“Those who wish to sing, always find a song.” ~ Swedish proverb
If you truly have a passion to do something, you will make it happen. Its allure, its promise, will be undeniable. You will have to set aside everything else in favor of getting it done.
That’s how it goes with projects of the heart. Because it is actually a part of you, you cannot shake it. You will stare down every fear, leap over every obstacle, and shut down every nay-saying thought to bring it to life. You don’t have a choice in the matter. It is just what you must do.
“Too often man handles life as he does the bad weather. He whiles away the time as he waits for it to stop.” ~ Alfred Polgar, Austrian journalist
I’ll get to it when I have more time, when life is less hectic, when I have more money, when the weather gets better.
How many times have you said something like that when contemplating your next step?
I used to say it all the time. Then one day I just got so sick of hearing myself say it that I stopped making excuses and really got down to business to create a life. On occasion, I catch myself slipping back in to my old “maybe someday” habit. The truth of it is that today is someday, and it’s just as good a someday as any other day will ever be.
Here’s my only motto these days – less waiting, more doing.
“What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience, something that never has been and never could have been experienced by anyone else.” ~ Joseph Campbell
Don’t wonder if your idea is original. Don’t wonder if what you have to say has never been said before. You are unique. The road you take has never been traveled in exactly the same way with exactly the same intention. You are an individual – a beautiful, shining example of the potential that we all have to do something magical and profound.
All that matters is that you bring your whole heart to whatever it is you do. Show up with authenticity and integrity. Don’t play a role. Just be you. You are enough and rare and amazing, just as you are right now. Your unique journey is waiting for you to get moving. Go!
“The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.” ~ John Burroughs, American naturalist and essayist
So often we think we have to make monumental changes in our lives to have an adventure, to stoke the fire of opportunity. We believe that we have to endure impossible scenarios to have a real adventure. In our pursuit of the new, we sometimes miss all of the possibility that lies at our feet every day, along the same roads we regularly travel, with the people who are intricately woven into the fabric of our lives.
Everything, and I mean everything, can be renewed. And not all of it has to come via challenge. Very often, adventure is laid at our feet and all it requires is a simple “Yes, deal me in.”
Open your eyes, ears, and mind, right where you are, right now. Somewhere in the course of your day, I am certain you will encounter the chance to do something amazing. You’ve spent all this time creating dreams. Go live them – you have everything you need to begin.
“Embrace relational uncertainty. It’s called romance. Embrace spiritual uncertainty. It’s called mystery. Embrace occupational uncertainty. It’s called destiny. Embrace emotional uncertainty. It’s called joy. Embrace intellectual uncertainty. It’s called revelation.” ~ Mark Batterson
There is nothing wrong with wanting answers. There is nothing wrong with wanting safety, security, and stability. It’s just not possible to have any of these things in any other moment except now.
This is all we get, ever. There are no other guarantees. We have now, no more and no less. So make the most of it.
Does your calendar make you feel like this? From Pinterest.
I recently had an odd turn with a friend and her frantically busy calendar.
She wanted to introduce me to someone and thought a brunch was the best way to do it. After tentatively choosing a date to run by the person she wanted me to meet, I didn’t hear back from her for over 2 weeks so when another friend suggested getting together for that same day, I took her up on the offer. I figured something must have gone awry with the brunch. My friend constantly tells me how “busy” she is and her busy-ness must have gotten the best of her this time.
When she finally did get back to me 2 days before the brunch to say it was on, I had to tell her that I made other plans since I didn’t hear from her for 2 weeks. Her response? “I can’t believe you did that! I spent a lot of time organizing this brunch and quite frankly I could have put that time toward something more valuable. I am a very busy person and if you make plans with me you need to be mindful of that!” When I explained my thought process and apologized for not being able to make it, she blew up and several other nastygrams about how busy she is flew into my inbox. The intensity of her angry response was rather disturbing, and to be honest, weird.
That same day, my dear yogi friend Cyndie sent me this brilliant article – The Busy Trap by Tim Kreider. Sychronisity is a beautiful thing. I laughed out loud at his observations about the state of being busy, our simultaneous loathing and pursuit of it. He practically quotes word for word conversations I’ve had with friends about being busy. Tim talks about his decision to choose time over money, to decidedly be less busy for the sake of creating more space in his life. He also talks very honestly of having to give up friendships with people who just didn’t have time for friendship because they chose instead to be busy.
Leading a fulfilling life doesn’t require a calendar that’s filled to capacity. It is possible to be fulfilled without being completely full. And it is possible to be productive without being worn down. Being busy and being free are choices. We make them every day.
My friend relishes her packed calendar and she wants everyone to know it. It increases her self-worth to be constantly busy and rarely available, and that’s okay. It’s just not the way I wish to live, and like Tim, this is not the kind of thinking I value in others. So she went on her (busy) way, and I went mine. And I gained a valuable insight in the process: I’d rather have a life that’s rich with people I love and the time to see them rather than one overrun by to-do lists and back-to-back-to-back appointments. Time to make some room for, well, nothing in particular.
“There is virtue in work and there is virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither.” ~ Alan Cohen
Last week there was a little cold traveling around my social circles. For a few days, I felt very tired. When I need to get work done, I usually just push through until I get my second wind. This time I went against the grain, closed my computer, and headed off to dreamland early for a few nights in a row. I never got the cold that was making its rounds.
My pup, Phineas, is with me most of the day now since I mostly work from my home. He is a model of good, healthy living. He sleeps when he’s tired. He plays when he has energy. He eats when he’s hungry. He doesn’t have anything on his to-do list except to go outside and run around a few times a day. Other than that, he just follows his instincts. He’s quite a little teacher for me; I’m trying to live my own life by his example.
There are a lot of wonderful gifts to be found amidst hard work. There’s also a lot to be said for walking away from work to enjoy the wonderful gifts of rest. When I get up from the dinner table, I want to feel comfortably satisfied but not bloated. I want the same balance in my schedule – just the right amount of work to feel accomplished and gratified, but not so much that I feel drained of every ounce of energy and will.
I’m not so interested in work-life balance. I just want one, cohesive life that feels fully balanced between effort and ease.
Well, folks, it’s happening. Despite my decision years ago to not age, Mother Nature is refusing to cooperate. How annoying.
Phin and I were out for our morning walk earlier this week and I noticed that my distance vision was not as sharp as I remember it being. For a number of years I’ve had a very mild prescription for glasses to sharpen my distance vision. I didn’t really need them to see, just to reduce strain caused by an astigmatism. Now it seems their necessity may be upon me.
Of course I went home and immediately started Googling to find eye strengthening exercises that I’ve been doing each night before I go to bed. Mother Nature may not be willing to help me out, but she can’t tell me not to help myself.
This week I also began to find a couple of consistent white hairs, not just stray ones few and far between. At first I plucked them and dropped them in the trash convinced that this was just a fluke. My few and far between white hairs obviously just all decided to show up on the same day at the same time, but certainly others would not be joining them any time soon.
Still, I wasn’t taking any chances. And so I started to color my hair, not just to mix up my look, but because it’s now actually needed. Those white hairs are a reminder of the one thing I will never be able to do, no matter how hard I try – stop time from passing.
Why is aging so tough? Why do we fight it every step of the way (with or without Oil of Olay)?
We hang on to what we know, and we know youth. We don’t know old age. We have no idea what it has in store for us, but we’ve heard stories. Scary stories of illness and pain and difficulty. And those stories are enough to make us want to stay right where we are.
I got home yesterday to find the latest copy of Yoga Journal in my mailbox. This month’s theme? Aging, with grace. The Universe has one wicked sense of humor. It’s also supremely skilled at giving us exactly the message we need exactly when we need to hear it. If only we could quiet down long enough to hear it!
I made my way upstairs to my apartment to begin reading the messages the Universe clearly wanted me to understand, but not until after I finished my eye exercises.
How many times have you churned your mind over and over to come up with a solution to a problem? And how many times have you found that taking your eye off of the proverbial ball, actually helps you to see the ball more clearly so you can hit it out of the park? This happens to me all the time. I read a lot of articles and books about the science behind creativity – it’s one of my favorite subjects to study – and from the research it appears to be true for many people.
So if we know that letting go of a problem will actually help us solve it, why do we hang on so tightly? Why do we have a problem relaxing and trusting in the process in which creativity works most effectively? It could be that we’re worried that while relaxation has helped us solve problems in the past, it will somehow fail us this time. It could also be that we are programmed in this society to believe that hard work equals self-worth. Without working hard, at every moment possible, will we somehow be less worthy?
I actually love to work hard. I love the feeling of accomplishment, of feeling like my effort matters. But here’s what I don’t love – the mania that comes from having a schedule that is so ridiculously packed that I have to remind myself to breathe. To balance this tug-of-war, I break projects apart into phases and give myself what I need in each phase to do my best work.
When I am working on the creative portion of a project, I give myself downtime to solve problems. I do trust the process of creativity, but I also give myself some guidelines. I get a few hours of downtime here and a few there, and I keep checking in with myself regularly to see if any new inspiration has arrived. When I am in the implementation phase and need to get something built, I really focus to give myself more structure and less downtime so I can do a lot of work while I’m in the groove.
Like anything, it comes back to needing balance – give both sides of your brain the opportunity to strut their stuff. They need different fuel because they do different types of work. If you’re taking too much downtime, or not giving yourself enough, try switching it up and see what happens. Creativity is all about experimentation.
“You break out of the box by stepping into shackles.” ~ Jonah Lehrer, Imagine: How Creativity Works
It’s a bit of a morbid visual but Jonah Lehrer’s quote made me pay attention.
Have you ever had the thought that goes something like this: “If only I had (blank), my life would be so much easier?” I have this thought several times a day, and when it pops into my mind I stop, breathe, and keep going. I’m sure somewhere in that breath there is a silent prayer for help to someone somewhere. Most of the time I don’t get that (blank) that I wish for, but to quote the Rolling Stones, I do get what I need. And often what I need is constraints. (No shortage of those lying around!)
Jonah Lehrer, and many other creativity researchers, make the case for loving constraints. Some go so far as to ask us to feel grateful for them. Why? They light a fire under us. If we had all the time, money, and resources in the world, would we really use them wisely? There’s at least the slight possibility that we would squander them to some degree.
I’ve seen this happen in many large companies. We get used to big budgets and flexible launch dates. Too used to them and it’s ultimately a curse.
When I worked in theatre, we were constrained in almost every area, especially by the hard deadlines. If there was going to be an audience on Tuesday at 8:00pm, then there was no way we could launch late. It forced collaboration, cooperation, and dedication from all parties involved. In theatre, the good of the many always outweighs the good of the few or the one so the few or the one had better get on board or exit stage left. That might sound brutal, but the curtain rises. The show goes on because of constraints, not in spite of them.
Maybe you’re working on a project right now that has constraints you wish you didn’t have. Rather than resenting those shackles, take a moment to recognize what they give you rather than focusing on what they take away from you. Creative work is a series of trade-offs. We get something and we give something. It is a sacred exchange.
Christa Avampato 