That is progress, dear sweetie Jen, that is progress. Big pat on heart.

And On to the List Thing

I’ve got a thrilling announcement (okay thrilling to me, hopefully to you, too) and it’s a direct result of all my writing and reading and thinking about fear and uncertainty this last six weeks and all these blog posts.  I’m working on an audio series and e-book and maybe a virtual retreat.

It’s all about helping ease and be with and not be stopped by fear and uncertainty, and I got waylaid for the last two weeks by this groovy project:

Comfort Summit 2009: How to Find Courage and Success When Uncertain Times Make You Afraid

(This is the big fat hairy goal I was talking about earlier.)
It’s a virtual summit of the world’s best self-care and self-acceptance experts (and really, I mean the world’s best), an online comfort-fest conference slated for early January - and it’s going to give you the targeted wisdom you need now to stay aware and awake and even (is it possible?) (yes it is!) thrive in these  uncertain times.  This is a once-in-a-life time opportunity to learn the most beneficial and effective methods, insights and ideas from my friends and colleagues — each expert selected because they can give you right now exactly what you need to dissolve fear and embrace change.

Best-selling authors like Geneen Roth, Barbara Sher, destuckfication expert Havi Brooks, effortless success coach Michael Neill, master coach and interfaith minister Laura Berman Fortgang, Harvard physician Eva Selhub and great work guru Michael Bungay Stainer are on board for a fantastic event that’s is aimed at giving you the tools, the inspiration and the support to navigate these uncertain times so you can be part of the positive change we each crave.

It’s going to be as incredible as it is affordable.

And as a heart-felt thank-you to you for reading my blog, I’m going to offer a big fat discount when we start taking registrations to everyone on my Preferred Subscriber list.  If saving money on this life-changing, fun, comforting event interests you, then please sign up for the Preferred Subscriber list below so you’ll be able to get the limited-time discount.

Sign up here - just takes a minute.
And if you already signed up on this blog for a special list, we’ll transfer your name for you. And if you aren’t sure you did, then go sign up. Just to be sure.

I love you!

And that’s okay.

Choosing Your Life Monday is an invitation to name what pattern you will lovingly notice this week.

As you may know from this post I recently set a BFHG and it’s going very well although I did hit a snag on Friday which is good as it requires me to lovingly notice my-hurry-up-you-should-have-been-done-a-year-ago pattern.

Although, of course, I hate (stamping my foot now) slowing down.

Anyway… my BFHG is about offering you lots of ways to be comfortable and  uncertain times and it’s about creating a place where we can hang out and support each other in never giving up on ourselves. A sort of comfort cafe. Virtual. With live events a few times a year.

But For Now, Back to Patterns

Patterns are something I’m always learning about (aren’t we all?) especially from my Writer’s Retreat guest Havi Brooks. In the shower today I thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could write your own owner’s manual?”

How cool would it be to have a way to record your wisdom, and have it replayed to you just when you need it as in when you are about to repeat a pattern you always repeat? (Note to self: invent software for this).

Then I remembered: I had created a guide to writing your personal owner’s manual: the Life Organizer! (Got a lovely note yesterday from Rachael, “Last night I had trouble sleeping and came across your book The Life Organizer at just the right time to reconnect & recommit to trying it out. Then I came across the book’s website and now, your invitation to join you on Facebook. Thank you!”)

(Hi Rachael, hope the book helped!)

I started wondering: what Life Organizer ideas would be good to practice together?

I decided on insight, which I define in the book this way,

You’ve got the gray hairs to show for them, so why not find a way to benefit from your life insights? Remembering and applying them is perhaps one of the reasons you were put on the planet, and even if it isn’t, using these insights can save you from wasting time (years!), money, energy, and love. Yet most of us were never taught to track, record, and refer to what we learn in life, or to hone these insights as they change and grow with us.
Life insights are gifted to you through therapy, coaching, reading, studying, meditation, prayer, spiritual practices, and listening to something larger than yourself. They tend to become clear on retreats, during long walks or runs, while rowing or folding laundry, during conversations with perceptive friends and sometime enigmatic strangers, and when we are writing or creating art. Sometimes we spot them in our journal, on our canvases, and in our complaints. We learn them through living, and often in a painful way, especially the third or tenth or thirtieth time around.

Here’s a really simple way of saying what I want to do with Choose Your Life Mondays: what pattern do you choose to pay attention to this week?

We choose our lives through awareness.

We change our lives is by becoming aware of our patterns and then changing our habitual reactions when those patterns are triggered (well, that’s one way we change).

But we cannot change our reactions until we lovingly become aware of our patterns and we cannot lovingly become aware of anything until we are paying attention and one way of paying attention is to name in community what we will pay attention to.

Another is to chunk down what we are lovingly paying attention to one thing at a time.

So Choosing Your Life Monday is an invitation to name what pattern you will lovingly notice this week.

I’ll start - heck, I may the only one doing this although I really hope you will join me -

This week I will lovingly notice my pattern of jumping into action without asking myself what I want or what feels good.

I won’t try to change what I’m doing, I’ll simply notice.

Want to join me? Name your pattern in the comment section.

Then next week when you name another pattern or the same one, you can reflect on what you noticed this week. Or not!

We know grief comes in waves and this week has been a tsunami: grieving my baby now fourteen and a full on teenager, grieving my marriage, grieving all the moments I tried to be present with her, all times I tried not to worry about returning this email or writing that or coaching that writing client, and all the times I failed.

I love myself so much for trying and I weep wishing I could have those days back.

And then I bring myself into this moment because here is another chance.

And another.

And yet another.

On yes, being here is so good. And so painful. And there is fear… flitting by… and there is joy.. and love… and regrets… and it just all keeps moving, as long as I allow it.

To…keep… moving.

BATHTUBS

This week, I teared up when I would remember the fierce firmness of her tiny feet, when I would hold one of my dogs and recall the absolute rightness of holding Lilly against my chest, when I caught sight of her picture on the table by the sofa. She’s four and in the bathtub, big grin on her face, hair gelled into a curl onto of her head.

That bathtub may have burned last night.

Or it might be burning right now.

My old neighborhood in Santa Barbara, where that picture was taken, is in the evacuation area and the area around it did burn last night.

My former neighbors are wondering right now if their homes are still standing.

I’ve left phone messages.

I keep checking the news.

And during all this fearful wondering for their well being, I find it so startling and just plain odd that my mind has been in that house so much this week.

It feels like my memories are burning.

And that’s not a bad thing.

Join me in praying.

P.S. My old ‘hood is fine as are all friends! And the comment box is not appearing for some reason I just discovered so if you tried to comment, so sorry. Will fix, promise!

I did.

Make a big fat hairy goal, that is.

A BFHG, man, a BFHG.

It involves asking very famous big people to do something with me.

That meant inviting them.

Gulp.

So right now, I’m typing on a keyboard covered with Swiss cheese oil (you know, the kind that oozes out of a rice tortilla when you’ve nuked the cheese too long) and checking my email every three minutes to see if the people I admire so much have said yes.

And every time I check my email, I feel this frisson of what?  Fear? Terror?

It’s just sensation until a thought comes along to interpret that sensation.

“Oh you are afraid this won’t work and you’ll never do anything again and people don’t like you and blah blah blah.”

Then my favorite thought, “You shouldn’t be afraid. You’re more evolved than that.”

What can I do?  Take myself by the hand (and take Bob’s hand and the dog’s) (paws).

Tell myself I really can hang out right here, without knowing everything is going to turn out the way I want it, I can hang out here and breath and really, pinkie swear, it’s okay. I’m in the unknown. Which is actually where I always am!

And then, miracles of miracles, I realize I’m not afraid.

I’m excited.

I’m alive.

Could it be that sometimes, just sometimes, fear lies in our interpretation? Of events, of sensations, of thoughts even. Add a little hand  holding and breathing and hey, whew, maybe this isn’t so bad.

What do you think?

P.S.

The picture Bob took in Ulaaaaaanbaaaaator (which is not the actual way you spell the coldest capital city in the world but I asked him to spell it for me and he told me this was the way you spelled it because he likes to tease me).  It’s really Ulaanbaator, Mongolia, where he works from time to time. The phone company was  installing fiber optics and people in the street jumped into help.

I posted this picture because being with fear, dissolving it, understanding it, is so much about hand holding i.e. asking for help. Which I have been, in a big way. Marketing help from the amazing Kay Ballard. From my best friend Barbra. Love from my Brain Trust. Support from my wonderful mom. Help from Havi and Naomi and Molly and Michael. A coaching client said to me yesterday how much coaching helped ease fear of launching her new career and it’s also so true. Support heals.

Are you getting any?

Acedia - what the hell is that? I’d never heard of it before.  Kathleen defines it as:

…as the spiritual aspect of sloth. The word literally means not-caring, or being unable to care, and ultimately, being unable to care that you can’t care. Acedia is spiritual morphine, but it does more than mask pain. It causes us to lose faith in ourselves and in our relationships with others.”

We are awakening from a time of collective spiritual morphine stupor. We sank into a profound state of weary not caring — not everybody, not all the time but a lot of us. Now we feel the breath of hopeful possibility, the brush of optimist trust upon our hearts and to help that goodness grow into sustainable action, we need to name the demon that has beset us (excuse the demon talk but it feels right, especially after reading the book).

There is such power in naming. Reading Kathleen’s struggles with acedia woven with early Christian theology and reflections on contemporary life, I kept having that electrifying feeling of being known. Of “Oh me too, me, too.” I kept having to stop and read sections aloud to Bob.

One reason I wrote this book was to explore my suspicion that much of the restless boredom, frantic escapism, commitment phobia, and enervating despair that plague us today are the ancient demon of acedia in modern dress. When we look at acedia’s root meaning, as not caring, we can see it as a social problem, and perceive that the sloth it engenders is anything but an insignificant physical laziness. It may even manifest as hyper-activity, but it is more like the activity of a hamster on a treadmill than action that will enhance the common good.

I was very glad to find the late playwright Wendy Wasserstein’s observation that “When you achieve true slothdom, you have no desire for the world to change. True sloths are not revolutionaries,” she adds, but “the lazy guardians at the gate of the status quo.” The question she raises is one I think we have to ask ourselves: “Are these hyperscheduled, overactive individuals really creating anything new? Are they guilty of passion in any way? Do they have a new vision for their government? For their community? Or for themselves?” She suspects that “Their purpose is to keep themselves so busy, so entrenched in their active lives, that their spirit reaches a permanent state of lethargiosis.” Lethargy, acedia: in some ways I think they define American culture today. The plethora of 24-hour news sources are perfect carriers of the disease, bombarding us with so much “information” that we can no longer distinguish between what is important and what is not, and discern what we truly need to care about.”

We live in a time where traditional ways of making meaning have mostly vanished. Heck, it used to be surviving was our meaning, then we had close (murderous) tribal ties and work that had a final product that could be touched, eaten, bartered. We had religion.

But in the post-modern world, we’re not even sure we believe in meaning. We often don’t have a community with whom to share our questions of “What the hell am I doing with my life?”  We fall prey to a questioning of our life’s purpose that eats away at our souls and our ability to get out of bed. And when we do try to find our purpose, it can easily turn into a narcissistic quest that ends up feeding the acedia.

The concept of acedia has always been closed linked with that of vocation. Acedia was, and remains, the monk’s most dangerous temptation, as it makes the life he has vowed to undertake seem foolish, if not completely futile… Artists can feel a similar disconnect… Acedia is a danger to anyone whose work requires great concentration and discipline yet is considered by many to be of little practical value. The world does not care if I write another word, and if I am to care, I have to summon all my interior motivation and strength.”

I’m in this boat, summoning all my strength to create a life, and work, that feels worthwhile. Have you ever felt that way?  What do you think the link between acedia and fear is — I think it’s the petri dish fear grows in.

I could barely form a thought, let alone write a blog post.

I felt little down. And I felt guilty and weird about feeling let down. But then in the afternoon, coaching a writing client, we were talking about how fighting yourself never works and I thought, “That’s what I’ve been doing all day. Fighting myself for being let down and exhausted.”

So I stopped and noticed I was let down, exhausted and wanting to hide from the world. And I didn’t, as the amazing Havi says, let that impress me. I gave myself some time to cry and snuggle and just notice. And then I read Naomi who always makes me feel hopeful. Then I went to the library and got some good novels to read when I finish Kathleen Norris’s great book. And hugged Bob and the dogs a lot. And Karen sent me this blog post which also helped.

Then in my writer’s group last night, Margaret said, “I couldn’t settle today. I kept feeling something should happen.” That made me feel less alone. Which is always good.

Then she went on to say that she wished the U.S. did things like her native U.K., “There’s a moving van waiting at the back door of 10 Downing Street to take the old guy out as the new guy’s moving in at the front.”

We have to wait 74 more days give or take a day I might have lost while napping.

I have an idea: let’s not wait. As Lisa said on Twitter “Can you take this breathless moment of shared hope and exhale it into our tomorrows?”

Let’s start exhaling now.

Let’s exhale our shared hope in small and vital ways and start preparing the way for the new year. Let’s work on our courage and resilience and vision so we’re ready to be part of the change. Let’s clear out the old within ourselves, our habits, our beliefs so we can have the energy and courage to help.

Because watching history being made on Tuesday, I kept thinking, “I want to be that great, too.”  Which may sound flamingly ego-mad crazy but isn’t that what great leadership and authentic hope can do, inspire us toward our own greatness?

Let’s begin to ask my favorite question from Viktor Frankl, “What purpose can I make of my life today?” Let’s ask it everyday. Not to find the answer but to allow the question to guide us. (You know I love questions!)

Are you yearning to express your greatness?

If so, what one thing might you love and accept about yourself in this moment so your greatness can shine?

I’d be honored to hear.

And finally, that story I promised you

in what now seems like a different century about the power of moving your body.

Last year I led a weekend retreat centered around rest and inner listening and it included a fair amount of movement with the totally embodied and inspiring Camille Maurine. The participants had come hoping to recapture a spark of joy, a sense of themselves free from “shoulds” and to-do lists. The movement exercises turned out to be the most challenging part of the retreat for a number of the women—and the most life-changing.

In the first exercise, I asked the group to ask their bodies (not their minds) to show them what their everyday life felt like. The circle exploded into hopping, running, grabbing, marching, and slumping. Then we came to a pause, breathed, and noticed how this felt.

Next I asked the group, “What does your sacred pause look like?” It looked like this: graceful swaying, arms opening and extending, breath slowing and deepening. The contrast was startling. But as we continued the exercise with different questions and expressions, I saw one group member, Kit, bolt from the room and several other women who were barely moving.

At a break, I found Kit on a bench overlooking the city. “How are you?” I asked. “Scared,” she said. “It feels like there is this roar inside of me. I want to let it out, but I’m afraid what might happen if I do.” We talked about giving herself permission, being kind to herself, taking it at her own pace—the most important advice when befriending the body’s wisdom.

Walking back to my cabin later, I marveled at how convincingly real our fear can feel, how seemingly impenetrable in its accumulation. Not just a box but a fortress. I asked Camille, “What are we so afraid of?”

Consciousness is a great mystery,” Camille said. “That we can be aware of our own existence is a marvel, but consciousness is also a mixed blessing. Awareness of being alive brings awareness of death, and the more aware we are, the more we feel. Movement brings us smack into contact with that wonder and awe—through sensation, through the breath—and that can be a scary awakening.”

The retreat unfolded beautifully: movement, journaling, and silent time outdoors slowly worked miracles, peeling away our layers of fear, rushing, and self-judgment. I noticed how much younger we all looked, and how much more laughter filled the center. We were discovering how thrilling it is when we reclaim our juice for living, our very life force, when we open our arms to ourselves and abandon our somatic ruts.

After dinner on the second day, Elizabeth told me this story:

When you asked us to move the first morning, I froze. I didn’t want to look stupid or stand out. But then I had an experience that changed everything. I took a walk after our class, and the young girl who lives here joined me. We stopped to watch a horse being shod, and she brought me a handful of flowers and said, ‘I am so lucky to live here!’ As she said this, her body dipped into a squat and popped up again—spontaneous movement! I thought, ‘This child didn’t wonder how to express herself or whether it was acceptable. She just moved.’

Later, in Camille’s class, when she asked us not to move until the impulse came from within, I thought of that girl. I sat frozen for five minutes, determined not to move until my body was ready, reliving every awkward moment of my teenage years, all the times I had learned to physically shut down. When the impulse finally came, it was so exhilarating. My body was breathing me. It was like my mind was a bystander, and as I watched, it was my body telling me stories. As it finished one, I’d get quiet and still, and then another story would pour out. It was breathtaking.”

To the power of love, change, hope, courage and moving our bodies!

Today is how-can-anyone-not-be-voting day?

Today is how can anybody-get-any-work-done-day?

Today is I-get-why-democracy-is-worth-dying-for-day.

Today is history-making.

Today is hope-making.

Today may be the day in which we collectively begin to turn away from fear-mongering and begin to have a relationship with our real fears. Which will, hopefully, allow us to create real solutions.

No matter which candidate you are voting for, no matter what voting shenanigans take place, no matter how long the lines, no matter that the archaic electoral college still exists, millions of people have enough faith that their opinion matters that they are casting a ballot.

Not one voter, however, will be killed for voting. No one will not be shot at. No one will lose their job. No one will have their children or family tortured.

No one.

As often in my life as I have felt shame at being an American because of choices our government has made or the lies our leaders have told or my own complicity in not marching in the streets when those things happen, more often I have felt gratitude.

Gratitude that I can complain about those choices and lies, that I can write a blog, newsletter or article that is not censored, that I can send a slip of paper through the mail (we have mail-only voting in my county) without retribution.

I have even more gratitude that my child can walk safely to school, that I can walk the streets day or night without fear, that I can buy food, that I can sleep at night without wondering if someone will burst through my door and kill everyone I love.

We may be profoundly poorer in the coming months and years, in dollars and international good will, and it is entirely possible we will become vastly richer in self-determination, integrity and the deep remembrance that each of can truly make a difference when we remember we have a choice.

When we remember our fears do not define us.

Today, I cry with gratitude and hope for the ideals of our country. Flawed and dented as they may be, they are ideals each person who casts a vote today is living.

They are ideals worth overcoming our fears for, whatever those fears may be.

To the power of voting, the glory of freedom and the remembrance that remaining awake to our choices is our first and most challenging duty.

Tomorrow, the great story! Promise.

This is the first part of an essay originally published in Body+Soul a few years back.  It popped into my mind during yoga because I was so proud of myself for being on my mat again, for just five minutes. Especially today when all I want to do is surf news sites.

It’s mid afternoon

and I’m feeling the itch to move my body, but instead I return phone calls, wipe the kitchen counter, sort my daughter Lilly’s school papers. I haven’t really moved in almost two weeks and I’m in “the box,” a place of parched fear, scratchy over-analyzing, and tart self-judgment.

I find myself here about five or six times a year, whenever I allow life to push me faster than I can keep pace spiritually and emotionally or whenever fear burbles in the background and I won’t stop to see what it wants. Then I narrow my focus to the bandwidth of “just get it done,” and when I lift my head, I find I’m in need of a major blast of passion and perspective but afraid to move toward it. The longer I’m in the box (or on the gerbil wheel or in the washing machine, pick your metaphor), the more tight and fearful I become.

I know what will free me and what will certainly comfort me:

allowing my body, not my mind, to move. Not to burn calories or tone my thighs or perfect a yoga pose but to shake and holler and swoop and let the energy move through me. Conscious movement (anything from free form funky yoga to whirling and wailing to Dance of Shiva) moves the stuck energy of holy-hell-what-if and judgments and hurry-up-freak-out so there is a little bit of space for ahh…

I’m okay right now.

Here I am.

Ahhh…. now what do I need right now to take care of myself?

The simplest thing I can do when I am afraid is to move but because it means feeling and letting go, I do everything but move

Tomorrow: a story to inspire you to move from one of my retreats.  In the meantime, why not step away from your computer right now and stretch your arms over head and sigh. Wiggle your hips. Look for something in your environment that gives you pleasure. Ahhh…

We are all feeling the tension of the impending election and we can so easily hold that tension in our bodies in ways that make us tired and grumpy and more fearful.  Why not let loose today- even just a teeny bit feels so good!

Halloween is my favorite holiday (besides my birthday). Particularly this year because I need, we need, a ritual way to blow off a little steam! To let loose some of our fearful energies. To shimmy out some anger and dread and what-is-going-to-happen-on-Tuesday tension.

Halloween is your chance to creep up on the very idea of fear itself and be it in a playful, outrageous unbridled way. Isn’t it fascinating that a holiday that began as a celebration of those we love who have died became, in America at least, a chance to embody (literally) the pent up, bottled up, unvented parts of ourselves? To flirt with darkness and mayhem and blood. Why?

Because we Americans are all about dreams, potential, doing better, being our best selves, moving on up. Which is super-duper fantastic let’s-do-a-double-split-throw-poms-poms-in-the-air-all-together-now but if you live only there, in the bright place, the other parts of you have no room and so they wreak havoc in the weirdest ways.

So tonight,  let those dark parts out to play. Make up a costume (even if just to wear around the house or to scare the kids who come to the door) that expresses your fears and worries- mine will be fears of poverty, failure, and creative nothingness. And yours?

Or make up a costume that expresses your inner bitch if you’ve been very contained and nice lately even while working with the idiots you have to suffer or the hateful teenagers you pick up after.

Or your inner I’m-so-sick-of-this-election-will-Tuesday-please-come character.

Or your I-want-to-hurt-anyone-who-had-anything-to-do-with-this-financial-melt-down costume.

Or what about a combination of those and more?

It doesn’t  have to make sense to anybody else. Get some cheap face painting crayons at the drugstore, paw through your clothes or your kid’s dress up clothes, or blow off work right now and hit the thrift store. Heck, why not throw a party tonight with the theme of dressing as your inner fears and angers?

Burn down the house! Destroy the old to make room for the new!

And for those of you who are now horrified by my oozing fear and anger, here is a nice bit:

Crows caw, flap from fir tree to cedar

Overblown pumpkins seduce, “Pick me, pick me”

Corn stalk maze swallows us

Wood smoke, cat’s back, crunching leaves: Hay pricks at our sleeve

We scarecrows of the fading year

hearts soaring bare at all this migratory beauty as they always do when we are about to lose something beloved and not wholly appreciated (can all this ever be loved enough?)

The afternoon is embossed with longing,

Our faces turned toward the low rays of the sun.

Geese showing good sense overhead

We would not follow even if we could.

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]]> http://www.comfortqueen.com/comfort-during-fearful-times-happy-halloween/feed http://www.comfortqueen.com/comfort-during-fearful-times-happy-halloween http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/LoudenMouth/~3/437432969/comfort-during-fearful-times-fear-of-creating http://www.comfortqueen.com/comfort-during-fearful-times-fear-of-creating#comments Thu, 30 Oct 2008 22:45:06 +0000 Jennifer http://www.comfortqueen.com/?p=888 When I took my nine month sabbatical that ended in June, I was certain, convinced and over the moon sure I would emerge re-energized, shining with ideas, filled to the brim with compelling content that would flow out of me like so much molten brilliance. That didn’t happen (for a bunch of reasons) which was groovy except what wasn’t so groovy, an unintended consequence of my time off, was calcification of the writing muscles. Oxidation of the imagination. Gunging up of the word-retrieval-apparatus. Resulting in a tremendous conviction that writing — and creating in general — were now impossible. For me.

Otherwise known as Fear I Will Never Create Again.

I knew this but I forgot it. If I’m not creating pretty regularly (with frequent shortish breaks otherwise creative burnout can result) empty space opens up where fear likes to take up residence. This isn’t true for everybody but some of us need to regularly create with the intention of finishing a discrete something to our own satisfaction.

Why finish to our own satisfication?  Because:

1

Finishing gives you a feeling of success simply through the act of completion and when you cajole your way through to finishing, you inevitably learn a number of things —   from how to deepen a piece of writing to how to apply that varnish you bought but never used before to how to cast off.  You also create momentum that can take you into your next project. I had a writing teacher who advised us to take parts of our novels and turn them into short stories, particularly good advice when you are working on a long haul project.

2

Being a creator means you will forever be assessed - some people will love what you do, some will like it, a few will hate it, and most won’t give a poop. I can read a book and press it on my friend telling her it will change her life and she can read it and say, “WTF?” If we are to stay (relatively) sane as creators, we must declare our own conditions of satisfaction for our work, conditions that are not dependent on anyone else. This is a hugely freeing idea that I talk about a ton at the writer’s retreat and with my writing clients.  Here are some examples from the retreat.

Before I write and if I start to feel lost or stuck, I check in with my heart by stopping, feeling my butt in the chair, and remembering a time I felt loving and connected.
I do not check email while writing.
I read a poem or short story once a week and make notes about sentence structure, words I like, and character development.
I look ahead each evening to when I will write the next day and make an appointment.
I record on my calendar that I wrote.
I generate new work four out of seven writing days.

Versus:

I’ll write when I feel inspired
I know this project will get done but it has it’s own life and I can’t rush it.
I have to hurry up and write this in a week because this idea must get out.
I must get up at 4 am every day to write seven days a week.
I have to go away to write, I can’t write at home
I’ll be happy when it is finished and I publish it and everybody loves it.

But wait? What if you can’t even get to the work because you are too afraid to sit down or even look at your supplies? You’ve got to ease into it, baby, ease in. C’mon on in, the water is fine. Here are a few very gentle ways to start:

• Pick up your pen or your paintbrush or a scrap of collaging material. Put it back down. That’s it for the day.
• Pause near your work space or your materials and as you gaze at them, recall a time you were creating that felt great: you were in the flow, you loved what you were doing, you were totally enjoying yourself. (When I do this, I think of a very specific moment rather than big swath of time.) Concentrate on those feelings of being in the flow and let them grow stronger. Relax into the good feeling.
• Pause near your work space and think about how much you love creating. If thoughts come chattering along like “You are so worthless for not working again today” or “You should give all those luscious paints away to someone who will appreciate them,” allow the thoughts to be there like you would allow clouds to be present in the sky. They don’t change the sky, they don’t hurt the sky, and they never ever stay put. Let the thoughts be there, neither resisting nor engaging.
• Ask yourself, “If it didn’t matter what I created or what I did with it or who liked it, what would I really really love to do today?”
• Take your art journal or computer to a cozy cafe. Sometimes you need other people’s energy to get started.
• Find a very supportive teacher and coach who showers you with love to jump start you.

What are your favorite ways to ease into creating?  And don’t forget to sign up here for the pre-release plus extra goodies and heck, I might even throw in my first born child if I actually finish the damn thing discount on my Comfort During Fearful, Perplexing, Overwhelming Times.