Tag: starting

What to write about when you don’t know what to write about.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Building Walls in Brooklyn

What do you do when you don’t know what to write about?

When you’re stuck or worried or wondering what to say next, write anyways.

Write about things that no one is talking about.

Write about the things that are whispering in your ear, that seem strange, or that seem off, somehow. Write about the things you’re not sure if you should say. Tell the stories you haven’t told yet. Say it anyway.

Write about what makes you angry, or what seems paradoxical.

Write about how the New York Times keeps writing about how we should get more sleep, eat less sugar, drink less coffee, walk more, and that sitting is dangerous – and yet what if the people who write the pieces are still living sugar-filled, caffeinated, stationary lives? What does it take to actually enact habit change, or motivate change?

Write about how Fast Company talks about digital sabbaticals yet never seems to stop posting on the damn internet. I feel like I’m drowning in Fast Company Facebook Posts. It’s like FastBook, except it’s going too fast for me and I want to slow down. Maybe Fast Company can take a digital sabbatical and save the rest of us a day. Less FOMO, more JOMO.

Write about how the deluge of life coaches means something significant (maybe that we really are all screwed up?) or that maybe we’re in an ever-increasing flood of informational internet opportunities that’s just a fancy pyramid scheme in disguise (do I believe this? I don’t know); or, alternatively and more optimistically, that the idea of a life coach is indicative of a culture that has lost something. Write about a culture that has forgotten how to describe the value of people of immense wisdom, of mentors, of friends, of age, and of colleagues who give us the increasingly scarcest resource of all–ample time and thoughtfulness and attention.

Or perhaps–and you should write about this, or maybe I should, we’ll see–maybe it means that we’re a culture devoid of meaning, that we’ve lost the rituals, practices, habits, and deeper connectivity to the earth and to our own spirituality (to God, to the universe, to anything). Talk about how our post-enlightenment love affair with science has led us so far astray from the knowledge and wisdom we’ve had for thousands and thousands of years (the yogis emphasized the importance of meditation five thousand years ago; the scientific papers are just beginning to understand why this is true). Perhaps religion and science are hand-in-hand, and both will make the other stronger, as each catches up with the other (and more importantly, acknowledges the other).

Write about why we search for a reason and an understanding for who we are. Write about why we seek to understand why we’re doing what we’re doing.

Write about what it’s like to be curious.

Write about what it’s like to see. Capture the world in words, as best you can. Really write it out–the details and nuances and intricacies of where you are, and who you are, right now.

Write about how digital technology and interconnectedness is changing us, and what you think the future of the internet is.

Speculate on the future of public space, and whether or not democracy and digital connectedness are serving us.

Write about problems around the world that we collectively ignore because the hip gyrations of a young teen is more mesmerizing than the assassination of twelve human lives.

Write about how the next $500 ebook or self-guided course isn’t going to get you where you want if you don’t actually read it. Wonder why people buy things and still don’t take action.

Write about how fucking mad you are, and your inside feelings that you’ve been locking up for years.

Write about what it’s like to be you, and what makes you angry, and what makes you blissfully happy. Write about the tools you use to numb yourself, because we all try desperately to avoid sadness and misery, and we stuff ourselves with caffeine, sugar, stimulation, pot, television, phones, and other instant-pieces that fill our minds with avoidance. Write about the things we do to numb us from actually feeling.

Admit that you have a body, that you have a soul, that you’re damn depressed and the reason for that is because you actually believe you’re capable of a lot more–and you haven’t figured out how to make the magic happen yet.

Write about what it’s like to be one single individual cell within your body, a particle so small it’s incomprehensible; yet it’s dependent on the air you breathe and water you give it to pulse and beat and carry out its marching orders.

Write about what it’s like to be you, here, and now.

Write about what you feel, and have an honest conversation with yourself about it. Crack the vulnerability open a little bit. Watch for the flood gates. Let the floods come. Have some fucking feelings, and roll around with them. Discover your desires. Write them in big bold beautiful ink on the insides of your body (or the outsides) and on the walls of your living space and in the margins and pages of your notebooks.

Write about the fact that we have no walls anymore or natural barriers to say no, and so we’re constantly flooded with requests that make us anxious, tired and depressed.

Write about what the future will say of Steve Jobs, and how our collective idolization might be washed away if we discover that the advent of the personal and mobile computer–while an exceptional tool for human creativity–also created the unintended consequences of contributing to alarming obesity rates couple and such sedentary humans that our internal IQ’s went down as much as they increased through the information access we enabled.

Wonder about the future of the internet and how it’s changing our lives. Take a piece that someone has written and respond to it, thoughtfully. React. Respond. Listen.

Poke the box. Fuck it, shake it. Stir it. Challenge Seth Godin, give him an essay that makes him think harder, question each of your idols, re-examine your mantras. Think twice about the information you’re given. Disagree and argue. If you construct it well enough, I bet Seth would be fascinated with the conversation you create. You might be wrong. So what? Admit it, and try again.

Think, and then think again.

Write about people who have adrenal fatigue, who are too tired to keep up with work. Write about how an obsession with productivity is wearing down the souls of the people who are trying the hardest; the people we need to continue to be vibrant. Write about what a waste of time email is. Write about how you would do things differently–and then write about how many steps and stumbles it took for you to make it happen.

Write about how your heart bleeds when you hold a tiny infant in your arms because, just for a hot second, the world’s energy moves through your heart center and you feel both restfully still and a live pulsing, and you’re connected through your chakras to a deeper reason for being, and in that bliss, you look at the limitless possibilities in that tiny breathing being and you think,

Damn, that’s perfect, perfect,

and you look at yourself and you think,

what the fuck happened?

###

[ You are still as beautiful, you know. You already are beautiful. You are always capable of beauty. ]

[ You’re perfect, in exactly that messy way that you are. It’s just hiccups and hangups that occupy the world, and get all messy inside your brain space. ]

###

Cultivate Wonder.

Wonder about change, and how it happens. Breathe into the space and creases and pockets of your lungs. Describe what it’s like to be a cell within your body. Touch the sensation of one side of your body, and then the other side. Pause for a moment and detail–in delicious words–the tracing of a finger around the circumference of your body. Close your eyes and imagine where the edges of your humanity are: can you feel them?

Pick an object and tell the story of its life. Talk about what it was before it came into your consciousness, where it was made, and how its life intersects with yours. Wonder where it goes when you toss it flippantly to the side. Consider waste streams and garbage, and capture the movement of things through systems by tracing one item through time.

Write about something that isn’t being said.

If you have a thought, or a joke, or a cranky opinion—and you want to rant, or write, or change the topic—do it.

Write about the things that should be different.

Write a story about a conversation worth having. Write about your experience, and then write about how that connects to larger issues. Write your story. Write about what it’s like to be you.

But for the love of all of it, tell your story, and say what needs to be said.

There’s plenty to write about. Go on, get writing.

Who are you? (+ survey + free book giveaway!)

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

The internet connects us all

The community is growing here!

The community here is growing quite a bit, and it’s exciting to meet many of the new faces becoming part of this tribe of readers. Long-time readers that have been here since the onset might see more and more faces pepper the comments; in addition, I get to work with many of you one-on-one through coaching and the workshops. Yet I’ve been struggling lately to keep up with emails and comments lately (although I still try to read all of them)! This past month alone, we grew again by nearly 20%–adding hundreds of subscribers to the blog, with thousands of people now part of our community.

Thank you for being here. The people I get to meet because of writing online has been incredible.

Your quick help: please take a short survey! (and enter to win a book)

We have hundreds of new faces joining us, and to continue to grow this community and write useful posts, I’d love for your help. Here’s a 2-minute survey that’s quick and easy–tell me a bit about where you are and what you’re working on. It’s anonymous if you’d like to be, but I’ll publish the aggregate results to my newsletter this month and tell you more about the community that’s forming here.

Take the survey, here.

In addition to learning more about you and what you’re working on, I am in the process of writing a book proposal — and I want it to be a book that you’re going to love. I have three pitches I’m crafting at the moment, and I’m refining them. Tell me what you like, and what you’d love to read next.

Take the survey, win a book!

As a thank you to everyone who takes the survey, I’m giving away a copy of two of my favorite new books that I’ve read this past year and absolutely loved. I’ll be sending two lucky readers a copy of one of the following books: Money: A Love Story, by Kate Northrup; or Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Everyday, by Todd Henry.

Thanks for being here.

You, on the other side of the internet–you fascinate me. Where did you come from? Where are you reading? What is your life like? Are you working double days in the Philippines, as one woman wrote to me? Are you a mother of two in Australia, teaching your children and learning online from everything you can absorb? Are you the CEO of a large company that manages hundreds of people? Are you a new entrepreneur or post-collegiate twenty-something, looking to find a passion and a purpose in the work that you’re building?

Yes, all of you. Thank you for being here. It’s the connection through the wires that makes the internet so magical.

With gratitude,

sarah signature

 

 

How do you find the people that are right for you? Hint: it’s all about energy.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

PeopleFactor_Sketch_SarahPeck 07-2011

Two years ago, I met Todd Henry at South by South West, and we got to walking and chatting between throngs of crowded sidewalks and the craziness of tech events. While walking, I remember him clearly outlining his ideas, his creative process, and his vision for the projects that were coming next. I’m so excited because today, September 26th, his next book, “Die Empty,” is finally live, and it’s all about creating your best work in the world. I’ll be doing a full review of the book in the coming weeks, but for now I wanted to share a gem that I previously shared with Accidental Creative–and it’s all about energy, people, and matching up personalities. 

The people factor: it’s all about energy.

Ever been at a party and felt like you were completely exhausted? That you couldn’t stand to keep your eyes open for another minute, even though it was supposed to be an amazing party?

Likewise, have you ever stayed up almost all night, focused and driven, surrounded by brilliant people and creative ideas?

Energy comes in limited quantities. It is finite, it waxes and wanes, and it grows or diminishes based on what you are doing and who you are surrounded with. What dictates our energy? How do we capture these spaces that help us be amazing, and remove the events and things that deplete our energy?

There are people, places and things that make me feel like I’m building my energy stores, that rejuvenate me, and help me to do my best work. Likewise, there are also people and places that zap my energy; that leave me exhausted; that make me feel as though I’ve waste my time and my energy – and my day – without getting anything useful done.

While brainstorming in a coffee shop with a dear friend, we both asked each other how to deal with these different personality types as they come into our lives. People are exceptional – they are our number one resource – but not all people are helpful at any given project or time.

How do you make decisions about how you spend your time – and who you hang out with? And more importantly, how do you say no to people and things that zap your energy reserves?

Together, we made a map of the different types of people in our lives, and agreed that we would consciously try to say no to hanging out with people that didn’t help us in our long-term goals – or in our energy management.

This system isn’t just about eliminating “Negative Nancys” and “Debbie Downers” (although every effort should be made to reduce their presence in your life, and to come up with phrases that don’t disparage the great Nancy’s and Debbie’s in the world!).

Understanding how people affect you means that you can do a better job matching what you need at any given moment to what your energy requires. Sometimes I don’t need to be around excited people. Sometimes I just need another balanced philosopher to do and create my best work.

And sometimes I need to be more judicious about reducing the time I spend with people who don’t match my energy.

On the energy spectrum, here are the ranges of personality types – from high, positive energy, to balanced and stable individuals, to strong negative energy.

Do you identify with any of the following energy personality types? How do you bring these different personas into your world? And do you pay attention to how people make you feel?

The Positives

  • Buzzers. These are my excited electrons. People who are so thrilled to be around other people and in the world, talking with them is like getting a burst of inspiration. When I wake up in the morning, a phone call with them is better than coffee. They are my muses, my inspirations, my creatives. Like coffee, however, I can’t drink it nonstop each day – so they are better in quantifiable bursts.
  • Happys. Generally positive, seem to be happy almost all the time. People you would skip with, laugh with, enjoy being with. I have lots of these in my life. They aren’t as physically excited as the Buzzers, but they are generally happy and have a positive attitude about most things.
  • Wonder Listeners. People who can hear what you are saying without you saying it; who seem to listen to you with both their bodies and their ears, and who exude a positive radiance without necessarily saying or doing anything, are your Wonder Listeners. After hanging out with one of these, I leave feeling happy, excited, and inspired.
  • Coaches and Mentors. These are people who seem to have endless stores of hope and inspiration designed just for you. People who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer and how you are doing. The coaches and mentors are usually a check-in, once a week or once a month, and they offer their advice and wisdom to you in their interactions.

The Middle Balance (Balancers and Grounders)

  • Quiet Stabilizers. People who are refreshing, rejuvenating, and inspiring without being showy or ostentatious. Someone you can sit quietly in a park with, without talking very much, and leave happier. These people don’t toot their own horn, and likely don’t know how cool they are. Yet being around them is satiating, relaxing, restorative.
  • Feedbacks. People who tell you what you need to hear, not necessarily what you want to hear. These people can be mistakenly labeled as negatives, but they still have your best interests in heart and are actually looking out for you in the long run. They come from a place of love. Keep them around, but note the times when you aren’t up for receiving feedback and need encouragement instead – and seek them out when you need smart advice.
  • The Strugglers and Changers. There are people who are struggling, working towards change, and are sometimes frustrated or caught in-betweens. They are on their way towards becoming the person they want to be, and conversations with them are raw, open, inspiring, hard, and generally variable. These are my strongest friends, the people who open my eyes and listen to my shared experiences as well. We learn well together. To note, however, sometimes I don’t have enough energy to devote to these conversations, and it’s best to say no or time this date for when I have enough energy or bandwidth to devote.

Negatives

  • The Repetitives and Non-Changers. People who are stuck in a problem that you’ve listened to for years. Their complaints are the same, over and over again, and they don’t bring anything new to the table. Each time, it feels like you’re stuck in déjà-vu, because you’re still talking about how to deal with their terrible relationships, bad work situation, or general malaise. To deal with these types, tell them, politely and firmly, that you don’t want to talk about their ____ problem anymore. “I appreciate all the struggles you are having with your job situation, but I’d like to not talk about that anymore. I know you are working hard on it. Let’s focus and talk about new things when we meet.” Sometimes by setting a clear boundary about your relationship and expectations even helps the other person by not letting them use you as a place to rehash the rut–and encourages them to take action.
  • The Fakes. There are people who masquerade as positives – the words they use are cheery, they tell you what they think you want to hear; they quote inspirational things and bits. But the substance is not there. And, more importantly, (and this is critical) you are not rejuvenated by the words or the ideas in the way you are around Quiet Wonders or Listeners or Buzzers. Some people are obviously fake; others not so obviously. At the end of the day, what’s most important is how you respond when you’re around them.
  • Negative Influences. There are people who are wonderful, interesting, bright, and creative. And yet, for some reason, I am negatively influenced when I am around them. It’s not that they themselves are bad people – it’s that I make bad choices when I’m around them. For some reason or another, hanging out with them is not conducive to my success. These are the trickiest people to identify, because there’s nothing about them that’s bad or easy to rationalize avoiding. It’s how they influence you that tells you about whether or not it’s a good person to have in your life. If your number one goal or dream at the moment is do ____, and being around this person actually hinders your ability to do this (and possibly even makes it harder for you to do in the future, as well), you have to make a choice about your priorities.
  • Toxic. These are the people who make you feel like shutting down when you’re around them. The people that drain you, that zap your energy, that are filled with negativity and cutting remarks. Most of us quickly eliminate these people from our lives after just a few interactions. They are easy to spot and identify. If you still have them around, ask yourself why? What do you benefit from being with a toxic person?

Remember: in each of these scenarios, it’s not about whether the person on the other end is inherently a good or bad person–the most important thing is how each of these personality types make you feel.

It’s not about whether or not the person is a good or bad person – it’s about whether or not they are the right energy type for you.

It’s important to note that not all people can fit neatly into each of these categories – often the dynamic relationships we have with others changes depending on who is interacting and what the objectives are. Sometimes my friends are Buzzing-happy, and other times they are balanced-stabilizers.

Defining these personalities – and how you feel when you’re around different types of energy – has helped me in understanding why I leave feeling out of sorts from some interaction. In turn, it helps me decide what to do – and who I choose to spend time with – in the future.

Relationships matter. Pay attention to how the people around you are making you feel.

Which is your favorite personality type to be around?

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This was originally published on Accidental Creative in 2011. Check out Todd’s newly released book, “Die Empty,” out September 26th, 2013.

When is the right time to make change? The changing of seasons is the perfect time to re-fresh and re-invest.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Image by Graydon Foulger, Impressionist Oil Painter.

Oh, these times of transition…

Fall is a beautiful time for change and transition. The weather cools with winds that whisper at a coming winter, the hint of a chilly air brushing across my shoulder tops and threading cool breezes against my skin. I huddle in my jacket, tugging it closer and shaking out my fingertips. I notice that the mornings are getting slower and the days are getting shorter. This weekend marked the official beginning of Autumn, closing down with a startling clamp on the last of summer.

The cooling season and drier air makes me long for hibernation; I stay in bed, pillow atop head, and say a muffled NO into the bedding, my aspirations for morning workouts disappearing alongside the droopy sun. I want to lie for longer, hide from the world, and treasure the warmth and depth of my hidden blankets. My mood shifts; I crave hearty foods and thick soups; I am slower to start in the morning and my mind dips more frequently into the melancholy of lower light. Every psychological trigger begins to fire a reminder for me–from the Halloween candy dotting the grocery aisles to the orange hues of colored leaves to the warm smell of turkey cranberry sandwiches with brie. I grasp the fleeting remainder of warm days with bike rides and lunches on the water before it cools too much to enjoy.

Yesterday was the Fall equinox, a time marking the transition of seasons and temperatures into a new time. For those on the northern hemisphere, we’re closing our long summer days filled with light and energy, and rolling into a season of darker days, hibernation, a few extra hours of slumber, and a craving for rich, starchy foods, harvest vegetables, salts, and soups. For those on the southern hemisphere, blinking in the spring light after a long winter, you’re also awakening to change and transition, one of a different sort.

The equinox is a time to revisit your intentions, to shift, and to re-align yourself for the coming winter. A friend wrote beautifully about what the equinox brings to our life:

“The equinox is a time to revisit your intentions as well as to be in gratitude for your harvest–whatever it may be. Acknowledge all that you have at this time and focus on the abundance of the harvest rather than any lack. The equinox is also a time to think about cleaning, pruning, and making any changes that you are inspired to make as a way to make more space for what you want. It is a time for expansion, freedom and commitment. Take some time to ritualize change. Honor the change of season and use the energy of the fall equinox support the release of any burden you may have been carrying for someone else. Put it down once and for all.” (M.M. via The Power Path)

It made me thankful for the energy, change, and growth processes I’ve put into place this year. Leaving my job, moving across the country, selling my car, and setting up my own client roster–these were not simple projects. In retrospect, I bow in gratitude to the year’s work, and I’m thankful for the times I took risks.

What have you harvested this year? What can you acknowledge that has gone well, or shifted significantly? What are you growing? Are you still setting foundations in place for great harvests next year, and next spring?

What can you let go of, or refocus your energy on? What rituals can you take towards change?

More than just writing… a workshop and a journey.

This Fall, 20 students joined me in the Writer’s Workshop, a 4-week course designed to discover your writer’s voice, teach essential writing skills, unlock your inner creative, and grow as a writer within a small-group community. Their inspiration and enthusiasm has been breathtaking.

Each person came to the course with a mind and heart open towards learning, towards improving, and wanting to grow in an area that’s critical for success: communication. Writing allows us to clarify who we are, what we want, and share our ideas. Beyond writing, however, the four-week course is a journey into creativity, into storytelling, into memories and dreams, and into mind-mapping.

It’s a commitment to yourself that you want to get better. It’s a ritual of change. It’s a recognition and a dedication towards growth.

Learning is one of my favorite things. It’s an incredible gift to pour new knowledge and ideas into your brain, synthesize them, mull over them, contemplate, and then create your own works. The best bloggers and creatives I know are all incredibly smart and phenomenally hardworking–likely far more than what is publicly visible, in fact–and they take the time an energy to invest in themselves, to create day in and day out, and to hustle when they need to.

For writers in our writing workshop, here’s what a few of them had to say about why they joined the journey:

“I love to write but have challenges finding the time and space with a demanding full-time (non-writer) job. I’m hoping this class provides both inspiration and structure to help me build writing into my daily life going forward.”

“I thought that getting back into writing regularly might help me find a voice that hasn’t been as vocal lately.”

“I want to hone my most crisp and compelling writing voice and develop a regular writing practice.”

“I’ve always wanted to engage in personal/creative writing but never did much of it. I’m looking forward to using the experience from this course as a catalyst to begin a daily practice of writing, mostly for myself.”

“I have a blog on my website, but I haven’t been too consistent with it. The goal for me is to be more consistent, disciplined, and always have a plethora of new ideas to write about.”

As someone who is hungry for knowledge, I love diving into new projects, courses, and ideas. It’s a joy to teach people who feel the same way. These talented professionals from around the world are brilliant peers and colleagues–and yet they are taking the time to join the workshop, often alongside day jobs, families, side hustles, and other endeavors–each of them coming together to invest in their dreams and take the steps towards improving their lives and businesses.

You don’t have to have it “figure it out” to partake on the journey.

Why do people join in new adventures? Sign up for new classes? What do they want to improve?

I find the most common denominator of people who make change successfully in their lives is that they start before they feel ready–they dive in before it seems right. And it’s true in my own life: I long delayed signing up for Yoga Teacher Training because I thought I had to be better before I could start (some idea in my mind told me that I needed to be “a great yogi” before I could indulge in deeper learning). And then I realized that I was putting up the same barrier: I didn’t need to wait for the perfect time to improve myself and learn something new. So I signed up to take my first deeper dive into Yoga Teacher Training. You don’t have to wait to get better. You can begin your journey exactly where you are.

It’s been an incredible year of change for me, and the year isn’t over yet. As I transition from traditional employment to building my own practice and business, developing my own patterns, and investing in my own journey, I have quite a bit to discover as I grow.

Getting better starts now.

What are you letting go of this Fall? What are you starting? How are you editing your journey and building your life?

With strength during all times of transition,

sarah signature

Jumping is terrifying. Or, behind the scenes of the last few months: Life. Mind Work. Change. Here. Now. Hello. Breathe…

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Panic-Now-700

I wake up in a panic, nerves sending a fear signal up and down my trembling arms. Adrenaline pours into my veins, shooting up my skin like a shock to my system. My brain races, full of questions and doubts and fears. I can’t sleep again, even though it’s dark. The light from the streetlamp outside my window glares at me, accusingly. I get up, I start pacing.

I wonder if what I’ve done is the right thing. If what I’m doing is the right thing. I feel like I’m jumping out of an airplane, a rug pulled out beneath my feet to reveal that I’m far too high up in the sky and gravity’s tugging on me. I don’t know if I have a parachute. I’m not sure what a parachute would even look like. I’ll need to figure it out later, but probably fairly soon.

Sometimes I’m soaring with the incredible high of experimentation, and other times my mind wonders if it knows just exactly what I’ve gotten myself into. I cling to my practices of yoga, journaling and other meditative daily walks, but they don’t fully temper the fact that I don’t know what I’m doing. My mind is a scramble. I can’t understand the illogical things I’ve put it through. It’s probably for the best that I don’t understand.

Trust.

There’s no easy way to jump other than to put both feet out and trust the world around you. Trust that you’ll land, that you might fly, that it’s okay to fall, or that some other iteration you can’t predict will come to fruition. Unlike the time I went zip-lining with my sister, where my jump off the platform was so timid that I smacked my butt against the wooden platform below as I launched, I need to lean, and lean so hard that it feels like falling.

I’m falling. This is falling.

While it’s been quiet around these parts lately, that’s just an illusion–a set of unwritten essays and the silence that is days passing a surface skin for a mind and a life that’s been in flux for much of this summer and this year. I look back at my writings for August, noticing that I’ve only scrawled two posts this month; those posts are just a scant glimpse into life behind the scenes and what I’ve been up to. For those familiar with astrology, the world’s been ablaze with the recent Grand Trine, the idea of a shift so large and a planetary arrangement so powerful that people will feel huge changes, up-endings, and fluxes in their life; that dreams become reality; that things get messy; that things resolve — and I don’t just read this, I feel this, I know this, I am living this.

Hello, world. Shall we dance?

Sometimes I struggle with what to write about on this blog—is it a diary? Is it a travel trope of my own adventures? Is it strictly related to writing and communications? It’s not always clear; I share my personal stories and lessons as a window into how I’ve practiced (and continue to practice) the philosophies and principals that underline most of my work, scratching out and re-writing as I go, editing as I learn. I don’t profess to write about myself because that’s the topic at hand; I do love telling the stories I live as a means for sharing bigger ideas and stories. But when I leave myself out of all of the writing and start to write just about rules or teachings or hollow lists, it starts to feel a bit empty.

Like I’ve forgotten to tell you something. Like I’ve left part of myself out.

The past six months have been a whirlwind, to the point that it feels as though I’ve been hiding something. The past year has been a challenge, and I’m not always comfortable talking about all of it. Some of the hands-down-best-things in my life have happened in recent months, but so have some of the scariest and hardest. It wasn’t shiny and glorious; much of it came in a package that felt like I was being thrown repeatedly against a wall like a rag doll and left in a crumpled heap to stand up and fight a bit more. The great moments came with adrenal fatigue, medical problems, extensive biopsies and visits to the doctor. Moments at conferences after months at home, working all day and late nights, and having to look at someone else and not quite share. Not quite tell. These months and moments have been filled with Doubt. Insecurity. Changes. Lives beginning. Lives ending. Leaving my job, starting a new one. Selling my car (finally). Meeting incredible people. Shifting careers, changing tack.

You, too, are probably noticing something in your own life and in the lives of others around you. As I talk with friends and clients and colleagues, I notice that these big shifts aren’t happening in isolation. We’re all experiencing it, the universe seemingly sending the earth into the spin cycle a few extra times, the players and movers jolted into new realities of their own doing–or as a surprise. The economy has been moving and un-sticking; opportunities are opening while entire industry verticals are left career wastelands; some generations are in huge loss while other people are starting to move around much more in jobs and vocations and practices.

I hear stories of daring and adventure, of incredible romance, of deep pain and loss, of glimmers of beauty within the deepest tragedies. Sometimes the suddenness with which you realize a dream can be incredibly unnerving, pressing you forward into a new sense of self, a new definition, a new story before you felt like you committed to the wanting of your dream. And yet the universe sends you out the door and through three new ones, pressing you to discover your readiness through action, not thinking. And other times it seems unfairly agonizing to wait, years of debt and doubt and pain layered into the pursuit of freedom, a tantalizing notion that seems just out of grasp. Change is rattling. Waiting is painful. I’ve watched people get all that they’ve said they wanted, and fall apart. I’ve watched people try for everything they’ve dreamed of and crumble, stall, wander into places they’d never wish to be. They’re surviving. The universe is doing something.

Change is not easy.

… I’m not sure there are many people who say that it is.

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Welcome to solo-preneurship*, to adventure, to freedom, to creation.

In my world, a big shift happened a few weeks ago. At the end of July, I parted ways with my wonderful and dear company, SWA Group, the place that has been my home for the last five years. Along the way, we created a number of digital and print communications initiatives — sharing the perspective of landscape architecture and describing how the built world works through books, magazines, blogs, and stories. My colleagues are some of the most talented physical and spatial designers I’ve ever met, and they challenged me constantly to learn how to create physical, built spaces within the tricky world of patterns, codes, rules and regulations–learning how to engineer and design places for human enjoyment. Understanding urban patterns and landscape systems is immensely appealing to me, and something I’ve focused on for a long time.

And yet, I leapt.

It’s exciting–and terrifying.

Transitioning from a wonderful job and a space with colleagues who have been extremely supportive of my adventures and experiments was not an easy choice, and it took several weeks and months to iron out the details and to wrap up my final projects and head out. Out into the world of clients and projects and writing and self-employment. Also the asterisk in the title is a note of caution–I’m not headed straight into “solo-preneurship,” because it’s never truly “solo”-preneurship, like Tara Gentile so aptly reminds us. “Business doesn’t happen in a bubble,” she writes; rather, it happens with teams and clients and support and evolution. And markets. And needs. Further, solo-preneurship is not about late nights hustling indefinitely; while hustling is a part of the journey, it doesn’t need to become the entire journey.

And then, I was here.

Shoved out the door and onto the sidewalk, suitcase in hand. I’m taking all the knowledge and chops I’ve got and doing the best I can.

Starting yesterday.

When did this happen? 

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.”– Pema Chödrön

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But Sarah, what are you working on? How will you spend your time?

I’ve been avoiding conversations that pull up that dreaded question, that accusatory, “so, what are you doing?” statement, the question that permeates what seems to be nearly every conversation. The rush to fill time—or worse, to apply a story or a definition to how we will spend time—is a national disease we all have, one that requires us to chase productivity and results over holistic being and space for mental clarity. It’s no wonder Time Magazine features a different cover for Americans than the rest of the world when we’re a market more obsessed with our own job performance (and resultant anxiety) than the civil unrest happening in the Middle East. Prayers to Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Israel, and all of the countries in need of deep healing. Including our own.

“The rush to fill time—or worse, to apply a story or a definition to how we will spend time—is a national disease we all have, one that requires us to chase productivity and results over holistic being and space for mental clarity.”

We ask each other what we do before we ask how we’re doing, a quick question that rolls off the tongue faster than you can truly hug someone and look into their eyes, wondering how they actually are. When you’re in transition (and transition is not a temporary state but perhaps an always-state, as Pema Chödrön has gently reminded me in her book, When Things Fall Apart), it’s much harder to answer that question definitively. I have an answer that sounds good, I have an answer that’s short and sweet, I have the answer that helps my parents worry less about my finances (So… how are you supporting yourself?), and I have a few ways to broach the conversation with friends.

The short answer is that I’m writing. And teaching. And learning. And living. The shift, if you put a definition on it, is that I’m no longer working full time with a single employer; I’m working in freelance mode with several clients and project across the country and around the world. Part journalist, part documentarian, part strategist and mostly writer, I’m building a new set of tools and skills and building a new business plan for myself. It’s liberating. It’s thrilling. It brings up every uncertainty I’ve ever had and puts them flat on the kitchen table and stares me square in the face.

It’s full-on accountability.

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” – Jack Kerouac

One of my first projects was a press campaign for a Y-Combinator company in San Francisco dedicated to helping aging seniors live gracefully. I joined Y-Combinator team True Link Financial, a tech start-up tackling the challenge of fraud target aging seniors. Seniors are increasingly vulnerable to misleading marketing and scams; the company’s cofounders Kai Stinchcombe and Claire McDonnell developed a new credit card with a customizable fraud-blocker that helps prevent your parents’ and grandparents’ money from being irreversibly stolen in the time in their life when they need it most.

Aging is an issue that’s fascinated me throughout my studies of cities and people, and with my grandparents aging and later leaving us, I wonder who will take care of them if we all don’t step in and take care of them. A society with no age diversity should alarm you: we need older people to be thriving within our ecosystems, visibly, or we should be concerned for our own future health. It won’t be long until we’re all old (hopefully–that’s the goal, right?). I wonder who will take care of me when I’m 70, 80, or 90.

“The way you do anything is the way you do everything.”

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My second assignment as an independent journalist this summer was joining 1for3.org as a documentarian and writer on a recent trip to Aida Camp, a Palestinian Refugee Camp in Bethlehem. I joined an exceptionally talented team of designers and human rights activists dedicated to making change in a part of the world that needs a lot of love. We traveled to Israel over the summer and spent time in several of the world’s oldest cities, and then focused on the problem of inadequate water access within a camp that serves 6,000 residents. A design and landscape-based challenge, the team built a variety of options to capture stormwater and rainwater, cleanse it, and re-distribute it as potable or recycled water for irrigation and play. While the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is long and complex (see this history of the conflict in maps), the challenge of capturing rainwater on a single site is something that can be implemented in real time. As a documentarian, I wrote 2,500 to 3,000 words per day, and we’re working on pieces for publication this Fall. Nothing in this paragraph suffices to capture what the trip was–I’m struggling for words. It was. I will write more.

And lastly, this Fall I’ll also be teaching again in the Writer’s Workshop, a private group for people who want to build a practice and a community around writing. Writing unlocks our minds and helps us clarify who we are, how we think, and how we connect with others. Last Spring, I opened up the first writing workshop to a group of twenty-five people from around the world and was blown away by the talent, enthusiasm, and dedication of each of the people in the class. I’ve updated and modified the program to make it into a four-week program that focuses on storytelling, imagination, creativity and persuasion–helping writers and aspiring writers of all fields learn how to add more detail, color, and story to their blog posts, essays, and other daily communications.

Writing well is critical to great living. It’s one of my core beliefs, as I dig into understanding the whys behind what I do: writing helps us clarify who we are, what we believe, and serves as an introspective tool for a journey into your own mind. Good writing also helps us get better at explaining ourselves, our ideas, our projects, our thought processes, and our deepest wants and desires. If you want to get better at any job, relationship, or project–get better at writing. Improving your writing makes nearly everything better. If you’ve been to one of my courses or live events before, come join us. ‘ll be sharing more information on the writing class over the next few weeks, and posting details here: http://dev.sarahkpeck.com/writers-workshop/.

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And in addition to leaving my Day job, I’ve left San Francisco for a while. 

The distance a country puts between your old life and a new, unprepared, different life–a life now navigated within the corridors of unfamiliar yet strangely reassuring streets–makes me see my old self with more contrast, more clarity. Distance gives perspective. Change shows your edges. Challenges reveal where we have more work to do.

I left San Francisco, heading to Brooklyn, New York for the Fall to build my own writing, teaching, and consulting practice. My client roster was overwhelming my ability to stay sane and get sleep while working full time, and so–I jumped. I leaned, and I leaned hard, arms spinning, free-falling in the the glorious disruption that is change. After long conversations with close friends, my own coaches, and my mentors both at my company and in my life, I wrapped up my time with my employer and I’m in a bit of a free space right now. It’s wonderful, it’s open, it’s strange, it’s new–and it’s now. It’s here. I’m in it.

It’s less of a jolt and disruption, in some ways, because I believe that the old employer–employee relationship is antiquated, and the job that’s perfect for you three years ago is not the same job (and nor are you the same person) today. Everything shifts and is in flux, and the jobs (employers, clients, projects) that stick around longest are ones that match you and your evolving human talents and needs the best. This shift, then, at least for me, is one towards more project-based work; a move that I believe is more in alignment with how corporate and employment relationships should work.

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But the truth is, I’m avoiding the heart matter, the real reason I’m changing tracks, the deeper stories woven into this framework of self-employment and time management. It’s easier to talk about jobs and locations and moving, because those are things I can point to. These are the things that feel safer to talk about, for some reason. Yet one of the beautiful, albeit less publicly prominent, stories in my life has has been simply and glossily covered over with the use of words like “life opportunities,” and “strategic choices” and “changes,” and “new directions.” These words mask the beauty of a burgeoning and deepening and marvelous love story I can’t even fully grasp that I’m a part of (me? this is me? how is this happening!?) — and my heart is cracking open with this new adventure. My partner. In life. I can’t wait to write about it, too, whenever the time is right.

In short, I’m stunned by how much my life has changed over the last few years. I bow in deep prayer to the universe and to spirits and to energy flows with thanks and gratitude for the gifts in my life.

We can’t wait until later to work on developing beautiful relationships, to starting new adventures, to leaning, to jumping. It’s always time to practice and to push. It’s an adventure, and you’ve only got a few opportunities to live it.

Breathe. 

But let’s dig a little deeper. Even beneath the shift in my relationships and the work that I’m doing is even deeper heart work. Life work. Body work. The thing is, I’m doing some mind work. I’ve been running at full steam for nearly a decade, and in a grasp towards more consciousness and deliberate creation, I’ve slowed down the project roll and I’m consciously practicing choices that make space in my life for essential philosophies and practices I want to devote more time to. I’m continuing to practice saying no to opportunities that don’t quite fit right; no to clients that aren’t a fabulous fit; and no to things that make me tired, cranky, and uncomfortable–like sitting still all day.

And as this moves forward, I’m creating space–ample space–for projects I’ve long put on the back burner.

My critics–largely internal–tell me this is silly, self indulgent, a waste of time. They sit on my shoulders and grumble, moaning about the work I’d better be doing, about the nonsensical things my brain tries to write, cackling in the backdrop. Occasionally I meet a real critic–someone who voices what I’ve been spinning up in my head–and the conversation usually ends with a decent explanation of why I’m doing what I’m doing, surprising even myself.

It can be easy.

It can be now.

My new apartment has a blank wall on it, in a room we’ve devoted to art and creation and the expansive, contemplative work my partner and I are devoted too, and even though we’re not moving in for another week or so, I’ve already scribbled across multiple sheets of paper with ideas, brainstorms, and plans. I’m pinning them up in the invisible wall in my mind. The marked shift is not one of dreaming that I put movement and writing first in my life, but a life in which I actually do it, and continue to align my life according to my values and principles.

Mind work, body work, spirit work.

We are more than the work we create and the products we produce. We are more than the money we earn and the statuses we post. We are humans, to the core, with moving, living, breathing bodies. We are connected, in communities and networks and relationships, and all of the pieces and parts need to be nurtured and allowed; cultivated and fed.

The next few months–nay, longer, please–are about mind work; about spirit work; about body work. We create a career and chase financial gains for consumer-based tendencies; in an effort to challenge these assumptions, the next few months of my life are deliberately about experimentation. I want to push myself (or yield, or soften) into experiments with mind and body. With doing more movement, and less computer work. With changing routines to learn what suits me best. With spirituality first and mental work first. With practices that develop the mind, body and soul. I’ve opened up space in this new life, this new day, for more writing and more movement. More teaching and more learning. More being.

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This means its messy, it’s different. There are a lot of late nights (or early nights) with tears. I’m not good at this; I’m not good at being composed and balanced at all times. I don’t expect myself to be, either. I get really stressed out and I want to throw things against walls and I make hyperactive sets of lists and then I feel like a complete failure when I’ve only done one or two things on my list. I put the list down. I listen to waves of anxiety roll across my body, and I practice trying to observe it—not critique it. I spend months in places that don’t feel right and only when it really really doesn’t feel good to I finally leave; and I learn that next time, I’ll listen to my intuition a little more closely. I shift, I dance, I fall.

Finding calm in the midst of chaos is not easy. Today is a day just like any other, and there is no arrival. Pema Chödrön’s “When Things Fall Apart,” has been a close reminder that the idea of chasing a completeness or an arrival–that feeling of having arrived is a false premise. We are not arriving, we are always arriving. We are always moving. Life is more often a state of chaos than calm; the fleeting satisfaction of completion erodes, too, as time passes and we seek more challenges, learning, opportunities.

The entire process—this ongoing, transitory adventure, this journey—provides fodder for stories and writing and ongoing exploration and journey. The more I grow and learn, the less I feel as though I have any answers at all. I document to track my brain’s inner workings, to train my mind, to place markers in the ground, to discover myself. I write because it’s such a gift to my soul and a beautiful way to connect with others. I teach writing because I hope to share the journey and discovery with like-minded individuals; I learn as much from the talented people I work with as I hope to share.

Thank you for joining me on this journey, and for listening. I’ve created beautiful friendships from this blog and I am grateful to be able to share with each of you.

To living life, to mind work, to creating space.

XOXO

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Tell me what you’ve been working on: I’d love to hear about it in the comments. How has your life shifted and changed over the past year? What’s become clear to you, and what are you working to prioritize? How do you deal with change and transition? 

Start where you are.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

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Where are you?

Just a few weeks ago: I’m sitting on the floor of an empty studio, barefoot, with not a piece of furniture in it. Boxes line the hallways and two giant moving trucks are parked out in the street. Every so often our dogs bark, whining about being pent up in the back. I’m helping my Dad move two states away, and the entire house has been up-ended. We’re sleeping on the carpet floor for two nights without beds. I have a radio interview scheduled and I’ve hidden in the bathroom to talk from my laptop to make this happen because their are painters next door.

Right now, we’re in limbo.

I ask if we can not use Skype video–as video is probably not the best medium at the moment, although I’m happy to talk — and right at the beginning, our interview accidentally goes to video. I laugh, and I tell my story: “Well, you caught me! I’m sitting on a floor right now, chatting at you while all the furniture is being taken out of my house … mind if we switch to audio only? Otherwise you’ll have me sitting on a floor in my yoga pants!” 

Right now, right here.

Let’s stop imagining the pretend perfect circumstances that might have maybe led to the possibility of your wildest dreams, and get real about the fact they haven’t happened yet. You are here. You are what you are.

Start where you are. Right here. Right now.

This is where the magic happens.

When you’re tired, worn out, flabbergasted, stressed out. You get up, you park yourself in the corner of the room, you duct-tape fabric ver the window to stop the glare, you polish your lips and you record that video interview anyways, even if you think the whole world behind you is falling apart. Do it in style. Make it happen.

Often all the things that aren’t right aren’t really problems–they are just crutches. “Well, I’ll do it once I have furniture in my house again. I’ll do it when I’m not so tired. I’ll do it when I’m feeling better. I’ll do it …”

Nope, sorry. This is it. Today.

I know very few stories of people who got set up in ideal circumstances and then made the magic happen. Rather, it’s about making the magic happen in any circumstance. (That’s true magic, right there).

Because if you can’t make it happen NOW… when will you?

Start where you are.

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Less is more, imperfect is perfect, and done is done: 17 tips, tricks & habits I use for writing, creation + business-building (or any creative pursuit).

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

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What’s better than perfect? Done is better than perfect.

Part of the beauty of writing, asking, and making projects is actually doing them. The best way out of something is often through it. Getting it done is where the art is. Seth Godin says “ship.” I say “do.” It means the same thing. Make it happen. Get it done.

It doesn’t matter whether or not you create the perfect product, the perfect essay, or the best story in the world; what matters is whether or not you have the nerve to ask and to create.

Sometimes you need to execute more and think less.

Rather than listen to all the voices that say you can’t do it, or why you’ll fail, take a step out and get started. Moving through something (physically, through action) is the best anecdote to stress, fear, and worry. At least this is what I’ve learned so far.

“What’s better than perfect? Done is better than perfect.”  (Tweet this)

Last Friday we wrapped the third week of my private Writer’s Workshop, a small group of writers that signed up on a 3-week journey and exploration in creative writing, narrative formation, storytelling, and persuasion. The class, a 15-module intensive, took us through a whirlwind a writing exercises and outlines frameworks and ideas around storytelling, understanding who you are, and the art (and difficulty) of creating a writing practice. (Side note: I’m so proud of them!!)

Often, as I work with clients and writers and with myself, I find a common middle section of any creative project or endeavor that’s fuzzy, mucky, uncomfortable, and scary. When we start any new practice–any art, any craft, anything that takes time and dedication and involves a bundle of newness–it’s terrifying. It’s that moment when the demons and creatures and critters tumble out of your neatly stacked closets, giggle and jump on your bed, and start a dance party that rattles you enough to make you think that starting was a bad idea.

But all those thoughts, all those jumbles, all that cranky and temperamental and strange stuff that pours out just when you were getting started–that is the good stuff.  That’s what you’re made of. That’s where the weird, wonderful, and zany comes from. It’s right at the beginning and when we get started that e need to set down the judgments and trade them for observations, noting only that we have this smattering of extremely strange and uncomfortable critters setting up a band show across our normally-made bed (Hah! You really think I make my bed? Right. Onwards).

One of my favorite lessons from the three-week class is my lesson on my personal writing and creation mantras: a bundle of tips, tricks, and habits that I keep posted up on my walls and in various locations as reminders and mantras towards my better self.

When I feel like crawling under the bed into the safety of the darkness and I think that the critters inside my mind will break everything in my house just by being them, I look at one of these mantras, breathe in a little bit, and remind myself to keep going.

I can survive a little hair-pulling. I can survive crayons all over the floor. I can survive the messiness. I can survive a massive dance party instigated by imaginary creatures in my mind. I can survive the Wild Things. I CAN SURVIVE THE MESSINESS! Because truly, the messiness is me. And in the exercise, I ask each person to create a list of mantras of their own (or to adopt whichever ones seem to fit from below).

What are your writing mantras? What are your creation mantras? How do you create your best self, and your best work? Here’s my list, to start you off.

17 Tips, Tricks & Habits I Use for Writing, Creation, Building and Motivation (Or Any Other Creative Pursuit).

In whatever your journey, the journey is about you.

Each person has a different dream, and your dream is the one that’s important in this journey (not anyone else’s). Your dream may be to write a book, to author a hundred books, or maybe to write a single essay. Perhaps your calling is to learn how to craft love letters to the important person in your life, or the important person who will be in your life after you write the story of how they get there. Writing might be a tool in your arsenal of visioning and dreaming, or it might be a process of self-discovery. Just like Gretchen Rubin writes “Be Gretchen,” so do I have sticky note on my wall that says: “Be Sarah.” Be you. Only you can be you.

In turn, the more I am me, the more me I become. Writing has been immensely useful in developing my relationship with myself, and seeing who I am and how I’ve grown. The better facility I gain with words, the better I get at processing, feeling, and learning from emotions.

The only system you need is the one that works.

I set up two key writing days for myself, with two optional mornings to write. I make these days priorities where writing is key; on the other days, writing is optional but always a possibility if I make time for it. If I find myself not writing or publishing as much, it’s a key to me to adjust the system—maybe I need to dial back the emphasis on other parts of my life and find another morning or night to dedicate an hour or two to writing. (Tweet this!)

The only system you need is the system that works

Habits are important frameworks.

Every writer I know talks about the importance of ritual and habit—whether it’s a morning pattern or a daily habit. For me, I have a few loose frameworks that guide me towards my larger goals—I try to publish once weekly, at minimum, and I try to write at least three days per week. Some weeks I write every day (I love writing, and I’ve been in the habit for a few years so I’m long familiar with this); and other times I only write once a week or so. When I find myself writing less, there’s inevitably a day or a two that month that the ideas start to come pouring out because I haven’t given them time to breathe.

My weekly structure gives me two mornings and two evenings to focus on writing; while I can break these rules and patterns occasionally (there are always conference calls to China that pop up), I try to keep at least 2 or 3 of the times for myself so that I can write.

Within a given month, I try to make sure at least one weekend is “clean”—in that it doesn’t have travel, events, or anything else scheduled on at least one (if not both) of the days. Often I actually have to go in and preemptively schedule the day out for writing so I don’t muck it all up with too many appointments. I’ll set a date with myself at one of my favorite coffee shops and plan to go, write, and eat for 4-5 hours that day and focus on writing and writing alone.

It takes longer than you think.

Writing is about philosophy, about articulation and detailing ideas and getting clarity around a concept or an idea. The harder the concept or the more challenging the story, the longer it will take you to work through it. It can take me several hours just to piece together a single story framework. If I have less than an hour, I usually can’t get to a depth or a place that I want to get and I become quite frustrated. I try to block out at least an hour, if not two hours, for my morning and evening sessions. Lately I’ve found myself losing track of time – I’ll come home around 7:30 or 8 pm, start writing on a Friday evening, and I’ll look up and the clock will read 12 or 1 AM and I’ve got to put the pen (or computer) down and head to bed so I can make it through the day reasonably the next day.

Deadlines are critical.

I have weekly goals (I call them frameworks) and monthly goals that serve as a baseline for what I want to make in the world. Some months I can’t possibly achieve it, and that’s fine—I try to strike a balance between pushing myself and enjoying myself during the process. If I’m going absolutely nuts and feeling overwhelmed, scared, and exhausted, then that’s not any good. My goal isn’t to make myself miserable! But if I go for more than a month or two without maintaining my baseline and I don’t notice things changing, I step in and re-evaluate what I’m working on and see if there is something I can say no to so that I can make space for more of my writing.

“To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.” – Leonard Bernstein  (Tweet this)

It’s okay to take breaks.

I took an entire quarter off from writing my blog last year by taking a week off of work and writing 8 posts and spacing them out over a couple of months–all so that I could take some much-needed time to rest and rejuvenate my soul. I tend to work on projects in “seasons,” and define goals within each season—and there’s often at least one rest season (read: Winter) during each year so that I can restore myself and think about what to build next. Sometimes during a Spring or Summer season, I’ll focus more on one aspect of a project (like launching a writer’s workshop, or swimming a bunch), and I’ll dial back on my other responsibilities and goals so I can make it happen.

Set parameters and end dates.

Always set end dates. Give yourself permission to finish something. As you think about the next phase of your writing practice, consider what your goals might be. I highly recommend starting with a small framework (of perhaps 3-4 essays) and building a series around one particular topic, and finishing it. It’s imperative to finish a project and have something to point to. Most people don’t need to start an indefinite blog to create work in the world.

I’ve created many small projects based on sub-topics (as an example, I wrote a 20-essay blog strictly on my experience of the environment in San Francisco with details of the fog, homeless, and urban lifestyle; I started the project knowing that I wanted to spend a summer ‘collecting observations’ about the city I loved, and that the project would wrap by the end of the summer). The writing was fun to do, I got to tell stories in a way that was different than I’d been doing before, and I now have a collection of essays that I can use as writing samples, that I can pull from in future stories, and that I could eventually turn into a bigger project if I felt the itch to do that. (As I’m always saying: get started and do something, and learn from it!)

If it’s too big to do, make it smaller.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by an aspect of your project, get way smaller. Just do a tiny bit of it. We work in fragments of time that add up, slowly. Today is just a day. Carve an hour, do a small bit.

“If it’s too big to do, make it smaller.”  (Tweet this)

The BEST way to reduce stress is to do work on the project, not avoid it.

Want to feel better? Get started. That’s it. That’s my secret. Everything is part of a larger conversation. You’re just starting with a piece of it, and giving that nuance.

Read well. If you can’t read well, you can’t write well.

Get rid of the trash. Unsubscribe from blogs and news that aren’t helpful. Unfollow people that don’t fill your feed with good stuff. Fill your brain. Push it. Challenge it. The most important thing you can do to be a better writer is read. I recently listed a years’ worth of my favorite books, and I’m already embedded in at least half a dozen new novels, historical accounts, and business books this month alone. Immersing yourself in good quality writing is the best teacher. Seek out people who push you and challenge you and feel free to say no to the rest.

There is no good writing, there is only good re-writing.

When I work with new writers, I often tell them to expect the first page to be “full of shit, with a few gems hidden in there somewhere.” It takes time, patience, and a whole bunch of red-lines to work with words on a page. It also takes the courage to put words down on paper without initial judgment or concern. Just do it, and let yourself write. Don’t let your judgment of yourself preclude you from starting in the first place. Trust that it can continue to get better with editing, time, and practice.

The goal is not complex words and simple ideas, but simple words and complex ideas.

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. Writing does not need to be complicated, pretentious, confusing, or full of jargon. To me, writing is a process for building understanding for yourself, and others. For myself, I often copy notes, explore ideas, and re-work words on a page just to tango with an idea until it makes sense in my mind. If I can’t explain it to people, then I’m not well-versed enough in the concept. Writing is a tool for communication (externally) as well as understanding (internally). Often, much of my writing is just about my words, rants, ideas, and explorations–before any of it gets shared with anyone else.

Let your voice develop.

Every writer has a different personality and voice, and learning what yours is takes time and practice. I’m often influenced by my favorite writers—leaning more towards a New York Times persona when I spend a Sunday reading the opinion pages, and oscillating back towards a bossy voice when I spend too much time listening to lectures. In between all of this input, I need to carve out time to develop my own voice and persona; this is a craft that takes many iterations. Start practicing!

What you take out is just as important as what you leave in.

Getting to a clear, simple essay or point is not straightforward. Often, I have to write 5-6 pages just to get to a distillation of one great paragraph. It’s part of the process.

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Capture your ideas however you can.

I love keeping a notebook and jotting down my ideas. Inspiration can show up during your routine, and it can show up at any time. I keep a pocket recorder on my phone and I talk stories to myself while walking through the city or driving in a car (why is it that driving triggers so many new ideas!?). I keep the recordings as well as my digital notes and I send them to myself via email to a folder called “notes.” When I get back to my computer, if I don’t have any ideas that are pressing, I go back through and read my short notes and scratching from the recordings, notes, and my notebooks, and find something that catches my attention. Then I begin with that.

Take the time to build your space and your project.

The world needs to hear what you have to say. “The world” might just be your son, daughter, or significant other, but they still need to hear it. An audience of a handful of people is still an audience. (For more on this, read my thoughts on building your voice on the internet and why I think you should join in). It’s time. Say what needs to be said.

Know what you want and what you value.

This is an easy phrase to say and can take years of work. Learn what’s important to you. Get to know yourself. Write because it teaches you, not just because you have something to say. Write because it will make you a better person, and write because it helps us become more of ourselves.

Done is done.

Sign it. Seal it. Deliver it. A dream unfinished is not reality. It’s your job to create it. Make it happen. Done is done, nothing else.

“DONE is done. Nothing else.”  (Tweet this)

What about you? What creates your best self and your best work?

In the comments below, let me know: what are your writing mantras? What are your creation mantras? How do you create your best self, and your best work? 
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Building a Space and a Voice on the Internet: Is It Time For You to Join In?

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

To Be A Person Is To Have A Story To Tell
Where are you telling your stories?

This past Monday we kicked off the first Writer’s Workshop with a group of 22 participants from more than a dozen states and countries around the world. I’m so impressed and inspired by the talent and hard work coming from the group already—and we’re just in week one! Writing is a journey into yourself, your ideas, and your memories—and taking the time to create something in words is a beautiful (albeit intensely personal) exercise. Several people have emailed me to ask if I’ll be teaching the course again and the answer right now is more than likely yes! I’ll be teaching the class as a summer session in mid-July, with details for signing up coming in mid-June. Sign up to get notified via weekly blog updates or send me an email if you’d like to join. Speaking of creating… is this something you’re dreaming of doing more of? Keep reading…

Building your voice on the internet: is it time for you to join in?

Have you been thinking about joining the online conversation? Have you been dreaming of starting a blog, website, or writing more?

By far, the most frequent thing I hear in my coaching and teaching is a remark that seems on everyone’s mind:

“I want to start a blog, but I’m not sure where to start.”

“I have an idea, but I’m not sure anyone wants to read it.”

“I have too many ideas, so I end up never writing them down!”

The internet can be an intimidating place—we see people who seem to write effortlessly, and publish often; they have crowds of people gathering and listening, and it seems like that’s something you’ll never get to—so why bother? Should you join in at all?

These are my arguments for why YOU should speak up.

The goal isn’t to have the loudest voice on the internet. It’s to have a voice. Your voice. The internet is a gold-rush right now, as people create content and the connections and communities born are exploding and multiplying faster than Google’s Spiders can crawl them. Should you join the conversation? There’s already enough noise and buzz anyway. What would you have to offer?

The point of writing isn’t that it’s for anyone else, at least not at first. (If your goal is to attract fame and fortune immediately, examine that desire and assumption. What is the deeper root? What are you hoping for?)

Writing and storytelling are about developing a relationship with your voice and ideas; it’s about finding (and practicing) ways of expressing them to yourself and others.

Carve out a home on the internet.

If and when you DO want to connect with others, however, it’s important to carve out your own “home” on the internet. In the world of Google-ability, we are quickly researching each other in order to learn about their skills and talents.

What do people find when they put your name into the Google machine?

The good news is that you can own this answer pretty quickly. If you want to craft three articles on a particular topic that’s interesting or a hobby to you (ideally something you’d like to be known for), you can start a Tumblr, Weebly or a WordPress domain for free or almost free (less than $50, max, if you want to own a domain name and buy a theme) and post three articles under a header with your name and contact information on it. This can be done in as little as four weeks. All of a sudden, when someone types in your name, or better yet—the topics you’ve written about—you can now be found. Your ideas can be known.

Resumes are static, and we’re searching for ideas through our web-maze of online information. Make yourself “findable.” Put your information onto the web so that search engines–and people, and serendipity–can stumble across it. Without putting yourself out there, it’s a lot harder to be found.

I get so many emails from people that say, “I was looking for an article about how to improve my writing, or how to write a thank you note, and I started reading your blog and sat down with you for an hour lastnight. It was so fun to read your thinking. Thank You.” 

By putting my words and ideas into a space where other people can find them–I’ve let myself be found. I can become known for my ideas. If you have an idea and it’s stuck in your head, there isn’t an easy way for anyone to know that you have it. Serendipity comes through connection and collision, and when people can find you and your ideas, possibility sparks.

Now – these interactions didn’t happen right away – I definitely blogged for at least six months with only my mother commenting, gently correcting most of my typos and spelling or grammar errors. My sister discovered Grammar Girl and gleefully pointed out my mistakes as well, which, as a younger sister, I’m sure delighted her. (I then hired her as my editor for my print projects, which probably made her happy as a clam–she got paid to point out all of my mistakes. Oh, life).

Starting small: creating a project, not a life (for now).

The other thing to remember is that some of my favorite websites aren’t by people who show up every week. You might not have the stamina (or the resources) to enter into a writing relationship that’s indefinite in its time frame or scope. In fact, I think that’s a terrible way to start. For people starting a blog, I recommend thinking of it as a “Project” and not a “Indefinite Relationship.” When you commit to a blog and say to yourself that you’re going to write every week for the next two years, the minute you mess up or miss a week, you’ve essentially failed the project. Who wants to be disappointed that they tried something?

The alternative is to create a project that you can do well at, by changing the parameters. Instead of promising an indefinite relationship, drastically reduce it in scope and start with a reasonable project that has a defined ending from the beginning. When you can close a project successfully and complete it, you’re much more likely to continue on to a phase two or phase three of a project, rather than let it taper off into the land of incomplete projects. You also change the feeling relationship you have with yourself—instead of creating an inevitable failure-situation, with resulting disappointments and twangs, putting pressure to show up in a way that might not be reasonable for you because of all of your various commitments–you’re creating a success situation, where you can end the project within a concrete time frame and still be very happy that you did it at all.

I recommend creating a project that says, “I’d like to talk about _[topic]_ in 4 posts, within the next two months.” Give yourself a start time, and end time, and a quantity. Specify a topic. Perhaps you want to blog about four fabulous meals that you cooked and created. Maybe you want to chronicle your science journey behind the lens of a microscope. Maybe you want to document your notes on a new class you’re taking. You could start a Tumblr with your favorite photos of doorways in your quirky city. The possibilities are endless, but you must pick one small one (and only one).

Don’t believe me? Blake Master’s compilations of Peter Thiel’s lectures is one of my favorite sites to read and there’s a fixed (static) amount of content – 13 lectures – accessible indefinitely for those that want to self-teach and read the series. He’s not adding more content. He’s creating great content and sticking it up in a place for people to find it.

What I find with myself–and others–is that if we start too big, we actually fail to start at all. When we dream the big dream of master projects and hundreds of photographs and best-selling books, many people fail to start because the dream is too big. I’m all for big dreams and goals–and relish in them, dance in them, and visualize them–but when it comes to the implementation, start with something small enough to do in a day or a week. Want to write a best-selling book or post? Start by researching your ideas, one at a time, in short posts. You can collect them later. In fact, the short pieces will serve as your building blocks for the bigger pieces.

Almost everyone I know that’s created something big started one, small, tiny step at at time.

Bottom line recommendation? Create a fixed, small project that’s do-able within a time frame of less than 3 months.

What about creating a community? How do you get people to read your stuff?

What is a community, anyways? Traffic is a collection of people “listening” or knowing how to find you and your new internet home. Traffic is built by pointing people, one by one, to the content you’ve created. Without arrows pointing in your direction (and that comes from giving people a way to find you in the form of an email, tweet, verbal share, facebook post, or link from another site as some examples), you won’t have very many people who accidentally stumble across your site. If the content is good, each person that sees it might share it with a few more people, and the site will grow slowly over time.

While I believe you should begin by sharing directly with your immediate colleagues and friends–emailing them to tell them you’ve written something; the absolute best way to grow traffic to a website is to write a guest post or article for a website that already has a built-in community or audience. It’s far easier than trying to coax one person at a time to your site. Scavenge the web for places that accept guest posts in your topic or area of interest, and spend time writing 2-3 posts that could be submitted at these places.

How big should your desired community be? Does it need to be a big community?

Before you jump into needing more traffic, however, I have many thoughts on how big a community needs to be.

The simple truth is that your story is important even if only one person hears it. Even if you’re the one who needed to write the story in the first place. We tell stories and share information to connect with other people, and your experience may mean the world to someone else, even if there are only a handful of people reading the site. Maybe the one person who reads your story desperately needs to hear that there’s someone else in the world like them, and you’re that person. Never underestimate the power of a small audience.

The best way to share your stuff is to think honestly and authentically about the work you’re creating and who you’d like to read it. Then, select a couple of friends and colleagues and send them an email that says, “I just wrote an essay about my experience with ____, and I thought you might find it useful or enjoy reading the story. I’m building my writing craft, and I’d love it if you would take the time to tell me what you think or if you thought the story resonated with you.”

Why traffic is not the same as community.

There’s a bit of pressure to garner a lot of attention and traffic to a website, and I think that only looking at the raw numbers misses the bigger picture. A lot of people get frustrated when their traffic count doesn’t seem as high as they’d like to be. While more can sometimes be better, it’s not (to me at least) about creating a site or a post that millions of people see. It’s about creating a post that resonates with a group of people that want to see what you’re writing about.

When you think about traffic, I believe that you first need to start by understanding your own personal goals. What do you want to achieve? Why is traffic important? What are your aims?

Why are you building your site, and your community? Is it documentation, analysis, understanding, connection? Who do you want to connect with? What are you hoping to achieve?

Does it matter if 20,000 people visit your site or that 2 people “convert”? Conversion is a term that indicates when someone has behaved in a way that you want them to–often measured in sign-ups or purchases. In the case of Landscape Architecture, where I work on projects that have 10-, 20-, or 30-year time frames, many developers and architects are clients that work with us on projects over many years. What this means is that we don’t need hundreds of thousands of people visiting our site (although that’s fine that they do)–our desired conversion (our want, our outcome), is getting the people who visit the site to connect with us and hire us to do incredible urban design projects around the world. If only ten people visited our website–but ten of our right people, developers or architects who want to hire us for multi-million dollar city-design projects or urban landscapes, that would be 100% a win.

For me, on this website, I am intentionally creating a space where first and foremost I get to learn and practice the craft of writing out loud. I simply LOVE storytelling and describing things to people. I enjoy it immensely when people enjoy what I have to say and engage in conversation about ideas or questions that I’ve presented.

I have grown this site by developing relationships with people one by one, and I’ve tried to take the time to answer almost every email that comes my way via this blog. Sometimes it takes me a week or two, and some weeks I have to shutter down and I miss a few – but for the most part, I cherish the interactions that have come from two years of blogging and getting to know people around the world who are interested in similar ideas. I believe strongly (and think we should all remember) that everyone on the other end of these fiber-optic cables is a human person and should be treated as such. Even in my writing, it’s not “my readers,” but lots of individual people forming a relationship with me (or my writing). A relationship involves two people! The more you can connect on a human level, the more you resonate—as a friend, as an author, as a creator, as a business person, as a marketer.

What does success mean for this blog? I started it as a space where I could think (through writing) about particular ideas I love–philosophy, psychology, motivation, storytelling, entrepreneurship and innovation, strategy. It became a place where I could connect (via ideas) to souls around the world who found resonance in what I was saying (and vice versa). I’ve met thousands of people through this blog, taught workshops across the country, found homes to stay in while traveling abroad, and had morning after morning of delightful coffee conversations with hundreds of people who reached out just to say hello.

I’ve built a small side business around this internet home, specifically by teaching writing courses both online and in person, coaching and consulting with people looking for someone to reflect and analyze their ideas or projects, and doing high-intensity work with folks who sign up for the Start Something Project that I built last year. One of the things people ask me for the most is to be their buddy while they build a project, and coach them along the way as they build their first project–I get it. It’s helpful to have someone there who can show you some of the ropes while you figure out what you’re doing. (Don’t worry–I take the training wheels off pretty quickly after one or two calls). But to be fair: I think you can do this all on your own.

Knowing your “right size.”

Interacting one on one, for me, also gives me huge value: I learn what people are working on, I develop new ideas for posts, I have “ah-ha!” moments where I understand how to describe something, and I get better at crafting things that are actually helpful. This post, in fact, is largely born out of a long conversation I had with a recent client developing her own blog and writing practice (thank you, for inspiring this post!).

One of the reasons I’ve been trying to “grow slowly” on the internet is because I want to develop real relationships with people, give myself space to breathe, learn and mess up, and also because it’s not about mass quantity. Do I want to be on the New York Times within the next few years? You bet. Would I like to write stories for the New Yorker? Absolutely. I also know that the best way to get there is not through a magic wand or sudden change, but through showing up, practicing, and moving forward on a consistent basis.

The other fallacy is that you need to have an audience of tens of thousands to make a viable business work. The reality is that the business you’re running might only need a handful of clients or customers. In fact, I might argue that having 10,000 people look at your stuff and only 10 people “convert” is poor efficiency.

To make a business work, you need to offer something of value to people who are interested, want, or need what you’re selling. I believe in business relationships that are highly satisfying to all parties involved—you learn, you grow, you get attention, mentoring, ideas, strategy, advice, review—and I also learn, grow, and cherish the working relationship and enjoy the service that I’m giving. To do my client work, I only work with two or three people a month as my “side hustle,” that is second to my full-time day job. In my recent writing course that I built, I’m not looking for 500 people; I’m looking for a small community of 20-30 writers interested in learning and writing in community.

How many people do you need to reach to make this business work? You don’t need 10,000 readers, you need the right amount of the right people–the ones who find high value in what you’re offering. To develop a community, you need to build the right audience for the product or service that you’re creating.

Perhaps there’s something to developing medium-sized communities or “tribes,” as other people call them. I love and cherish the people that I’m getting to know—and I’m constantly in awe of the talent, ideas, and personalities that cross my radar just because I happen to write stuff on the internet. I thank you.

As You Grow

Things change. As you build a space for yourself on the internet, everything will change, as things tend to do. I’ve always said that the first 1000 people will get a response, and as the community and shape of my work changes, I’ll shift my strategy to create a strategy that’s satisfying and pleasing in service of my best work for the most people that I can reach.

But before “growth” in the numbers or traffic sense comes growth as a person, and growth in your skill sets. Just as I’m trying as a novice in dance class each week, a tall gangly female of all legs who keeps moving in the wrong direction, building a writing practice and a craft takes practice. It’s okay to start small, and it’s okay to have just one essay at a time. Start with the right sized audience and a single essay, and go from there.

Resources I love:

There’s a whole world of amazing people and products on the internet, and you don’t have to start from scratch if you don’t want to. For an investment of $100 to $2000, you can find someone (or a couple of great lessons) to show you what steps to take and how to move forward. $2000 may feel like a lot, but most people who went to college spent about $5000 per class, as a point of reference. I’ve taken probably thirty-odd classes from $25 to several hundred dollars in order to learn more about all of these. (You get to keep the skills you learn, by the way.) Here are some of my favorites:

Enjoy:

  • Jenny Blake’s May Mastermind For Side Hustlers and Solopreneurs–If you’re curious what a mastermind is or how it works, her May “sampler” is a month-long mastermind group that focuses on creating optimized schedules, financial roadmaps, finding your ideal client, and building an action plan for your business. Priced at the ridiculously low $75, she said she’s offering this alternative class as a way for more people to access her programs (and to make it “impossible not to sign up”). Speaking of amazing content, Jenny’s Behind-The-Business blog updates are one of my FAVORITE things to read. She shares her process for building, creating, and all of the nitty details you wish someone would talk about, but rarely do. Not publicized as a blog, it’s probably better than most blog posts.
  • Think Traffic, by Corbett Barr, a website with tricks and tips and ways to build a blog (with traffic–if that’s your goal!). His product, Start A Blog That Matters, has been well-received and I’ve heard rave reviews.
  • Fizzle, another product by Corbett Barr, Caleb Wojcik, and Chase Reeves is an online community of business training and video training for $35 a month ($315 for the year).
  • Anything Danielle LaPorte, but mostly her latest, The Desire Map, as a way to discover your true desired feelings and help create a new way to think about goals and desires.
  • Tara Gentile’s MasterMind Group, 10 Thousand Feet–a coaching and mastermind group to “pull you out of the trenches and give you the big-picture view on your business.” Creator of the ‘New/You Economy’ movement, Tara gives wonderful no-nonsense business advice and I’ve treasured her speaking events and engagements. This one clocks in at her early-bird $1800 price, and it’s a 3-month intensive for people with new/early businesses who want a summer of focused, personalized work to build their work to the next level. Most small-group masterminds are at least $2000 or more, so this one’s a great value for those initiating businesses or in the earlier years.
  • The Live Well Space, by Suzannah Scully–I met Suzannah via Twitter (after a very public swim) and we realized that we were walking down the same street(s) in San Francisco. We both had heard of each other and wanted to know more. After a long and lovely morning laughing with tears streaming down our cheeks, we convened a fast and cherished friendship. Her blog channels yoga + philosophy + movement + strategic wisdom, and the focus of her work is on living, working, and loving well. Her coaching work builds 3-month relationships with clients to unpack and restructure your life’s focus towards greater clarity and happiness.
  • New Minimalism by Cary Fortin–another soul sister whose creation rocks my socks off — Cary’s work looks at how less clutter and fewer things can bring more freedom and happiness to our lives, but takes the edge off of the extreme nature of many minimalist movements that trends towards absolute nothing. Believing that enjoyment and luxury can also be a part of simplicity and specificity, her new blog is a delicious discovery.
  • Hannah Marcotti’s Community Grace–I’m a few days late in sharing this, but Hannah’s lovely, raw, real community for women has periodic 30-day group sessions for a $49 registration fee to join in learning about blogging, growth, and community-building. I love and admire her work, and think you’ll love her blog if you haven’t seen it already.

My takeaways for you? Build yourself an “internet home,” even if it’s only to enjoy making something by yourself.

I’m biased–I think we should all participate in this new form of community space, this digital world where we can place our creations. If you’re wavering about creating something, let me be clear: I think it’s time for you to join in.

To make it easy on yourself, start small. Pick one topic or project that you’re interested in, and make a small commitment to create a collection of pieces–drawings, ideas, words, notes, stories, essays, paintings, photos, or other–around this topic.

Give yourself a deadline of 3 months or less (ideally one month). And finish it.

What happens? It gives you something to point to. It’s a reference point for the future. It’s a means towards executing your projects. It’s a way to start a conversation. And it’s a way to do the things you’ve been talking (or thinking) about doing.

And best-case scenario? You get to meet a few people along the way who like talking about what you’re doing.

It’s an incredible place. I hope you’ll join in.sarah signature

Bravery

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

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Bravery.

Bravery is showing up.

Bravery is saying what you believe in. Out loud. To the people who need to hear it. Even if that person is you. 

It’s having honest communication with your self, your teams, your communities.

Bravery is saying no when you know you need to. It’s saying no to the wrong things so that you can say yes to the right things.

Bravery is having the courage to quit when you know you’re on the wrong track, even if hundreds of thousands of people are headed in one direction. It’s knowing when the path you are on isn’t the one for you. It’s taking that scary leap, swimming upstream, or wandering down unfamiliar trails.

Bravery isn’t fun, macho, or full of gusto. It’s not always done in one big sweep.

Bravery is all the heroes in Boston, visible and invisible, local and global. 

Bravery is having the courage to stand out on social media and remind people to collect the dots, not connect them too early.

Bravery is saying something different and showing empathy for our peers around the world. It’s not jumping to conclusions too quickly. It’s remembering what we stand for and believing in the best of us.

Sometimes bravery is remarkable, unfathomable courage by the youngest and oldest of human souls who rush forward to help everyone and put their lives on the line to save others. The runners in Boston who kept running to the hospital to donate blood were Remarkable. Beautiful. Stunning. Incredible.

Other times bravery is calm, methodical. Sometimes it looks quite peaceful. Sometimes it’s shaking off the noise and clamor and distraction and realizing with simple focus that your next steps require you to take those steps and walking forward is the best and happiest way forward.

Bravery might not be visible to anyone else at the time that you’re being brave. Bravery might be broadcast on national television (but that’s not the point).

It’s showing up, little by little. 

It’s putting yourself out there, even if “out there” is pushing past your own mental barriers.

It’s deciding that now is a better time than later.

Bravery is bravery, even if it doesn’t look that remarkable to anyone else. You are still brave.

It’s continuing to press on, even when your stomach drops in fear, your hands shake in nerves, and you collect sweat in your armpits faster than fog droplets in a San Francisco “summer” day. It’s taking a step forward in the midst of whirlwind gusts of wind and shouting into the windstorm, I’ve got this, dammit! I’m still going to do it! I have to! 

My soul tells me I have to do this, and I have to listen.

Start small. (It’s okay to start with a bang, too, but small is still very brave).

Watch for the mental overwhelm, and give yourself kindness and space to freak the heck out (although maybe not publicly just yet).

Be very kind to yourself.

And also, remember,

in your quest for bravery:

In order to do something new, you often have to let go of something old.

The trouble with starting something is that it requires a different behavior than what you did before.

We are creatures of habit, yes, but we are also creatures of continuous change.

Spring is the perfect time for creative bursting, for unfolding, for the skin-shedding, cocoon-bursting metamorphosis that transforms you towards your next self.

The world is waiting for you to grow into the next version of you. 

Bravery doesn’t always feel like bravery.

It can feel like whirl-wind, mind-bending, all-changing upset, filled with unpredictable whims and whammies, stomach upset and nervous twitters, body aches, starts and stops, trial and error, and a whole lot of messy.

Sometimes bravery feels nauseating, overwhelming, scary, and downright hard.

It’s still brave.

 

A little insider’s story–my story:

When I opened the doors and launched my writing class last week, I was terrified. This was my brain:

What if I wasn’t ready? What if no one showed up? What if nothing worked? What if this dream of mine, that I’ve been working and crafting and creating for so many months past, resulting in a big giant internet wall of silence? 

Intellectually, I know that I can do this. I’ve been ready to do this for years. I’ve taught workshop after workshop and coached folks for years. I have a chart on my wall of the things I’m leaning towards this year, and the one big thing not lined up for the longest time was creating a course for writers. I can’t confess to understanding all of the reasons that I’ve avoided doing it, but I can speculate.

It means so much to me.

I knew deep down that I would do it even if only one person showed up. I would do it even if no one paid me the first time, and I would keep honing my chops and my offerings until I found the right fit.

That still doesn’t mean I’m not incredibly terrified. I get scared! Scared SHITLESS. My brain, many weeks ago:

What if no one shows up? What if I’m a terrible teacher? What if I can’t get it all done? What if it doesn’t work? WHAT IF NOT ONE PERSON SHOWS UP? What it I can’t do it on top of the work I’m already doing? What if this isn’t what I’m meant to do? WHAT IF, WHAT IF, WHAT IF EVERYTHING???

WHAT IF IT’S ALL JUST WRONG?

So scream the fear-monster voices in my head.

Yes. They are there. I have them. 

When you get close to your dreams, fear can rage like a giant monster. Every thing that could go wrong seems to loom large. The website broke. I stayed up all night, nervous about prepping the materials. Funky characters showed up across my website. More things went wrong. Before launching the program, I waited for months. I studied stacks and stacks of books, compressing more knowledge into the course documents in order to make it even better. I stalled. And then stalled some more. I thought about not doing it at all. I almost said to myself, “Nah, one wants this. It’s not worth trying.” 

And then someone thanked me. People went out of their way to reach out and tell me how excited they were. 

Several more people signed up. The class started filling up before I had all my ducks lined up and my posts ready to go. (I have so much more promotion I’m planning on!)

In the form: “Yes. I’ve been waiting for this. This is exactly the class I want.” and “I’m so excited I cannot WAIT until the 29th!”

Holy shit. I’m so excited. And thankful. This is going to be good.

Today, with the class more than half full already, I could laugh away those fears and pretend with a big shiny smile that everything is all and well, but it’s not the truth. I’m scared, too. The fear monsters hit everyone. I don’t know all the answers. But I do love writing!

I’ve learned, slowly, over and over again, that the scariest part of doing anything is not doing it and wallowing in thought. 

And wrapping your thoughts around all those fears? That’s a scary space.

Be brave. Get started.

The best way to do anything is to do it. If you’re afraid of starting, make it smaller and simpler. Want to have a conversation with your boss about something you’re frustrated about? Don’t write a big report or delay on it. Write a quick, simple email that says: “I’ve got a couple of items I’d really like to talk to you about–including a couple of frustrations I’d like to work through. When’s the best time to chat, and is there a format that’s easiest for you?” Do it as soon as you know that you have to have this conversation. Stop by and say what you think. Look for solutions.

And be brave. I know it’s terrifying, I know it’s not easy, and I go through it all the time.

Be brave.

With big love this week,

sarah signature

 

Are You Over Thinking?

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Sometimes the answer is just doing it.

Not thinking about doing it. Not writing about doing it. Not talking about doing it. And not waiting on it, or giving it more time.

Sometimes you just need to do it.

Anticipation can be deadly. Every time I have to jump into cold water or a cold pool, I can’t think about it too much. The more I think about it, the longer it takes to do it. The longer I think about it, the harder it gets to pull the trigger. The longer I think about it, the less time I spend actually doing it, and the more time I spend lost in thinking about it. The worst part is always the first three minutes as my body acclimates to the change in temperature from the outside air to the colder pool. And magically, after those three minutes, the sting wears off and I even begin to forget those moments pre-cold. Adaptation happens quickly. We forget our fears the minute we go ahead and get started.

The worst part is starting. Scratch that. Sometimes the worst part is the anticipation of starting. Sometimes the worst part is all that dang thinking you do before you start doing what you really need to just be doing. It’s all that thinking about starting that can paralyze you.

Quit that thinking.

The antidote to anticipation is action.

The hardest part can be just getting started.