It All Depends On How You See It.
I was having such a hard time getting going on this piece. I probably should have expected that. Sometimes these pieces just flow, almost writing themselves in a flurry of expressed emotion, and the last few have been like that.
So it should come as no surprise that I was going to run straight into writers block tonight. I should have been ready for it, trusting that eventually I would find a pathway through, and into a piece that I felt was worth sharing.
And I did, but not in the way I was expecting to.
Because in the past, when this kind of a block hits me, I would start piece after piece, becoming more and more frustrated each time I would falter. Annoyed, I would delete the piece I had been writing, and start over again, desperately seeking that first paragraph that would start me on a course to completion. In digital terms, I was ripping the paper out of the typewriter and throwing it in the garbage can.
But not tonight. Tonight I finally realized a simple truth, by applying one of my favorite pieces of wisdom.
I’ve been training myself, when I become angry or frustrated, to ask the powerful question “Why is this happening for me?”
It’s a great question, as it focuses me away from the negatives of a situation, forcing me to both find the positives of a given moment and think of ways forward so that I can change a bad situation into a good one. So when I tried that tonight, a powerful realization struck me.
I had been throwing away some really good ideas, that might have been great pieces on another day.
Wow, did I feel like an idiot for a moment. All the work before that I wasted in frustration could have been used another day to inspire, ennoble and uplift. They were all gone, because I allowed my anger (which was really self pity, but that’s for another day) to blind me to how I could have used this situation for the better.
So today, every time I started to write and got stuck, I simply saved the document with a potential title, and calmly, gratefully, moved onwards to another piece. After a few of these, my mood began to change, as I realized I was actually in the middle of a creative goldmine, rather than feeling like I was lost in a desert of confusion.
All it took, all I really needed, was simply to change the way I looked at the situation, and take something positive from it, rather than being frustrated with it.
Oh the thoughts I have wasted in the past.
So today, I invite you to ask yourself why something is happening for you. It may be hard to find the emotional space to do that, because you might feel like you have the weight of the world bearing down on you. But I promise you, there is a way you can look at this and feel differently, if you look hard enough.
You just have to see beyond your fears, and believe in the power of yourself.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings