Your Journey, Your Wisdom, Your Path. No one else’s – yours alone.
“I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?”
– Mary Oliver
If you meet someone who offers you a recipe to success that works unfailing for everyone, run, run, run away. There is no one size fits all approach to creative practice. We are different, and that’s good because if we were all the same and all had the same thoughts and processes, we’d be extinct by now. Your divine uniqueness is what makes your contribution so helpful to the world. No one else sees it quite the way you do. No one else finds their way through life exactly the way you do.
And you may have had a life that tried to grind this truth out of you. My mother was an outgoing, social-climber wanna-be who wanted me to be her ticket to adoration. She wanted me to be her mini-me. Because I excelled in school, specifically art, she paraded my accomplishments to everyone. And I wanted to be left alone to make stuff without all that publicity. I failed at being my mother’s ticket to social standing miserably and was severely punished for it. You have your own stories or not living up to someone else’s expectation and made wrong because of their idea of who you should be. Luckily, you are you and anyone else!
“It’s not possible to save the world by trying to save it. You need to find what is genuinely yours to offer the world before you can make it a better place. Discovering your unique gift to bring to your community is your greatest opportunity and challenge. The offering of that gift — your true self — is the most you can do to love and serve the world. And it is all the world needs.”
— Thomas Berry (Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche)
I love being alone. That is where I do my best thinking, get my ideas, and do my best work. No recipe will ever get me to be an extravert. And that’s ok. Make a list of your best traits (these are usually ones we think others like in us). Now a list of the traits you are shamed of (these are usually traits that others rejected or disliked in you). Let’s make a sample list – I’ll use my own:
Good traits
Competent
Creative
Leader
Good manager
Thoughtful
Compassionate
Bad Traits
Know it all
Intense
Aloof, Standoffish
Controlling
Judgmental
Withdrawn
Notice anything about these? They all could be in re-termed in the opposite column, depending on who is judging you. Let’s examine reframing my traits and how they are the opposite of the column I put them in:
Good traits
Competent (Know it all, Intimidating)
Creative (Rebel, Doesn’t follow the rules, Misfit)
Leader (Controlling, Judgmental, Intense)
Good manager (Controlling, Judgmental)
Thoughtful, Deep (Aloof, Withdrawn, Heavy)
Compassionate (Sappy, Weak, Female)
Bad Traits
Know it all (Competent)
Intense (Focused, Effusive, Passionate)
Aloof, Standoffish (Introvert, Thoughtful, Deep)
Controlling (Good Manager)
Judgmental (Discerning, Leader)
The point is that we all have things we aren’t proud of, BUT all our traits make us most wonderful. Embarking on the journey of radical self-acceptance is integral to showing up in the world as the creative, innovative problem-solving genius you already are.
It’s not an easy road, it takes lots of practice, but the dividends include a full life open to abundance and joy, even in the midst of loss and sorrow. The paradox of our “good” and “bad” traits is that they are neither and that when we come to see the gift of who we authentically are, our shame starts to dissipate because we are focused more on how to creatively and thoughtfully approach things through our own unique lens and with full acceptance of our gifts.
“Yet, no matter how deeply I go down into myself, my God is dark and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence.” — Rainer Maria Rilke
Draw the drink of creative genius through your own deep roots.
Download my primer on creative practices, the “Seedbop Navigator,” by clicking here: https://seedbop.com/the-seedbop-navigator/. Message me for a free initial coaching session.
