Category: Psychology

The upside of being busy

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Being busy – being full, having a lot to do, filling your calendar to the brim — can be overwhelming, tiring, exhausting. Sometimes we’re busy for busy’s sake. And answering “busy” to how have you been is, well, annoying.

But sometimes there’s an upside to being busy.

When you’ve got a handful of projects to work on, you don’t have as much time to worry about whether or not they’ll work out — you’re busy making something new instead and learning from the results.

When you’re focused on learning new material, you don’t have time to worry about what people think of you, what you should do next, or how to spend your time.

You’re too busy doing.

Emails don’t stick or sting too much because you don’t have the time to think about it for another second.

There’s a reason people say “if you want something done, ask a busy person.” Busy people get things done.

Up to a point, busy can actually be helpful.

Maybe the answer isn’t thinking more, but doing more. Maybe getting a little busy will help you out of your next rut.

Have You Ever Lost Your Temper?

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

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This is an excerpt of an essay from my twelve-essay short series on Grace and Gratitude. Each day, I send a story with a nugget, an idea, and a practice — everything from losing your temper, to finding small happiness, to practicing meditation. The program is here; or just enjoy the essay below as a window into our world.

The other day I lost my temper.

I’d been holding on tightly to so many projects, and I was carrying both loss and love in my heart. An email came in and I swore softly under my breath. (Edit: perhaps not so softly). I stomped into the kitchen and started muttering. 

This person, I thought angrily, had no right to be so demanding about the project we were working on. I proceeded to launch into a tirade, ranting about the terrors of this person, sending grenades of vicious language into our living room from the kitchen table. My honey raised an eyebrow from his chair in our office and turned around, listening. He hadn’t seen me like this too often.

My mind and tongue got swept up into a spew of vitriol. Getting angrier seemed to somehow make me… angrier. 

And in the middle of, around the third or fourth paragraph, my body started to sag. I felt energy fall out of my body, and somehow I felt even worse. The crazy yelling wasn’t helping at all. I was just working myself up into a funk and I was horrified at the things that were coming out of me. It was like anger spewed out of me and I had lost myself in a tirade of feelings just because I could. For a brief second, I saw myself from across the room—this human body standing in the kitchen, frothing anger at the mouth. 

And in that realization, 

I took a breath. 

I paused. 

I stopped talking for one second.

And changed my mind.

“Oh noooo.” I said to my partner, my face scrunching up into a mash-up of worry and frustration, gasping breath in, 

“I don’t like what’s happening. I don’t like talking like this. I need to watch my tongue. What’s happening?” 

I exhaled completely, shakily. I called a time-out on myself. (I think my partner thinks I’m comical when I do stuff like this). Marched myself into the other room and sat down on the bed, steaming mad, huffing and puffing, shaking and stomping, still angry, but with enough of a fraction of awareness to take my piping-mad self into the other room and give her a little time out.

“You know what?” I yelled from the other room.

“I’m going to go shower and stop talking and see if I can figure out some of these feelings. I’m sorry about losing my temper.”

It came out “I’M SOR-RY I LOST MY TEMPER. HUMPH.”

I walked (stomped) out and headed to the shower. Not the classiest apology, but.

That. 

That was a moment of grace. 

It’s not about being perfect and never making mistakes (Please! Who are we kidding?). 

It’s about giving your self the grace to become aware in the present and to shift your thoughts or your behavior.

You’re allowed to be imperfect, and you’re allowed to change your mind. You’re allowed to edit yourself, reflect, and improve. It’s about owning where you are at this exact moment. It’s about being honest and brave. And it’s about being able to say,

“Oh gosh, that just isn’t what I meant to do. That’s not what I want to be. I am so sorry, and I’m going to shift. Right now, now that I’m aware, I’m going to change my mind.”

And

I have permission to do it another way.

As a husband or a wife, you can pivot. When you make a mistake and you yell at your child, you’re allowed to go in and say to your partner, “I think I goofed. I think I did that wrong. Can you help? I’d like to find a better way.”

And

“That didn’t feel good. I want to do it better next time.” 

This is a moment of grace. Of presence. Of foundation.

Here’s the interesting thing about grace: grace can happen anytime. Grace can happen anywhere. It’s a softening, a releasing, and a letting go. It’s permission that you maybe don’t have everything right. And you can pivot in a minute. You are allowed to be you. 

Words of wisdom: you’re allowed to make mistakes. And have feelings. 

As humans, part of our job is allowing ourselves to make mistakes, acknowledge them, own up to them, and reaching out if we need to. You’ll know the feeling. You have a pang, a little emotional signal shooting up at you when you think that maybe you’ve over done it, but you stubbornly don’t want to admit it.

Feelings are our body’s way of talking to us. Most people tend to ignore their feelings or cover them up by stuffing them under a rug or trying to forget what happened and move on. We puff up and change our behavior largely because we just aren’t sure what to do with that firestorm of feelings brewing beneath the surface. It’s not entirely our fault, either: we don’t have great language (or cultural norms) for talking about and identifying all those feelings we have inside. 

When you start to analyze what the feelings are behind the emotions and reactions, it will become easier to understand your reaction to different people and events and learn from it. 

The more awareness and emotional intelligence you have around your feelings, the less you become a reaction fuse, and the more you’re able to look inwards and say, “Huh, that really made me angry. She pushed a nerve—she triggered this insecurity within me. I now have a choice in how I react.” (The alternative is a blind “nerve-pushed! nerve-pushed!” reaction). 

The more you can take a look at the deeper feelings behind every action, and how each feeling connects to an action, the easier it gets to connect the feeling to the action in real time. To be fair, however, sometimes it takes me months to figure out what the real feelings are behind something that happens; other times the connections become more and more apparent.

Forgiveness—of both ourselves and of others—isn’t about forgetting or surrendering to other people. Forgiveness is seeing things as they really are. It’s about seeing yourself as you really are (and the inner stories you have, the feelings you’re feeling, and the work that you’re holding); and it’s about seeing other people as who they are, in real time. It’s about realizing that everyone has their own body of work to do. 

“Forgiveness is the choice to see people as they are now.” —Marianne Williamson

The more you practice, the easier it gets.

There’s a really important point about this exercise that’s worth pointing out: the more you practice it, the easier it gets.

In life, there are examples of small-but-tangible practices. Have you ever dropped litter on the ground? Some people stop to pick it up and don’t even think about it. Pretend that you accidentally dropped a wrapper on the floor and you don’t notice for a few steps. When you turn around, you see the trash behind you.

What do you do?

For many of us, it depends. If it’s far away, we might continue walking—even though there’s a ping in our hearts that says, “I really should go get that.”

Actually, the biggest and most opportune time to practice a behavior is when it’s so small it’s easy to do.

Whether or not you pick up the trash is incredibly important for the neurons and habits in your brain. If you practice picking up the trash every time, you begin to tell yourself a story about what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable. You commit to taking action when you notice something that’s wrong.

“The most opportune time to practice a behavior is when it’s so small it’s easy to do.”

It initiates a cascade effect of good behavior. The next day, if you see someone leave their tablet out on a table and forget it, it will be a smidgeon easier to walk over to them and say, “hey, I think you left this behind!” The behavior chain and habit pattern continues. Then, when you get to a moment and you’re in a heated fight or angry outburst, this neuron—this behavior pattern that lets you pivot, that lets you initiate, that knows that you trust it to do something right—it will speak up. It will nudge you, and it’ll say, 

Hey, maybe not this way. 

Try again? 

Let’s pause. 

Let’s do it this other way we’ve been training.

Let’s look at ourselves, imperfect, fallible, strange, growing, and remember that it’s okay to learn. To grow. To adapt.

We’re allowed to make mistakes. We’re allowed to breathe. And we’re allowed to say, hey,

I’m going to try to make this a little bit better.

Cool?

Ship. Iterate. Improve. Repeat.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Iterations

How do you make something great?

Start small.

Build something that you can do today, this week.

Ship a little piece of it. Stop holding on to it. Maybe keep the idea big, but just start with something so small you can’t not do it.

Make the smallest version possible. Give it away. Share it. Sell it. Tell people about it. 

But start small. Make an MVP (minimum viable product). It’s okay if you wince at the difference between your grand vision and your actual iteration. The first iteration can be improved. So can the second.

But only if you start.

Experiment. Play. Ask people to pay you money for it. (PS: it’s okay to ask for money.)

What can you start, today?

What can you finish, today?

What can you ship, this week?

Start. Ship. Iterate. Improve. Repeat.

When You Fall Down, Break Your Routine, or Stop: Notes on Re-Starting

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

HEADER GRAPHIC TEMPLATE—WRITING

The rhythm breaks. The routine falters.

You write, so diligently, and then a week slips by.

Getting back into the structure of things — writing — is even more challenging when traveling, moving, changing.

I can make a million excuses; writing and making time for writing is and always seems so hard.

It’s easier when I’m already making. When I’m on the train that’s already moving, it can be easier to keep going. And then I slip. My eyes wander up and left, I slip outside for a drink, I stop in the sunshine, I caress the thought of taking a break, and—

—Days go by. The procrastination wears down, like water through a crevice, building its rut and smoothing the sides into familiar curves with its constant trickle.

The weight of the days adds up, as though each day has its own weight, compounding over time.

Dread hangs over until the shadow of not doing spooks me in the morning, haunts me inside of the bags underneath my eyes. The sheer weight of not doing makes me so tired and that fear and dread build up, and I even start to doubt; I believe that I’m too tired; that tomorrow will be an easier, better day, that writing will somehow become more magical and effortless if I just wait.

The truth is, the one that I learn only by doing, is sometimes one sentence and one foot in front of the other, a shuffle-step, a trip, even — Sometimes sentences are written underfoot, scribbling out while running — the truth really is, that if I only just start, if I sigh and press open that sheet, tricking myself into making something so tiny I can’t help but just inch it out; when I make a small piece and massage it a bit, play out a word, dedicate a paragraph to the morning and a few more notes to the day;

The truth is, the hardest part is starting.

The gaping mountainous space that is not having started, with the weight of all the days piled up on top of each other like the exploding laundry piles of a pair of triplets, that space—that space is the one that can be popped like a balloon, a whistle of air sadly escaping out as a small sigh, only, only, only if you dare to jump, to pop the weight of the invisible balloon, to recognize that starting is always as hard as it’s ever been, and the hardest thing you do, will be to start.

Starting my pages is like an exercise in watching my crazy brain dart and monkey around — all the things I must do! Lists and busy-work become important, tasks and to-do’s building up alongside corners of pages, papers stacked several sheets high across the expansive desk space that is, for all purposes, meant for writing. I must make a new batch of tea! And i’ll try a green juice! Perhaps the internet will have the answers! I will Facebook like everything in sight because ALL OF THESE LIKE HAVE MEANING! I am connecting! I am powerful! I am!

And the answer is, after three hours of puttering, anxiety building in my stomach like a lining of acid swelling across my belly, I get so mad and frustrated that I shout, I MUST go for a run, I will RUN, then, then, you will SEE.

And a small piece of my mind thinks to me, you can’t afford to run, so, well, just write a couple of sentences before you go, and then of course, you will go for a run, and of course, that will help.

And then I sit at the desk, legs twisted to the left, shoes half-on, one sock on the floor, and finally open the document — my intent to start writing as soon as I get back, and then the document that is still blank bursts open on my screen, white terribleness blasting me with my procrastination; I stare at the pages that are empty, and with one hand on my shoe, I scribble and scratch out the thesis and the questions I’m going to be answering when I get back. I’m not writing, see, I’m running.

Lists and notes come out, and then my foot rotates and slides under my chair, and I’m jumbling in it, sports bra and keyboard, pouring, pouring, — well, I’ll just talk about this one thing, I start to say, but that story in the paragraph builds into a third, or a fourth, and I look up and the clock has spun around a few times far too quickly, and the sun’s down already, and I’m still in my underwear from taking off my pants to go for a run, but in between pants off and shorts on, I sat down to type, and the typing exploded, a story wielding it’s way on the page, long words and excessive ramblings wrapping around neatly in the shiny way that digital files do, and I’m hungry.

I’m hungry.

The sun’s down again. It’s dark.

On the days when I have to begin again, on the days when it’s been far too many days in between, and I haven’t written in too long, I know that the most important thing is just the dump of words.

The writing will not be good — it rarely is on the first time, and especially not on the first day back, but the second or third day after greasing the word wheel with an onslaught of words, it gets smoother and easier in a way that’s unexpected.

It’s like the first day is a rinse of my brain with a writer’s neti-pot, the morning pages and the first thousand words a clearing of the clutter, a draining and sweeping of the cobwebs in my brain. Snot-clearing pages, I describe them to my writing classes. Just get the snot out, blow your nose, suspend judgment and don’t look inside too closely at those boogers!

It’s like the pile of words that drains out is mucus that stuck up my brain, and those morning pages are blowing my brain’s nose. The next day, when the morning pages have been written a second time, I can sit down and my mind is much more connected to the page, to the words at hand.

Starting is hard.

Come back in, however you can.

How to practice saying no.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

I walked into the restaurant and something didn’t feel right. The prices were too high, the waiter a little stuffy and dismissive, the air a little cold.

I can’t tell you exactly what it was, but I do know that my body was decidedly uncomfortable. While none of the particulars was enough to make a fuss—should I complain about the temperature?—I knew the minute after I walked in and sat down that it wasn’t right.

Social norms would cue me not to make a fuss and to stay where I am. Cognitive dissonance—the idea that we do things in accordance with our beliefs and decisions, to support our earlier actions—would have me stay put because I had already chosen to eat here, and leaving would mean changing my mind.

But my intuition, that feeling in my gut, in my body, knew. Intuition isn’t perfect. Sometimes it takes a moment to settle. Mostly, it takes a willingness to listen, and to listen closely. After being seated, I placed the napkin in my lap and looked across at my man’s face. I could tell he felt equally at odds, if not more so. I leaned over and asked him:

“You okay with this place? I’m not feeling it.”

A look of relief immediately washed across his face. “Yes,” he replied, “I don’t want to be here, either.”

We had already placed our drink orders, and it took another ten minutes to get a waiter back to our table. At that point, I looked at our waiter directly in the eye, smiled, and said, “We’re not staying for dinner after all. Here’s my card, please run us for the drinks, and that’s all we’d like tonight.”

We enjoyed a few sips of our beverages and pushed back our chairs. Within a few minutes, we were gone.

The power of saying no — and the need to practice it.

Sometimes you just need to say no.

No is a muscle that needs to be exercised just as often as yes.

No isn’t always a voice that jumps up and shouts its way into your ear. Sometimes “no” is a subtle whisper that’s only heard if you’ll listen for it.

No, it says, I don’t want to be here. I need you to make space. I need you to rest. 

The small times we say no is a practice in listening. When we practice listening, we tap into the power of our own intuition. Stopping to say no in line at the coffee shop and say, “Actually, I don’t want this coffee anymore; can you gift it to someone else?” is you exercising your right to listen—to yourself.

Saying no is a practice of listening.

When we practice the power of saying no, we build an inner strength of tapping into our intuition. There is a listening that comes from our own gut. Our own bodies already know, if we’re in tune. “I don’t want to be here right now,” your belly might be telling you. “This isn’t the right person for me, I know it,” your body might know intuitively. Itchy skin, wiggly fingers, tired eyes, disinterested neurons—they know.

Sometimes “no” shows up in strange ways (and why it’s okay to change your mind).

Saying no—and making any decision—is skill-building exercise. I don’t always know that I want to say no until after I make a decision — and I realize that now I know what I want.

We don’t always know everything in advance. It’s okay to say no in the middle.

Sometimes I say no and realize later that I wanted to say yes after all. Sometimes I say yes and realize that I wished I had said no earlier. We don’t always have all the information—if we knew how life would turn out, living wouldn’t be so extraordinary. Life is a series of experiments. Sometimes you say yes, and you learn that no would have been wonderful.

In those instances, write your experience into your mind and body. Remember to tell yourself, “Ahh yes, Sarah, here’s a moment when you can remember that no is an answer you’re allowed to give.”

You can also change your mind.

Changing your mind—or rather, making up your mind after receiving more information—is something that we can do. You’re allowed to change your mind after you’ve been seated at a restaurant. You can leave a party after you’ve walked in through the door—by hugging the hostess and saying, “I absolutely love that I got to see you, and I love you dearly, and I need you to know that I’m so tired that I need to get off my feet.”

You are allowed to not know. You are allowed to listen. You are allowed to say no. You are allowed to change your mind.

The power of yes can pull us into commitment that feels overwhelming. Alexandra Franzen has an exceptional resource out right now – a wee book full of scripts on saying no, and when and how to say no. My favorite? Scripts for saying no just because you don’t want to, whether it’s a client you don’t feel like working with, a conference you don’t want to keynote at, or a project you’re too tired to give your time to.

She even has a script for — and I love this so much — friends you just don’t want to spend time with at the moment. Beautiful, wonderful, smart friends that it’s okay to say no to.

You are allowed to say no.

No to clients, no to friends, no to freebies, no to time you don’t want to spend that way.

How to practice saying no:

Start small. The smallest, most insignificant things are the places we begin to cultivate our habits. Say no to the creamer you don’t actually like; put down the coffee once you realize you don’t want it after all. Leave an event early if you’re disinclined to go; say no to the television late at night when your body whispers, Hey You, let’s go to sleep.

Iterate. If you don’t know what you want, experiment with a new response. If your typical response is affirmative, test a small no and see how it feels. (Caution: this can become really fun as you unleash a reprise of your inner two-year old.)

Be kind and generous. The word “no” can still be thoughtful, kind, and sweet.“Gosh, love, I love everything about this event of yours, but I’m overbooked at the moment so I need to say no. I know how important RSVP’s are so I wanted to give you mine even though I won’t get to see your face this time.”  The word “no” can be exercised graciously and lovingly.

What can you say no to?

Why are Stories So Important?

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

The world is overcrowded with information.

We’re wired to tell stories because it’s how we make sense of the world around us. Stories let us distill large, complex ideas and important messages into sticky, memorable pieces that we can carry forward with us in our minds. In the absence of a person or a phenomenon, we tell a story about what we saw and who we met.

Telling the right story about you and your business can be a big challenge–online, in person, or through social media. How do you decide what story to tell? And how do you know it’s the right one?

A story is what you take with you. We don’t keep lists and facts and essays in our minds; rather, we carry relationships, connections, and (sometimes false) ideas about correlation and causation.

A story is how we understand the world.

We’re wired to consolidate complex information into pieces we can carry—like little suitcases for the brain.

The test of a great story is what people remember about you when you stop talking. Listen for what people say about you (or your company) after you’ve left.

If you have the chance, listen to how people introduce you; it’s an inside look into how people remember you and your business. Just like ideas, viruses, and people–stories have lives, and how far they spread relates to how sticky they are. The life of a story spreads when the story is good.

In general, this means that simple stories are better — the gift of a story is not capturing every single moment, although detail is important — it’s in giving the listener something that they can enjoy and remember.

What stories are you telling — or what stories are being told about you and your business?

Doors are now open for the summer session of the Writer’s Workshop, now open for early registration! Join us for a six-week program designed to kickstart your writing habit—and discover secrets of storytelling, narrative form, and powerful writing. Early registration closes May 25th and classes start June 30th.

 

 

Words to Fill Your Mind: The Power of a Mantra

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

The words that fill our minds…

We all have words that we cycle on repeat in our minds—from worries about being late to songs we sing or words we repeat. Don’t be late, don’t be late, don’t be late, we repeat to ourselves as we rush from subway to office to meeting to appointment. Gotta finish, gotta finish, gotta finish—it builds across our mind like a chant, a pull to keep us focused long enough to finish the day or the project.  

[tweetable hashtag=”@sarahkpeck”]”What we think, we become.” —Buddha[/tweetable]

What is a mantra?

A mantra is a basic sound used in meditation and chanting, and more simply, in our daily lives. At its root, a mantra means “mind tool.” The root man– means mind; tra- means protection or instrument. Anodea Judith, in The Wheels of Life, describes a mantra as “a tool for protecting our minds from the traps of nonproductive cycles of thought and action.” She writes:

[tweetable hashtag=”@sarahkpeck”]“Mantras serve as focusing devices for making the mind one-pointed and calm.”—Judith[/tweetable]

Have you ever heard a young kid gleefully say the same thing over and over again? “This is so COOL!” They exclaim, only to repeat the same thing again a few minutes later, and again a few minutes later. Our minds hold words and ideas captive, guiding our thoughts with simple patterns that we often repeat on cycle. Sometimes it’s negative:

Dumb, dumb, dumb. That was dumb. Why did you do that?

And sometimes it’s positive:

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Nailed that! Whooo! Yes. Awesome. Awesome, awesome. 

And sometimes we get a peaceful song noted in our minds—a song that sticks, webbed words woven into our invisible frameworks.

Oh what a beautiful morning… Oh what a beautiful day…

Try it yourself:

A beautiful way to start your day is with a small mantra. Try a notecard taped to the side of your bed, a post-it on the inside of your wallet, or a scribbling on your daily diary. One of the reasons I write so many notes and doodle all over instagram is to remind myself and repeat words as I imprint them into my being.

What phrases would you love to embed in your mind? What new mind patterns and habits would be soothing or helpful? Perhaps during times of stress, “This too shall pass;” or “This is just but a moment.” These short phrases are powerful tools to build into your inner mind strength. Sometimes I like to hum to myself, “zoom in, zoom out,”—the vibration of the z buzzing against my lips, the mmmm a buzz deeper in my ribs and belly. (Try it: humming is delightful).

[tweetable hashtag=”@sarahkpeck”]”Zoom in, zoom out. It’s nothing in the macroscrope, it’s nothing in the microscope.”[/tweetable]

The vibrations of actual sound — joyful noises, as I like to call them — do more than just warm up our vocal chords. They are a means of expression, and they help to settle our mid-bodies.

How do you use language to protect your mind? Do you chant, sing, or hum each day? Do you have a phrase you love to hold on to?

What words are you telling yourself? Listen in.

Hustle is a dial, not a way of being.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

There are appropriate times to hustle in your business. Sometimes you’re hustling for a year or two on the side, creating your escape route and freedom business to jump ship from your corporate job.

Sometimes you stay up late and hustle the night before a course launches, or when you’re putting the final tweaks on a project before a deadline. Sometimes you hustle in between gigs, moving across the country, lining the highways in a bus, or getting from bookstore to bookstore to sell copies of your book.

Hustling, however, is not a way of being.

Many professions and careers (and managers, unfortunately) make hustling an expectation. Too many companies create expectations that people will work non-stop, jump at an email, and stay up late with very little advance notice; this is hustling as a result of poor planning, not as a result of the ebb and flow of project schedules.

With few exceptions, hustling as an expectation and a way of life—when you’re staying up too late and waking up early again the next day, time and time again, without an end date—is not sustainable. You’ll get sick, fall into depression or adrenal fatigue, contract bronchitis, or want to quit. The advent and appeal of lifestyle design comes not from people who are lazy but from people who are fed up. People who want to regain a bit of control over their time and want their efforts to matter.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, an employee, a self-directed freelancer, or a consultant, constant hustling isn’t always indicative of a great environment. There is such a thing as too much hustling.

Hustle is a dial. Dial it up, ratchet it back. A mode that you can press to apply a bit more pressure, and ease up when it’s time to rest.

Hustle is a dial—play it up, pull it back.

Play it like an instrument. Step on it gently or firmly like a gas pedal. Know when to apply the hustle. Know when to apply the brakes. (Brakes are there for a reason, and it’s not just to slow down).

And as a counter-point: if you’re not hustling, I suppose it’s time to find something worth hustling for. Once in a while. It’s alright to love something and want to work on it a lot. Ratcheting up the dial can make downtime so much sweeter.

But if you’re hustling non-stop, it’s probably time to step back.

Project hangovers, self-criticism, and the necessity of making messes.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

I have a confession.

Sometimes–more nearly like every time–after finishing a project, I hate it.

My writing class? Sucks, obviously. Last week’s essay? Good God, that could have been better. All those open and empty drafts waiting to be finished? Seriously, could have worked harder to get those done. 

And on and on… My brain and the ego mind can be wicked.

When a project is done and in the world, I want nothing to do with it. I see it in all of the flaws, errors, imperfections. All the ideas that didn’t transpire the way I wanted them to show up; the folds that didn’t turn into corners and angles the way that I wanted, the misprinted line weights, the typos, the sentences. The project in its fascinating speculations and then, the seeming sigh of its final iteration. The scalding difference between my brain’s dreams, desires and wishes and the tested, iterated manifestation of creating that product with my hands and resources.

It seems impossible to see the final product without the embedded knowledge of all of the processes that it took to get there.

I wonder why on earth I did the project in the first place, and whether or not its worth anything. Surely, they’ll all hate it. The same is true on stage. I finish my talk, I finish the presentation, the idea, and I leave, not deflated, but with a fatigue from the project’s finale and the owner’s knowledge of everything that could have been or should have been, with the result left on the table. Everything left. Performance. Done.

Could have been better.

But I remind myself, each time:

Messiness and imperfection are part of the process of creation.

[tweetable hashtag=”#creation #manifestation @sarahkpeck”]Messiness and imperfection are part of the process of creation.[/tweetable] Manifestation and realization—bringing something to creation—requires endless amounts of decision making. There is a cruelty inherent in cutting out all of the ways you won’t move forward, in order to move from the infinite boundlessness of ideas to the limited arena of conception. An idea always seems smaller when it becomes a practical thing. Perfection is an ideal that lives in our minds, a lifting, an aspiration, a drive towards the higher creativity we all have within us. The act of creation, however, is messy, fragile, fraught, and filled with the mistakes of making.

The secret grace of making (and pushing publish):

The thing is, no one else knows what you know.

What’s fascinating is that for all the razor-edged criticism I can muster, the audience is presented only with the work at hand; they see the work for the first time, with new eyes, with their own perspective. Everyone has a different opinion. Many see flaws I never saw. Conversations are sparked and ideas fly.

Sometimes the reviews are quite good.

Because I, the owner, cannot comprehend what it means to experience the data, the idea, the print, the drawing, the presentation for the first time. (This is why giving presentations is also so difficult). But the thing is they don’t know inside my brain, inside all of the things that could have been; they just see what is.

[tweetable hashtag=”@sarahkpeck”]Your audience, users, customers, visitors–they don’t know what they don’t know.[/tweetable] (There is grace in this). They don’t know the alternate version of the website. They don’t know the eight chapters that got chopped. They don’t know the fourteen other parts to your talk that you accidentally skipped over. They only know what they saw. What you gave them, in it’s presented version. Just because you know all the details, doesn’t mean that they do.

What does this mean?

It’s important to remember to maintain enthusiasm through a launch, through a release. The birth of a project is a commencement for you–the end of the creation cycle–and the initiation of the new project in the audiences eyes. They experience newly. Look at it with their wonder. Try to visualize experiencing it for the first time.

Planning for the rhythms: making time to rest after production.

It is important to also remember that a project life cycle has within it the natural hangover phase; the point at which you are so sick of hearing or thinking about it any more that it’s time to put the pencils down, pin the work up, step back, get feedback, and take a short rest.

An overnight to reconsider.

And preparing for this lethargic state, in my experience, helps wonders. I need to plan a night of quiet before the storm of publication or release. You can’t stop a launch after you release; rather, this is when the communications and marketing builds steam.

Practices for finding the good + restoring your energy:

:: Find the good. Think back to the moment you began, when this idea was nothing but an idea.
:: Thank yourself for having the grit to make something.
:: Thank yourself for showing up.
:: Write down at least a dozen things you did right in order for this to happen. List out all of the things you did right. (We’re too quick to forget this).
:: Acknowledge how much energy and time you gave to the project, no matter how it turned out.
:: Acknowledge that you are smarter, wiser, and more learned that you were before.
:: Trust that you get to keep all the knowledge you built along the way. Even if the project goes in the trash, your skills stay in your mind.
:: [tweetable hashtag=”@sarahkpeck”]Look to the long view, and remember that this is but one moment of many.[/tweetable]
:: Forget about the project, and cradle your heart in your mind.
:: You did well.
:: You did good.
:: You are a good person.
:: That is all.

And sometimes, months later, I go back and look at the work that I did, the project, the talk, recorded digitally, the book, on a fresh counter top. And I realize, finally, strangely, after the time apart, that the work isn’t all that bad. Of course, sometimes the work is bad, and I cringe, and I learn–but sometimes, I finally see.

That maybe, in fact, I did a good job.

Good job.

Alright, Carry on.

Easy?

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Shouldn’t it be easy?

An inside look at what it feels like for me:

There are some days when I can’t get out of bed. Some days when I feel so overwhelmed, tired, and disappointed in myself that I don’t know what to do, or where to begin.

The signs I hang up and the pins I post and the words I copy? They are just reminders to myself, first and foremost. I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. Most of the time. I’m just here, trying, just like anyone else.

It’s not easy. “Yoga teacher training,” for example, sounds like an indulgence when I type the letters into my social profiles, cheerily posting about heading off to practice, but the reality of practicing these twenty hours each week is a face-to-face awakening with the mindsets I live with. Each time, I struggle with being too tired, with being scared, and with confronting my “samskaras,” or the past stories and patterns of truth I’ve got imprinted on my brain. I struggle mightily with quieting my mind, and this devil of a mind drives me bat-shit crazy. A lot.

A lot.

Seriously, who writes 20,000 words a week… just to stay sane?

I write to let it out, to maintain my sanity. I’m afraid that I’ll be insane by fifty and mumbling to myself in poverty huddled in a torn jacket in the corner of the subway entrance, and that no one will see me.

None of this is easy.

Here’s the thing, though. It’s not promised to be easy. It’s going to be hard, it’s going to be weird, and there are going to be plenty of days where you’re in a puddle, confused, lost, lonely, or wondering where to go. When I left my job to begin my own company, it was hard—I had to learn (and I’m still learning) new systems, new organization patterns, new habits, how to prioritize—again and again. I had to learn how to work alone. How to be accountable.

The lessons keep coming.

The promise of “easy” is a delusion, sometimes. Is that the point, though? I don’t think any of us, if we really thought about it, said—yes, the only thing I want in this life is the easy stuff. Forget about the rest of it, I’d just like it to be easy.

No, it’s not about the easy. (There is ease, but that’s a different conversation). First, it’s about what you do when it’s not easy. It’s about realizing that even if it’s hard, it can still be beautiful, and you can still make things that matter when you’re tired, lonely, scared, depressed, or bothered.

In the words of my coach, during a particularly arduous sequence of events: “Just f-*king do it.”

“Show me you can do it no matter what.”

This is when you become better than the best. Not when circumstances are perfect. It’s when circumstances are shit and you do it anyways.

Easy?

When did someone sit down and promise you that it was supposed to be easy? Or better yet, fair? It’s not guaranteed to be easy or fair, and the people who get what they want go after it–in spite of and because of–each and every advantage or disadvantage they are thrown.

Sometimes, things are easier than you could have ever imagined–pieces fall into place, the actions a result of agreement finally locking into place in your mind.

Other times, the fight for what you want, what you desire, is harder than you’d ever imagined; it begs you to give up, to stop, to drop. You doubt your desires, you fear the pain. You quiver, you stall. Many give up–no, most give up–and say, you know what? I don’t want it as much as I thought I did. I’m not willing to fight.

But if you want it, if you really, really want it, you’ll make it, you’ll do it, you’ll fight for it.

You’ll keep going even if it’s years of pain and labor, if it’s a fight worth fighting.

You’ll give up the excuses and the hards and tireds and you’ll find a way.

This is when you become better than the best. Not when circumstances are perfect. It’s when circumstances are shit and you do it anyways.

Do it anyway.