by Jill MacGregor
I glanced through Facebook this morning and it appears that all of my friends are curing cancer, building monuments and teaching children to read. Oh.
And that doesn’t make me feel so good…about me.
By the way, what is that smell? Oh, its me…doing nothing right.
It stinks.
I don’t think this post is about feeling good and solving problems. *spoiler alert* it really is! This is about feeling unsure and giving that feeling all the permission required to hog tie you to the moment when you can do nothing right, you can forge no new paths, every word out of your mouth is trite and you are doing nothing important with your life.
I think I might put all my ugly on the table so that we can poke at it a bit.
But *yea* for my friends and all of their accomplishments. *balloon as all of its air escapes, making a pathetic squeaky noise…*
Being Afraid of the Dark
New projects represent uncharted territory, forcing us to speak in languages in which we are not fluent and planting the possibility in our heads that we may be embarrassed. The thing we always seem to forget is that all eyes are not upon us. You are finding yourself in this new situation for a reason—you are meant to be here and you are meant to learn. You might as well embrace it.
And…I hate to be the one to say it but..control freak much? Relax. Things will be revealed—think about that for a minute. You’re going to get it—you always have in the past. Do you really think your cognitive powers are suddenly going to fail right when you need them most? Please get real. If you were watching someone else react this way you would laugh at them.
I have a few friends who are deathly afraid of bees—I bet we all do. They can see a bee 8 feet away and they begin their bee dance—arms flailing over their heads, heads shaking wildly as if the bee is somehow in their hair and brought its friends, and—my favorite part, the running in place, spinning in a circle.
She’s a maniac, maaaaniac on the floor…
Picture that in your head.
The bee is nowhere near them. I know they feel they can’t help it—but this is what happens to us when fear takes over. We create danger where there is none, we begin defending our self when there is no enemy and people looking on probably wonder “What the hell is happening with crazy pants over there?”.
But I can’t!!!
Let me give you a personal example—something that has me doing my own emotional “bee dance”. A lot of my tied up in knot-ness revolves around writing. In this particular example, I’m afraid that I’m about to set back civil rights by about 60 years with this article I’m trying to write—and set civil rights back not because I want to but because I’m wandering in the woods on this one—I’ve never written an article like this before…but what’s a post, you say…oh shut up, I say…that I’m sure I’ll say all the wrong things and miss all the important points, causing ever reader to mentally turn off and stop reading about people and things that are so extremely important—events that are so important that they continue to resonate like an enormous bell that will never stop ringing.
This fear has become a giant pile of boulders—boulders of hesitation and doubt– that I am trying to climb over but not making much progress, because they are also greased. This fear is keeping me from writing the article. I have everything I need to write: thorough research, interviews, great quotes. I want to do it—it was my idea. Claw, claw, slide down greasy rocks.
Fear will test how much you love something.
Practice Active Listening…With Yourself
One of the things that helped me get over my foot stamping *I can’t* tantrum was to take a step outside of what I was feeling. Pretend…pretend…pretend…and try looking at these problems as if they belong to someone else. Take a side step away from your personal circle of confusion and imagine someone else is wrassling with your demons. What advice would you offer a friend who is going through this kind of fun? Sometimes that voice is more rational.
It might sound more like this:
Why don’t you take that energy and bootstrap it for a minute. If you can accidently bring down the civil rights movement with one article, imagine what you could do if you harnessed your powers for good. No one said doing something for the first time was going to be easy. Let the respect you have for these actions you’re describing come through in your writing. Just try. So what if it’s hard. Why should that even matter in the scheme of things. Just keep moving forward. And shut up, you big baby. Geez.
It usually falls apart at the end like that and I resort to name calling. Since this voice can still be biting, I really have to bring in the big guns. I imagine what my friend Melissa would tell me. She’s always tough but fair. Of course, I could just call her but I am a believer in self soothing whenever possible.
Here’s what she’d tell me:
Are you kidding me? You’re not looking at all these things you are doing—while you are sitting around not curing cancer. I think you are doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing. You’re investigating new things with your writing. Look, you’re building something. Building is hard work. But you do it for a reason and the reason is you love to write. You are not doing nothing. You’re just having a tough day. shutupyoubigbabygeez. Oops, that last part was me again…
Everyone You’ve Ever Met Is Not Peering Over Your Shoulder
When I do something new, I feel self conscious. When I write something that feels very personal—which is bound to make feel like I am wearing a very itchy sweater on a hot day—I have a large group of unseen people reading over my shoulder. Their voices and opinions interfere and I’m just now learning how to banish them. They become my unwelcome editors—although I’m the one who issued their unwitting invitation.
Irony.
The voice you hear is yours. This whip, well, that belongs to you, too. Boulder greaser? Yep.
Decide to approach it differently. All of those monkeys that escaped…you’re smarter than they are.
