Here’s your mantra for the week! This week’s card is from my Cards for Creative Courage oracle deck. You can get it here or here.
A while ago, I signed up for something that was miles out of my comfort zone.
As I wrote in a previous musing, I’ve been doing a daily meditation where you visualise the future and ask your future self what you did in the past to get where you are in that vision. It’s become such an important part of my morning ritual, and I look forward to doing this meditation every day.
(It’s become so important to me that Lucinda and I are even doing an entire series on Future Thinking on our podcast, Diving into Writing.)
Generally, when I do this meditation, I just soak up what I see in my future and let that energy guide me towards doing what’s best for me right now, in this moment. Sometimes, though, I find myself frustrated after the meditation is over and I return to reality because I can’t fathom how I’ll be able to get from where I am to where this meditation keeps taking me.
In those moments, my trust and faith in the Universe make place for fear and doubt, and those nasty little voices in my head pipe up and start convincing me I’m never going to get where I want to be if I don’t start pushing myself.
It’s in those moments that I do things like signing up for something I’m not even close to being ready for.
How did I know I wasn’t ready for the thing? In hindsight, as per usual, there were quite a few signs.
First of all, the only way I was able to convince myself this was a good thing for me and my career was by reminding myself it was a free event, so there would be no loss if I cancelled last minute because I couldn’t get myself to do it.
I also didn’t sign up for it until I found a hotel at walking distance with a room I could cancel up until forty-eight hours before check-in. I also made sure to pick a room affordable enough, so it wouldn’t hurt me financially if I didn’t cancel it in time.
For weeks, this was my mantra whenever I started panicking about the event: ‘You can still cancel, it’s OK. You don’t have to go. There’s still time to make that decision.’
To get the most out of the event, I had to sort some stuff out as well, stuff I kept postponing and then forgot about entirely. I now see this as a sign that part of me always already knew I wasn’t going to be needing these things, so why bother?
I also kept surrendering the event to external circumstances. If my period – which is far from regular and always takes me out for a couple of days – decided to show up right before the event, I would take that as a sign it wasn’t meant to be. One of my friends was planning a visit to Cyprus around the time of the event as well, so I told myself that I would keep quiet about the event and let their plans dictate mine. If they left before the event, I would take it to mean I should be going.
Last but not least, I kept thinking about this event in terms of ‘should’. It was not a case of ‘I might be scared of this, but I do want that, my heart wants that, my soul needs that!’ It was a ‘If I ever want to get where I want to be, I should start doing things like this pronto.’ A red flag if there ever was one.
But that’s the thing about having such voices in your head: they tend to distract you from your deepest knowing and all the signs telling you that this is not for you, at least not right now.
So when did I cancel the event and the hotel room? Right after finalising my last musing, the one about moving at your own pace and figuring out a timeline that works for and not against you.
I knew damn well that I was nowhere near ready to attend an event like this, and I had already told myself a few times I just needed to call it off, but it wasn’t until I was organising my thoughts on the I move at my own pace card that this decision truly sunk in.
That evening, after I’d cancelled everything, I made myself draw up a list of ten things I could be doing instead, things that would still move me beyond my comfort zone – and in the direction of my dreams – but at a better pace. Things I was actually ready for.
It took another couple of days to stop feeling bad about having to have made that decision, but when I drew today’s card, I not only knew but felt I had made the right choice. I am doing the best I can under the circumstances.
And it’s not like I’ve been standing still. I’ve been doing so many firsts over the past two years, and I really, really needed to remind myself of that too. Because growth is growth, no matter how fast or slow you go about it.
That realisation, which I’ve had again and again over the years, brought me back to a quote by Arthur Ashe that helped me a lot when I first started as an entrepreneur:
Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
It used to be my profile picture pretty much everywhere, and I think it’s time I print it out and put it up somewhere I can see it on a daily basis.
For the occasion, and because I know this quote will help many of you as well, I crafted a couple of screensavers/wallpapers you can use on your phone and computer. You can download them here.
(And yes, I’d love to see you using them, so feel free to email me a screenshot or picture at marielle@mswordsmith.nl.)
YOU are doing the best you can under circumstances, too. I hope you’ll remind yourself of that this week.
Happy creating <3
xx Mariëlle
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This really resonates with what I've experienced lately in my creative practice. Thank you for sharing. Also, I love your take on "firsts"...a few months ago I started acknowledging firsts and found there were many! And that felt significant.