A couple of days ago I had one of those moments.

You know, a moment when you not only know something, you really feel it through your body. As a simple, clear truth.

What I knew~felt was this: the thing that makes me miserable, most consistently, is me.

And I decided to make a list of 33 things I’d rather make, than make myself miserable.

I don’t say this flippantly. Remembering, in the midst of feeling miserable, that I’m likely the one holding myself in that misery, is hard. Having done that, remembering that I get to choose what happens next, is hard. Having done that, actually doing something about it, that’s hard too.

Which is why I thought a list might help, and here it is!

I’d rather make:

1. an avocado and chicken wrap
2. a photograph
3. my cat purr
4. wrinkles on my bedspread
5. a drawing
6. chocolate cake
7. a kiss
8. a post
9. sweet dreams
10. amends
11. an awful little poem
12. tracks across fresh-cut grass
13. a gift
14. deep breaths
15. love
16. someone laugh
17. a vase of flowers
18. jasmine tea
19. a wish
20. tears
21. a cuddle
22. a bad karaoke performance
23. a daydream
24. prose
25. a dance step (or two)
26. conversation
27. a smile
28. something sparkly
29. a soft place to fall
30. long, slow stretches
31. a memory of something beautiful
32. a plan for better days
33. a list of 33 more things I’d rather make…

What would you rather make?

This is my contribution to the inspired Courage to Fly Blog Hop curated by the delectable Stephey Baker of Marked by the Muse. You can check out the courageous flock who will be posting over the next six weeks, and the questions we will be answering, here. I’m responding to the question: What do you feel keeps (or would keep) a heart light? As light as a feather and ready to fly!

Nervous, empty, continually willing action is sterile and the faster you run and accomplish a lot of useless things the more you are dead.

Why do these grim-resolution people will? Because they are full of fear that drives them to try to dominate themselves and others for the purpose of making money or getting some kind of security. But the great artists… dare to be idle…

…it is the dreamy idleness that children have, an idleness when you walk along for a long, long time, or take a long, dreamy time at dressing, or lie in bed at night and thoughts come and go, or dig in a garden, or play the piano, or paint, or sit with pencil and paper quietly putting down what you happen to be thinking, that is creative idleness.

With all my heart I tell you and reassure you: at such times you are being slowly filled and re-charged with warm imagination, with wonderful, living thoughts.

~ extracted from If You Want To Write by Brenda Ueland

When my heart is heavy, I reach for the gentle words of wise women

As soon as I read Stephey’s challenge to share how we live in a way that keeps our hearts open and light, throughout the highs and lows of daily living, I knew I had to quote Ueland. Her book, ostensibly about writing, is really a manual for living in our creative power which is, she says, “…life itself. It is the Spirit. In fact it is the only important thing about us.”

And so when my heart is heavy, when my creative impulse is (as Ueland so succinctly captures) “…inhibited and dried up by many things; by criticism, self-doubt, duty, nervous fear that expresses itself in merely external action like running up and downstairs and scratching items off lists and thinking you are being efficient; by anxiety about making a living, by fear of not excelling…” I turn to the soothing, nourishing and strengthening words of Ueland (first published in 1938!), and also Pema Chodron, and most recently Tara Brach.

Soften, soften, soften

For some people ‘taking flight’ seems to look like this:

“Crushing it”
“Riding the buzz”
“Pumping it out”

And for a long time, I thought there must be something wrong with me, because that’s not how I want to fly.

Sometimes I do feel the pulse of that kind of energy (after client sessions, for example), but if it goes unchecked that energy burns through me. I’m a hummingbird on speed. Not flying but hurtling.

Instead, I tap my true power and take flight when, as these wise women counsel, I return to myself with exquisite compassion, self-kindness and gentleness. When I soften, soften, soften into ease.

Where I find the courage to fly

I go outside to a patch of grass. And breathe.

I stretch my bare feet over the earth and listen as the sounds of bird and insect and traffic and breeze fall into me. And breathe.

I guide my eyes across the bent-every-which-way grass, and the tangled profusion of garden bed, and up the mottled trunk of the neighbour’s tree, into its tiny confetti leaves, and I feel delight welling up from my toes.

I’m smiling.

Wonder! All this life is happening here and everywhere, all at once. It happened before I came, and it will go on long after I am gone.

But, now, here, where I stand, I am alive.

I remember my feet and feel the earth again, holding me.

I tip my head back and see the clouds for the first time, gracefully, soundlessly, gliding.

Now. Delight resonates through my body.

I imagine the clouds are not moving at all, but it’s me who is moving, riding the great curve of the rotating earth.

I lift my arms and I am flying. Flying with my feet on the ground.

You do not need to find the courage to fly…

… you need only find the courage to remember—you already are.

A friend sent me a copy of an article “Death by Information Overload” from the Harvard Business Review. I think the headline says it all.

It canvassed the usual complaints of living and working in a constantly connected state.

A study of Microsoft workers found that:

“…once their work had been interrupted by an email notification, people took, on average, 24 minutes to return to the suspended task… and more than half that time was spent after people were ready to return to their work: cycling through open applications; getting distracted by other work in progress; and reestablishing their state of mind.”

There are certainly plenty of productivity gurus now urging us to turn our backs on the evil of multi-tasking and go towards the light of perfect offline focus.

What I found more interesting was another aspect of information overload that the author, Paul Hemp, touched on in passing.

“…it’s not just the incoming tidal wave of email and RSS feeds… it’s also the vast ocean of information I feel compelled to go out and explore in order to keep up… we’re drawn toward information that in the past didn’t exist or that we didn’t have access to but, now that it’s available, we dare not ignore.”

I’ve suffered from this information anxiety.

Feeling compelled to research and research again other people’s experience, advice and 5-step programs before making a decision myself.

Worrying about systems for managing all this information gathering (AKA hoarding), and being so overwhelmed by the task of synthesizing the data to generate something actionable, that I freeze up.

And the comparing! The relentless consuming of other people’s words leave me wondering if I’ll ever have anything useful to say that hasn’t already been said a thousand times before.

It’s a creativity killer

The secret of life may be hidden in one of those many ebooks or bookmarks languishing in my ‘to read’ folder, but I probably wouldn’t recognise it if I saw it – I’d be too busy trying to process the next bit of information.

There’s no space to reflect, to absorb, to create my own connections and ideas.

That’s the bottom line. For better or for worse, I can’t create* in this barrage of STUFF. And if I can’t do that then what I am doing?

* For more on the create, consume, connect relationship check out Charlie Gilkey’s excellent article of the same title. He says:

A new definition of useful

For the practical stuff, the how-to stuff, the build your business and change your life stuff, it’s not enough that it might be handy someday, it really must be something I can use now.

And that judgment involves not only assessing the content, but also assessing my capacity and need. Truth is, I’m sure I could spend at least a year simply going deeper into, and taking action on, what I already know.

Which is why, for at least the first part of 2010, I made a conscious decision to shut off the flow of how-to for a while. To turn inward and mine my own resources.

I suspect you probably know a lot more than you think you do.

When you next feel that moment of uncertainty, you might want to take a moment before you google, read the latest expert advice, buy another product, or check out what your colleagues are doing. Take a moment to call upon your own resources.

Refilling the creative well

Although I have mostly shut off the flow of how to information, I’m not actually on an information fast.

It’s more a matter of avoiding the pre-processed, pre-packaged stuff that’s produced to provide fast fixes.

I guess, to jump onto a popular trend, I’m trying out ‘slow’ information.

I still read blogs, but blogs written by thoughtful people I like. I find myself avoiding the ones I know are ‘laser-focussed’ and prescriptive – the ones that seem to consistently point out what you’re doing wrong and offer a 10 step process to fix everything, all in 350 words or less.

I’m savouring books. Books with broader themes I can digest slowly. Stuff that invites me to make my own connections. And podcasts with interesting people.

This isn’t a prescription for you

More an observation of how I interact with information, and an experiment in modulating that flow.

It seems to me that maybe there is something shifting here – from an initial stage of using productivity hacks to better manage the information overwhelm and do more in less time, to developing deeper relationships with information (and the people that share it) that better serve our individual capacities and needs (and so deal with the underlying anxiety).

I don’t have a neat, 350 word how-to for this process. But I think it may start by knowing yourself.

Wholeness. That’s my word for 2010.

I’ve never chosen a word (or perhaps more accurately had a word choose me) for the year. To have a word present itself to be the focus of my intention and awareness… it’s actually kinda awesome.

How my word chose me

Like many people, I found myself midway through December thinking about where I’d been 2009 and where I wanted to go in 2010.

Thanks to the time I’ve spent with a whole bunch of smart people, I already knew I didn’t want to tie myself in knots coming up with specific goals (not yet anyway). So I decided to approach this thinking in a deliberately dreamy, relaxed way.

I let my mind rest softly on what was happy-making (and unhappy-making) in 2009, and dance freely across different themes that appealed. For 2010 I simply asked: ‘what do I need?’ and ‘what do I yearn for?’

And answers bobbed to the surface.

Consolidating and strengthening the roots and supporting structure of my business

Giving attention to my health

Refilling my creative well

Finding a way to grow at pace that’s  comfortable for me

Going more deeply into what I’m about and what I have to give to the world

Saying ‘no’ to people and situations that aren’t a good fit, so I can say ‘yes’ more often to those that are

All these felt really right. I was satisfied with what I had.

A couple of days passed.  And then, without even asking for it, my word arrived.

Wholeness.

And man did it arrive. You know a word has chosen you when it hits with a WUMPH! In your chest. When rolling it around your mind and mouth sets off tingling down to your core.

The magic bit

The magic bit is that this one word brought together three pages of answer writing. It took my disparate ideas and notions and yearnings and wove their edges and then folded them, over and over, until I was holding just one flat papery little thing in the palm of my hand.

A flat little thing so small and light that I could slide it into my pocket and carry it anywhere. Knowing that everything I need is tucked inside, ready to unpack when I am ready. It means I can hold and remember my intentions, without being overwhelmed.

But that’s just the start of the magic.

Because soon after, when I took that flat little papery thing in my hand and tugged at the edges, it unfurled with the most amazing whoosh.

What popped out was not only the thoughts I’d started with – there was a cascade of new things. There were more detailed specific goals. There were also bigger and more meaningful connections.

It was like one of those incredibly fancy fold-out greeting cards with a whole world hidden inside. You’re expecting ‘Best Wishes on Your Birthday’ and you get a miniature circus with clowns and horses and even a trapeze artist flying through the air.

That’s the magic of a word.

Oh, and the fact that it’s unique for each person. We could have exactly the same word — our flat little things could look exactly the same from the outside — but what I discover in mine will be completely different from what you discover in yours. And what I discover in mine will even change depending on when I open it (and reopen it).

Would you like to know what’s unfurled from Wholeness for me so far?

Wholeness is about giving compassionate attention to every part of me – even the stuff I don’t like, or am afraid of, or am simply bored with.

Hating and berating parts of myself (like the part that’s terrified of doing less than perfect work), or trying to run away from parts of myself (like my chronic illness) is just so damn tiring and pointless.

Wholeness is about knowing and caring for every inch of my physical body. It’s not an inconvenience, it’s part of my reality here and now.

Wholeness is about being wholly me in my business and my relationships.

When I work with people to uncover their core message, many have some element of their business or themselves that they’re trying to hide or gloss over. Because it’s not ‘special’ enough. Because they think other people aren’t interested or don’t want to hear about it.

Often this is the very thing that becomes an important part of their core message — that in turn gives them the confidence to go out into the world as their true selves and really connect with the people they want to serve.

I want this wholeness for myself, and I want to help others find it through my work.

That’s what wholeness has given me so far, but I know there will be more. It could be the start of a very magical year.

Just over two weeks ago I had emergency surgery due to an ongoing condition I have called Crohn’s. Since my diagnosis over 11 years ago, I’ve managed the condition with medication and the need for surgery wasn’t even raised as a possibility until recently.

It all happened very quickly.

In the days that followed the operation, as I lay in the hospital bed, I got some fresh perspective on an issue that’s been on my mind for quite a while: control.

On being a control freak

Being in control. Staying in control. Not allowing things to get out of control. I’ve been a control freak since I was a kid.

My methods for control centre around information, systems and planning. Faced with a new situation I default into problem-solving mode, gathering the facts and analysing the variables until I come up with an answer, a strategy, something that makes sense of it all and maps out the logical next steps to take.

Finding (or perhaps, more accurately, creating) order gives me a sense of certainty, of safety, of comfort.

However, my journey into mindful business has highlighted, more than ever before, the downsides of being a control freak.

I’ve come to recognise when I’m stuck in analysis paralysis – unable to discern the ‘one right path’ amongst many possibilities, and unable move forward without such certainty. And I’ve seen how following only ‘safe paths’ denies me the opportunity to really exercise my creative and intuitive potential.

Which brings me to the hospital bed…

When I realise control is an illusion

It was really hard. Like I said, the surgery happened very quickly and I wasn’t prepared (read: I hadn’t done my usual fact gathering and analysis) for what recovery from a major operation could entail.

I was frustrated I wasn’t getting better ‘fast’ enough (yes, after only a day or two!). And there were a few backward steps along the way that left me feeling desperate – why was this happening to me?

That’s when I realised, in one of those moments of startling clarity, that there was no timetable. No ordered step A, then step B, then step C that I could follow through with certainty of the outcome. Bodies are different, recoveries are different and people are different. And thinking I could ‘control’ anything was truly an illusion. Not just in the hospital bed, but in life.

Thing is, really comprehending this was not as panic-inducing nor depressing as I had previously feared. It was a relief.

Because constant problem-solving can be really tiring

I have to thank a family member for me really getting this. They were calling me in hospital and asking a lot of questions: Why did the doctor think such and such was happening? What could we expect next? Why didn’t they tell me about that two days ago?

My relative wanted me to be better and they wanted to know when that was going to happen. And it was exhausting.

I told them that what I needed was to focus on where I was right now, what I could do (and what help I could accept) right now to take care of me, and not worry about what happened yesterday or what might happen tomorrow.

Now, that was a moment.

Because I could have said the exact same thing to myself countless times before. Times when I was running my mind ragged trying to anticipate and guard against any problem that might arise in my business or life. Times when obsessing about the ‘why?’ and the ‘what if?’ left me incapable of actually doing what I needed to do – for me and my business.

And not problem-solving can be incredibly freeing

The amazing thing was that as I began to recover, in the spaciousness of not controlling and not managing and not planning, all sorts of ideas occurred to me. Things I wanted to do, to write about, to bring into my business. And it was light and fun and filled with energy.

It’s a slippery realisation, one that’s hard to hold onto as I move back into the day-to-day scheduling that’s absolutely necessary in a business. Because, of course, managing and planning must happen.

But I hope I can remember that ‘controlling’ my world is not just an illusion, it’s a burden I can do without.