010 | Start. Finish. Party. Repeat. (A Methodology)
11:18 AM , Saturday
Otis Coffee using my START Mug
Dear Friends,
Let me get straight to it. Today has been hard. Really hard. I woke feeling so much Resistance. I woke up feeling my body was off. I woke up tired after a night of restless sleep and stressful dreams.
But I set out to choose to show up. I left the house to get to a coffee shop to get to work … some morning reading, writing my Sunday letter, editing a video, and editing a podcast. I wasn’t going to let Resistance win.
But it kept coming up. It’s like you have a certain amount of strength to hold up a certain amount of weight. You are strong enough to lift 100 lbs over your head. But what if weight starts getting added … just a little at first … 5 lbs … then 5 more. The weight is getting heavy, but you can still hold it … but 5 lbs … and 5 more lbs … and then out of nowhere 20 lbs. It feels like more weight than you're strong enough to bear. What do you do then?
Maybe some of that weight is just life. It’s there and you can’t take it off. But what if there’s some weight you put on there that you don’t have to bear? Like the weight I put on there when I started to compare myself this morning to another artist.
Let’s get REAL real. I’ve been struggling the past few months with comparison. It’s surprised me. I mean, I think there will always be flare ups where I need to choose to keep my eyes focused on my path, but I don’t generally struggle with it. But recently, it’s come up a lot. It’s been unsettling. I’ve noticed myself getting jealous of other artists and their success, their resources, their support system, their collaborators, their path. It’s made the Resistance even stronger.
And then I started thinking about all the things I needed to do to get where I want to go, and the things I needed to learn, and the work I needed to get done, and decisions I need to make, and on and on. More weight. More Resistance.
Let me take a moment to say something about Resistance and give that word a little more context in terms of how I'm using it.
I started re-reading a book this week I was given many years ago called The War of Art.
One of the first lines in the book is this:
"Most of us have two lives, the life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance."
Resistance doesn’t need any help to exist in our lives. It automatically and indefinitely comes with trying to do any meaningful work, work that matters and matters to us. The comparison that’s been coming up, the doubts, the distractions, the overwhelm … that’s all Resistance.
I hit a point this morning where I just didn’t know what to do. I knew everything logically in my head … I knew the perspective I needed to take on to push forward and I knew I needed to figure out what my next step was … but I just felt like I couldn’t do it. I knew I needed to take a deep breath and figure out how to reset, but I didn’t know how, but I also knew I couldn’t just sit there and wallow.
So I got up, took a walk, and called my dad. This is may dad.
I mean, how can you not feel better about life after talking to THAT face?
My dad is one of the voices in my life I wholly trust. I just honestly told him where I was at and started working it out out loud. In talking with him, I also realized I was just overwhelmed with everything.
After I rambled for a while, our conversation went something like this:
ME: I don’t know what to do, and I know logically it’s like, okay, what is your next step? You can’t make this happen by tomorrow, but what can you do today? I just don’t even know what next step to take of the ten that I could take. I don’t know what to do next.
MY DAD: Well, sometimes you just take a deep breath and say, okay, whether it’s the right one or the wrong one, I’m going to do it. You don’t have answers to a lot of the things that are swirling around in your head, but you find what you can do and just get started again. It’s kind of like, okay, push the reset button. (Funny that used the word reset after I had thought I needed to reset!)
ME: I was thinking that I need reset, but today, I don’t know how to do that.
MY DAD: So mentally, what’s the top things you know you have to get done right now.
ME: I want to write my letter.
MY DAD: It sounds like you get a fresh cup of coffee or something, take a breath, and get the one thing that’s there and don’t worry about anything else at the moment.
I realized that the one thing I needed to do to fight Resistance was to sit down and write this letter to you, even if the letter was about how everything feels so hard right now and I feel a little deflated, but I’m going to write this letter dammit, because I said I would, and it feels really hard, but I’m going to write it and beat Resistance.
So I took a deep breath, and started writing. (start)
But you know what else happened on that call that I just realized? My dad gave me a little strength, and it helped me bear the weight. Or maybe he helped me remember I don’t have to carry it all at once and a few weights slipped off. He reminded me I needed to figure out what I could do next and do that. And I didn’t feel like I knew what it was, and then I did. So I started writing.
I wrote it. I’m writing it. I’m beating Resistance. I’m not dropping the weight. I’m getting stronger. (finish)
So what am I going to do now?
I’m going to finish my cup of coffee.
I’m going to get in my car and listen to music that reminds me of truth. (Music is medicine.)
I’m going to look at pictures in my phone of my people that remind there is so much good in my life and that I’m not alone.
I’m going to go eat a freaking food truck crepe and have a beer at one of my favorite breweries. (party)
I’m going to go to one of my jobs at a coffee shop I love where I get to work with my friends at a good place that brings joy.
And the whole time, I’m going to keep taking three deep breaths, and with each breath, hold onto a thought of something I am grateful for that is good in my life. And with each breath, I’m going to fight Resistance. I’m going to live the unlived life. I’m gong to live the life I dream of. I’m going to become the person I want to be. One breath at a time. (repeat)
Start. Finish. Party. Repeat.
Keep fighting for the life you dream of,
Keep fighting for the person you want to be,
One step at a time,
Shel
P.S. I wrote this while listening to my instrumental song "Solitude" that’s coming out with my Human to Human EP next month. If you haven’t heard it through some of the earlier sneak peek’s, here a link to have a listen.
