a 2×4. Although it feels like it’s coming out of the blue, like my ex’s departure, in fact there are always hints before you get smacked upside the head.

Little whispers, like:

“Melissa, you got into this because you love creating and making art, and you’re not doing that. You know creating is what makes you happy. Don’t you think you should figure out how to spend more time creating?”

“Hey, Melissa, how about trying something new? You don’t actually have to do one thing for the rest of your life.”

“Melissa, this person has really different core values from you. Maybe he’s not the one to spend the rest of your life with.”

But when things are still pretty comfortable, you just don’t always have enough incentive to make a change. It’s hard to change. It’s uncomfortable. For better or worse, even if we know we “ought” to make a change, it’s often only when not changing is more painful than changing that we finally bust out and do it.

As Anais Nin put it,

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

How I’ve blossomed

Susan Elliott has a great book called Getting Past Your Breakup: How to Turn a Devastating Loss into the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You (affiliate link). It has tips and exercises for integrating your loss and moving on with your life, and if you’ve ever gone through a breakup, I highly recommend it.

But the principles behind it apply no matter what the loss is. Steve Jobs gave a great commencement address at Stanford in 2005, detailing how the tragedies in his life turned into the best things that ever happened to him. Watch the video – it’s incredibly inspiring.

(As a calligrapher, I especially love the part about Jobs’ interest in calligraphy leading to the wonderful typography we have today on personal computers!)

Some of the biggest losses in my own life have resulted in some of the greatest gifts:

  • At 16 I tried out for the cheerleading team (I cringe to admit this), and because I wasn’t one of the popular girls, I didn’t get in. I was devastated, but because I wasn’t booked up with cheerleading time commitments, I started taking dance classes after school, and discovered my first big passion, culminating three years later in a year at Juilliard in New York.
  • At age 20, while at Juilliard, my budding dance career was suddenly ended by an injury. Which took years to emotionally recover from, but also ultimately led me back to finish my degree at UC Berkeley where I met my first big love.
  • This first big love turned into a lousy marriage and ended in divorce, but my 5 years in that lousy marriage allowed me time and freedom to explore my creativity and get started in my art career.

And more recently, my financial crisis and my breakup forced me to finally look outside my ketubah artist box. I started writing. I started making art for me again. I started looking at really fun, cool ways to add to my income stream.

I started having fun and really loving my life again!

I thought I was happy before, but perhaps before a snake sheds its skin it feels pretty good and shiny too.

Back to the point

Which brings me back to the point of this post: how’m I doing?

I could complain that I’m underslept and that my finances are still not where I want them to be, and this would all be true. But the fact is, despite the bags under my eyes, I feel more balanced and happier than I’ve ever been.

Why? It’s pretty simple, really:

  • I’m doing the things that make me happy.
  • I’m engaged and excited about the projects I’ve taken on.
  • I’m making time for exercise, friends, and even two upcoming music camps.

Over the course of the last four months I’ve figured out a few things about what leads to happiness, at least for me. And the key has turned out to be totally opposite from what I’d thought. (But this post has already gotten kinda long, so I’ll save that for another time and make it a post of its own.)

Comments from the peanut gallery?

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!

New Art: 100% responsible for my own HAPPINESS!

Yes, I am. You are too. Embrace it. Do a dance about it. Sing out loud about it. (You can do this in the shower, or in your car on the freeway, if you’re worried about it bothering the neighbors.)

Your happiness is your own choice!

Hallelujah!

(And if you really want to let the Universe know you’re on board chasing after your evolving Bliss, and you want to buy stuff at my Zazzle shop, I’m not going to stop you. ;-))

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