I’ve been struggling lately. Like, majorly struggling.
I started a new job a few months ago, which I should be happy about, right? And on some level, I am. But it’s been devastating for my creativity.
I’ve written nothing in the last few months. Published no new content. Part of the reason was that I was spending most of my days learning everything about the organization, the people, how we do things around here, and figuring things out. So at the end of the day, when I got home, I had no brain capacity left to sit and be creative. I was just utterly exhausted.
But the longer I went without creating and publishing a single piece of content, the more miserable I got, and the more my mind would create excuses for me not to write. I had lost the creative habit.
And the longer that cycle kept going, the unhappier I became.
You see I believe we all need a creative outlet. Something that we do that expresses who we really are. For some people, it’s taking pictures, or drawing, or creating beautiful videos. For others, it’s making gorgeously delicious cakes, or sewing beautiful quilts, or speaking from the heart and telling interesting stories. For me, writing is my creative outlet. It’s how I express my true self.
But I’m lucky. No matter how unhappy I get about my writing or my business, there’s always one thing that’s been guaranteed to make me feel better: coaching.
It’s not about seeing what others are struggling with and feeling better about myself. It’s that somehow, during almost every coaching session that I have with clients, one of the messages that comes through me, as I work with them, ends up being for myself as well.
And this time, it was an especially powerful message.
If you’ve ever experienced coaching before, you know it’s powerful when your coach tells you something and you’re like “Oh shit. They’re right. And oh double-shit, now I have no more excuses and I have to do the work.”
That night, the “oh shit” moment felt like an echo because it resonated deep within me too.
The Universe apparently has a twisted sense of humour.
Last week, I signed up for an online course, and then a few days later, I get a strange-looking e-mail that felt like it was a post-GDPR glitch. It contained a link to an e-book. Not a short PDF, 1st chapter of a book you have to pay for later. An ENTIRE book. For free. And do you want to know what the title of it was?
It was called You are a writer (So start acting like one) by Jeff Goins.
Obvious message much? Thanks Universe. Message received loud and clear.
Yet still, I didn’t really write.
Oh sure, I started journaling again. But for me, journaling isn’t “real” work. It’s just me writing my thoughts down in a place that is for my own eyes only. For a growth junkie like me, journaling is too safe.
You see, the real work, the scary work, the work that’s the hardest to do but ends up having the most impact, is the work that we put out into the world. The work we can’t not do.
Does that make sense? Let me clarify.
Putting our true work out into the world is the hardest, scariest work, because every time we do it, we risk being seen.
You see, we human creatures all long to be seen, to belong, to have people truly see us in all our vulnerable glory, and then to be lovingly received as a result. We want to be seen, but at the same time it scares the shit out of us because we also risk being judged, being ridiculed, being rejected.
“What if they don’t like me? What if they don’t like what I have to say? What if they judge me harshly and tell me that I suck?”
You know what sucks even more than those fears though? The longer you wait to put that work out into the world, the stronger your desire will become, but the more agony you will be in because you’ll feel like a teddy bear being pulled in opposite directions by two needy kids, ripping apart at the seams. You want to do it, but you’re afraid to do it.
There is no substitute for doing the work.
You want to know why you’re unhappy? Because your Inner Being is crying out for you to put your work out into the world, to do what you’re meant to do, and when you resist it because you’re letting your fear dominate your decisions, it creates this deep pressure within you like shaking a Coke bottle.
All you have to do is put it out there. Hit publish. Send it out. Share it on a group or in a like-minded community. The strongest emotion you will feel as a result, will be relief.
It will release some of the pressure, but not all of it. Then the only way to keep the pressure from building up again is to keep doing the work and putting it out there.
Doing the work you can’t not do isn’t about finding a job you love and getting paid for it.
It’s certainly a part of it. But the money will come as a result of the momentum you’ve built from doing the work consistently.
Doing the work you can’t not do is the path to fulfillment because when you do it, you are expressing your true self, and there is nothing like allowing yourself to be who you truly are.
Then, the Universe can’t help but respond to that and bring to you all of the other things that you want, including the financial abundance you seek.
That night, even as I shared that message with my client, who had recently realized that she had a message to share with the world, but had been allowing fear to tell her that she needed to plan it out and figure out all the details about how she was going to do it, I felt it resonate within myself as well.
I’d been too busy making excuses lately: I’m tired. I’m stressed. I don’t have time. I need to make a schedule. I need to plan out my week and figure out when is the best time for me to sit and write. I need to be strategic and figure out what I’m going to write about.
And yet, the message was clear: Fuck the planning, just do the work.
*sigh* Sucks doesn’t it? Ugh, it hurts just remembering it and writing it for you here.
So here I am, back at my keyboard, writing to you. I have no idea if you’ll like it. I have no idea if it will resonate with you. I have no idea if you’ll judge me for it.
But it’s the work I can’t not do. I have no choice.
So what about you? What’s your work? Do you have something that you can’t not do? Something that tears you up inside when you don’t do it? Tell me I’m not alone here. 🙂 Let me know in the comments.