Author: Jill Winski

A couple of announcements, & gratitude!

/ Jill Winski / 2 Comments

A while ago, a coaching buddy of mine and I were talking about how it’s difficult to experience a feeling of abundance in our lives when we don’t take time to really feel it, don’t slow down enough to be with it, don’t take a moment to say “thank you.”

I can forget. I can get so focused on what I don’t have that I get into “lack” mode. And then I see evidence of lack, everywhere. When I remember, when I notice what I have been given — often with no conscious effort on my part –I see evidence of this in my life, everywhere.

We can practice this. We can practice by noticing. Yesterday I noticed I was a little bit tired, and although I felt a tremendous urge to rush over to the computer to respond to email, I decided to sit quietly on my couch. My cat woke up from his nap, looked at me, and immediately came over and jumped into lap. I listened to his purr and felt it reverberate through my hands, my chest, my abdomen.

I breathed in the abundance of this moment. I was sitting on a soft down throw my mother gave me for Christmas last year. My living room felt warm, even though it’s in the 40s outside. The sun was sneaking out, after a clouded-over, gray morning. It felt good, to just be, to realize I had all I needed in that moment. And in this one.

Here’s to noticing what we have. Here’s to saying “thank you.”

And here’s to more abundance — a couple of announcements:

* Last week, I officially became a Martha Beck Certified Life Coach (woo-hoo!).  In celebration, I’m offering four FREE half-hour coaching sessions — first come, first-served. Bring me any issue (it doesn’t have to be related to creativity, but it certainly can be) and we’ll do a little exploring and get you a little less stuck. To get your free session, email me at jillwinskicoaching@gmail.com and mention “free session” in the subject line.

* Also, I am super-excited to announce that I will be a coach for the next session of Jenna Avery’s Just Do the Writing Accountability Circle, which begins Nov. 28. I’d love for you to join us — it was the amazing encouragement of this circle that helped me finish a first draft of my novel last session, which I wrote about here. To sign up for the Writer’s Circle, click here. The last day to register is tomorrow, Nov. 23, so don’t wait!

Wishing you the gift of noticing what’s beautiful, good and right in your life.

Image is PUMPKINS © Paul-andré Belle-isle | Dreamstime.com

How’s it Helping?

/ Jill Winski / 4 Comments

A lot of times when I’m coaching someone, there’s some behavior they just hate that they’re dying to get rid of, because it’s ruining everything. Or so they say. (And when I say “they”, I mean, equally, me.)

When it comes to creativity, this behavior is almost always what the client calls “procrastinating.” Or being “stuck.” Or maybe they’re feeling hesitant about submitting a piece of work somewhere, and they’re beating themselves up for not doing it.

If it’s a person who wants to lose weight, the behavior is “snacking too much.” Or “not exercising enough.” Or tearing the doors off the kitchen cupboards and emptying them one by one.

I get it. In my teens and early twenties, I had an eating disorder. At the time, I couldn’t have told you that: I thought it was “normal.” I thought I had about ten pounds to lose, so I would starve myself until I lost it. I couldn’t stay on my crazy extremely-low-calorie diets, so the pressure would build and finally one day I’d crack and I’d binge. Then I’d feel I’d failed, and what was the use anyway, and I’d binge and binge until I gained the ten pounds back.

I tried to rid myself of this bingeing behavior by more dieting. Then I tried to rid myself of the dieting behavior by “eating normally.” But I had no idea how to do that. One day I didn’t show up for one of my classes in college because I’d eaten so much I felt like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Woman, and I didn’t want anyone to see me.

I was in enough pain by this point that while I was supposed to be in class, I walked to the bookstore down the street and found a book by Geneen Roth called Breaking Free from Compulsive Eating. I had deep skepticism about books with titles like that. But I knew I’d hit bottom. With great shame, I trudged up to the counter to purchase it.

This book changed my life (I still have my little dog-eared, yellowed, paperback copy, in which about half of each page is underlined in red ballpoint pen). Geneen suggested that behavior that appears to be hurting us on first glance actually has a purpose. It’s helping us in some way that we don’t, or won’t, acknowledge.

When we change our question from “How can I get rid of this behavior?” to “How might this behavior be helping me?”, we change the story we’re telling ourselves. I was no longer “woman hell-bent on self-destruction”; I became “woman who’s trying to take care of herself the best she can.”

When I saw how my behavior took care of me, I was able to thank it and gradually let go of it. When I saw that “feeling fat” gave me a good reason to say no, I realized I didn’t have to feel fat in order to say no. I could actually say no just because I wanted to say no. I could actually choose not to attend class just because I didn’t want to attend class. I didn’t have to binge on lasagna and make myself sick so I’d have a “good excuse.”

This was only one way my behavior helped me, of course; it was complex, and I needed to do some digging and some looking around for me to understand all the ways it served me. And it took some time before I was able to truly thank it for its service, and let it go.

When it comes to our creativity, too, our “counterproductive” behavior is serving us in some way. If I’ve stopped writing in the middle of my draft, there’s a good reason for it. I can plow through, force myself to write, but in the long run, it’s probably more helpful to look for the good reason and see how it’s helping me.

That doesn’t mean I will stay stopped. It means I trust that there’s a wisdom within me that wants to be listened to, if I’ll only give it a chance to be heard. This wisdom wants all good things for me — and when I don’t listen to it, it acts out in ways that seem destructive to get my attention. The sooner I listen, the sooner I can discover what it is I really want, and move forward in the way that serves me best.

If you think you are “stuck,” I guarantee you there’s a good reason for it. But you don’t have to stay stuck. Check out my Free Creativity Consultations — I’ll help you find your good reason and we’ll figure out how you can move forward.

The Gift of Finishing

/ Jill Winski / 4 Comments

This weekend I finished a first draft of my novel about a forty-year-old unemployed woman obsessed with the musical Cats who leaves her seemingly pretty awesome husband and rekindles a relationship with the crazy artist who made her life hell in her twenties. Whewwww. That was a mouthful.

Finishing the draft was a big deal. I wanted to pour champagne for my fellow participants in Jenna Avery’s Writer’s Circle, who encouraged me through the last ninety pages of this draft. I glowed to my boyfriend. I’m still trying to figure out how to reward myself (can Crystal the Monkey come over and play Galaga with me?).

I started writing this draft in October of 2009, exactly two years ago. I worked on it pretty regularly — okay, more off and on — for a few months. And then I started losing faith in it. I wasn’t sure what the story was about. This is really bad, I thought. And so it sat. And then I went back to it. And then it sat again. And so on. Until I started to worry it was “on the pile” — the pile of my unfinished novels. (This would have been the third.)

I don’t believe we need to finish everything we start. That’s a thought that can definitely be questioned. We can’t imagine every twist and turn our lives will take, how our experiences will shape us internally so that we may not want or need what seemed so vital five years ago. It’s okay to let go.

But I wasn’t happy that these last two novels had been abandoned about two-thirds of the way through. I was starting to think it was a pattern that didn’t feel good: When I feel stuck, I stop. I talked to Jenna in a coaching session and it came out that this last novel, I was kinda bored with. The voice didn’t seem quite right. I didn’t think I cared about the subject matter. The earlier novel, the second to last one, well, as I told Jenna, it scares me. It’s been sitting so long. I don’t even want to look at it. “That’s the one you need to finish!” Jenna said. And I suspect she is dead right.

So I resolved to let this last novel go and get back to work on the scary one, the earlier one. Only, the thing was, this last novel didn’t want to be let go. Hey you, it whispered to me while I was trying to fall asleep one night. I’m not letting you off so easy!

So when the opportunity to join Jenna’s Writer’s Circle arose, I decided I would use it to finish this not-quite-right, kinda boring book. I embraced Anne Lamott’s terminology, “shitty first drafts,” wholeheartedly.

And I learned something: This novel was also the scary one. My boredom with the book, my seeming apathy toward it, was a cover-up for fear. I didn’t want to go where the story wanted to go. I didn’t want bad things to happen to my characters. I wasn’t sure my writing muscles were in very good shape. And I wanted it to be good, dammit.

It was overwhelming.

So, with the daily structure put into place by Jenna’s group, I made my goals feel eminently doable: I’d write at least fifteen minutes a day, five days a week. Often, when I filled out my daily comments for the group, my negative thoughts were something like: I don’t know where to go next. It isn’t very good. And the killer: It’s not dynamic enough. I replaced them with: I just need to write the next sentence. It isn’t bad. And: Who am I to say what’s dynamic? I’ll figure that out in the next draft.

In noticing the thoughts that keep me from moving forward, I take the charge out of them. They are just thoughts. In doing this with a group, I saw that we ALL have roughly the same negative thoughts about our writing. The same fears. That took the charge out of it all a little more.

In forty-five days, I wrote ninety pages. I still have no idea if the draft is good. But by writing, by moving forward step by tiny step, I learned what the story was about. I got a clearer idea of what my characters wanted. And it wasn’t overwhelming because I didn’t have to do it all at once.

Most importantly (and this part makes me plain old tear up), I remembered the joy of disappearing into my story because I can’t wait to find out what happens next.

We can put so much pressure on ourselves when we create. As if, through our creating, we make the world turn. We can be easier on ourselves. We can show up, write for a while — take it sentence by sentence if we need to — and let the writing come through us. It knows what it wants to be. (“Listen to your broccoli,” says Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird, referencing Mel Brooks’ line, “Your broccoli will tell you how to eat it.”)

But we can also be gently firm with ourselves: by committing to a regular habit of creating. And we can get the support we need to keep that commitment.

If you are feeling massively stuck on a creative project — if you’re terrified to go near the thing or even to speak of it — you are exactly the kind of person I looooove working with. Check out my Free Creativity Consultations — I have some openings coming up.

 

Image is CONTROLLING THE WORLD… © Radu Razvan Gheorghe | Dreamstime.com

A Short Post about Overwhelm

/ Jill Winski / 2 Comments

Today’s blog article is short, because it needs to be in order for me to do it.

I’m overwhelmed. Well, I was overwhelmed earlier today. I’ve had family visiting from out of town for the past ten days, and yesterday, they left. Today, have-to’s and should’s about neglected work stampeded through my brain, and the more I added to the to-do list, the less I actually felt capable of getting any of it done.

And in the midst of all that, I had a very unhelpful thought, something in the realm of “What will so-and-so think if I don’t get this done?”

So, today, here’s how I dealt with my overwhelm (it might be different on another day):

1) I asked myself, what are the musts? What really feels vital and important for me to take on today? (The answer was: working on my novel; laundry; doing the dishes — the housework wouldn’t usually feel as vital, but it’s really piled up).

2) What part of the musts must I do? In other words, what chunk of each must would feel like enough for today? (The answer: thirty minutes of writing; two loads of laundry; half of the dishes).

3) Where am I getting into somebody else’s business? Byron Katie tells us there are three kinds of business: my business, your business, and God’s business. When I’m wondering what my mother will think if I don’t get my dishes done (even though she lives hundreds of miles away), I’m in my mother’s business, and nobody’s taking care of mine. And I’m adding to my overwhelm by neglecting my own business and trying to control what I can’t possibly control.

So that’s it for today. The writing’s done, half the dishes are done, and that second load of laundry is in the dryer. Tomorrow, if overwhelm creeps in, I will look at tomorrow’s musts. But that’s tomorrow, and tomorrow, my friend, is another day.

Make Your Journaling Legit

/ Jill Winski / 2 Comments

For years and years and years, I’ve been a journaler. I can remember little diaries with locks and keys that my parents gave me when I was a child, with the words My Diary written in gold on their covers. At six or so, I filled the pages with sentences like “Today was good.” “I am sad.” “I love Rosie.” “Rosie loves me.” (Rosie was our dog and the subject of many of my — thankfully brief — early diary entries.)

When I was thirteen, though, I really started to journal. That is, I wasn’t just recording what happened that day — I was delving inward, trying to understand myself.

I have never, ever, had to force myself to journal. It comes to me as naturally as breathing. Anything goes in my journal, so I’m never concerned with whether or not what I write there is “good” or “right.” I have a compulsion to record, to notice, to reflect, to make connections. It’s a practice that grounds me and reveals me to myself.

It is different than, say, working on my novel. When I write fiction, I’m not delving into myself. When I write fiction, “I” disappear. Sure, all my experiences are there for me to draw upon, and they feed the fiction. But my novel is not concerned with my own self. It’s a story coming through me, filtered through my self, but really, I’m not creating it. I’m just the channel.

With journaling, I sometimes get to the place where I feel like a channel too. These are the sessions I call hardcore. As I wrote previously, I can get to a place where I know that if I allow myself to sit down with the journal, the floodgates will open. All the other days of showing up to the journal — maybe a lot of the time I’m just writing something like “I’m not sure what’s going on with me today, but I feel like crap” and going from there — allow for these glorious hardcore journaling sessions, where something I really need to know is moving through me, but I’m not controlling it. It’s usually the culmination of a lot of struggle, a lot of wondering, and a lot of surrendering — having to admit, hey, I don’t know. And then it comes through on the page and I do know.

When I was in grad school, in the awesome writing program at Columbia College Chicago, we used our journals to write about what we noticed in the published work we read, and what we noticed as we worked on our own stuff. There, too, I can remember connections being forged in a particular way on a particular day, and suddenly something I really needed to know about what I was writing would be apparent to me.

But in order to get to this place of connection, of that really cool thing opening up and coming through onto the page, I had to show up for all the days when nothing much seemed to be coming through. “I’m sad.” “I love Rosie and she loves me.” A lot of days, I don’t feel so different from that six-year-old. But it’s still important to show up, to fill the pages.

Sometimes I hear writers (including me) say, “Well, I didn’t do any real writing today. I mean, I only wrote in my journal.” Guess what? That means you did some real writing today. Recognize your journaling for what it is: It’s legit. It’s real writing, and connected to all the other writing you do. Make room for it, learn from it, be totally in love with it. It’s you.

Image is DESERT © Loredana Marchesin | Dreamstime.com

The Message of Hesitation

/ Jill Winski / 8 Comments

What’s happening when we’re not sure, when we actually find ourselves stopping on the way to something we thought we wanted?

I asked myself this question today when I found myself feeling agitated and hesitant in the face of an opportunity that presented itself. And, to complicate things further, that age-old question I tend to torture myself with reared its head: Am I just procrastinating?

As I’ve written about previously, when we are truly procrastinating, there is a simplicity to what is going on. We know we want, or need, to do something (say, the laundry), but we’re enjoying sitting on the couch. Or, maybe I know I want to work on that chapter of my novel but I’m not sure where to go next. So I find I’m not getting over to the desk.

Today was different, though. An opportunity showed up and a part of me said, “Maybe I should jump on that.” But I couldn’t seem to do it. My body actually seemed to move away when I tried to move myself toward the opportunity. And then it didn’t move at all. I stalled.

The first tip-off was my use of the word should. Should is often (though not always) an indicator that some part of me is afraid. Yes, believe it or not, should frequently equals this: I’m afraid I’m going to miss out. I’m afraid someone (maybe me) is going to think poorly of me if I don’t. I’m afraid this might be my last chance to do X.

When I hear myself using the word should, it’s very likely my inner lizard is freaking out. “Should” is one of those words that almost always requires some investigation.

The next tip-off was my use of the word “jump”. Now, jumping can feel fun and exciting, but in this case, I noticed it was frought with a kind of urgency, a tangle of knots in my stomach that felt heavy as bowling balls. Some of my worst decisions have come from that urgent place. I highly recommend not making decisions (especially big ones) from a place of urgency or panic. If you’ve ever been in a true emergency situation, you probably noticed in retrospect that you simply acted. You grabbed your child or your cat or your goldfish and you left the house where you smelled smoke and called 911. You felt a pain in your stomach and you knew something wasn’t right and you got yourself to the ER.

Urgency and panic come up when we feel like we should be acting, but we’re not clear enough about what we want to know which action to take. And our minds start spinning out stories of future deprivation, poverty, hopelessness, madness, isolation.

When I noticed today that I was feeling urgent about taking a certain action, but hesitated in the face of it, I knew my hesitation was good. It was a message: you’re not clear. What do you need? Do you need more information? Do you need to give yourself a day to think about things? Are you trying to deny or ignore your intuition?

I know that when I answer these questions and come to a place of relative peace, I will know what to do. And if this opportunity wasn’t the right one, I can be sure that more will present themselves. That’s the cool thing about opportunity: not only does it knock twice, it knocks every freaking day, if you’re open to it.

Defining Creativity

/ Jill Winski / 6 Comments

Yesterday I was chatting with my coaching buddy and awesome fellow coach Marte Gehlken and she mentioned how often she hears people say this: “I’m not creative.”

I hear this a lot too. Or, “I used to be creative, back when I did a lot of artwork.” Or, “I would be creative if I had more time.”

We need to expand what we typically define as creative. Marte said during our conversation, oh so wisely, “Creating your own reality is creative.” Yeah, it is! But we tend not to see creativity this way. We think it is something outside of us, something we “should” be doing, but (frequently) aren’t.

I remember the summer of 2008, which was a very low, “dark night of the soul” place for me. Now I realize it was what we coaches who went through Martha Beck Life Coach Training call a “liminal period”, or Square One. You’ve shifted out of a place that felt really good for quite a while, because it no longer fits. But you don’t know where you’re going yet, nothing new and solid has emerged in you to guide you on your way, and it kind of sucks.

So one day in 2008 I was feeling crappy and uncreative and I was on one of my very early morning walks and pretty soon, lo and behold, I got into The Zone. I became unattached to my thoughts and was just kind of watching them and my body moved me along and I felt my breath coming in and out. And I looked down and saw this little house sparrow hop into a puddle, in which he dipped the ends of his wings and the underside of his tiny body and then shook himself off.

I felt actively engaged in my observation of this sparrow. I could feel what it was like to be the sparrow, the warmth of the water that had been sitting out in the sun on my feathers, and what it must feel like to know you’re going to take off and — fly! — in a moment.

And a message bubbled up in my chest and translated itself this way: This is creativity! Actively observing this sparrow, I had the exact same sensation I do when I write, when I paint, when I do all the things we typically label “creative.”

Creativity is a way of being in the world. It’s a way of interacting with our surroundings. We’re soaking it up. We’re actively engaged. We’re feeling it.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t write, paint, act, dance, or do whatever it is we typically label “creative.” Absolutely you should, and you must, if it calls to you. But don’t say, “I’m not creative” just because you are not doing these things. Notice where you ARE creative — which, my friend,  can be everywhere — and then do whatever you’re inspired to do.

On that note, on my walk this morning I came upon some birdseed the neighbors one street over regularly scatter on a square of sidewalk. Except today, mixed in with the birdseed, were some large cheese curls. You know, the big fat puffy Cheetos. That, I thought, is creativity.

 

A Brief Intermission

/ Jill Winski
A quick note to let my beautiful readers, clients and friends know that I’ll be on an internet hiatus until around Aug. 30. I’m looking forward to time with family, time with my journal, time with myself. Actually, my intention is for the whole thing to feel like an extended version of what Julia Cameron calls an Artist’s Date, or “filling the well.” I want some extended filling the well time.
 
So please note that if you contact me about coaching or to set up one of my Free Creativity Consultations (which are great fun, by the way!), you will likely not hear back from me until Aug. 30 at the earliest. But please do feel feel to write — I love hearing from you. 🙂
 
Meanwhile, I invite you to focus on anything that makes you really, really happy. Like kitty feet.
 

kitty feet = happiness

Let Your Wisdom Come Through

/ Jill Winski / 4 Comments

I’ve noticed that when I’m getting close to some kind of major insight — some piece of wisdom about myself or my life that I very much need in order to move forward — I usually become resistant to receiving it. That is, I have a hard time allowing myself to be in “receptive” mode, where I can access the insight, and I crank up my activities.

My latest way of distracting myself is by playing Galaga. If you were also a kid in the ’80s, you might remember this was an Atari arcade game that came out around 1981. I’ve been playing it on my TV, for old timesake, remembering how much fun it was to shoot rows of insect-like creatures who rain fire on me.

It’s fine, and joyful, to play Galaga when I’m not using it to distract myself from something else. But lately I’ve noticed I’ve been intending to write in my journal around 9 p.m. or so, when I suddenly think to myself, I’ll just play Galaga for a few minutes and then I’ll write.

Only I end up playing Galaga for two hours, and then I’m very sleepy and the journaling doesn’t get done.

And the reason my journal has been calling to me — in that subtle, quiet voice it has — is because it’s time for some wisdom to come through. And the way that often happens for me is through journaling.

But I’m not letting it come through. I’m distracting myself, and not just with Galaga. And I’ve been feeling distanced from myself, agitated, even kinda hostile and angry with myself.

If history is any indicator, there’s a very good chance that when I actually sit down with my journal for a good amount of time and let whatever wants to come up come up, come out, move through me, I will feel a hell of a lot better. What I’ve learned is that the bigger the insight that’s ready to come up, the more I avoid being open to receiving it.

Why? Because it isn’t necessarily easy to sit still, to write, to be, and get in touch with whatever it is. There’s usually some scary stuff hanging around the insight, protecting it, and I need to chip away at that — or, even better, be very gentle with the scary stuff and let it know it’s okay to unclench itself from my newborn insight and deliver the insight into my arms.

Eventually, I know I will step away from the Galaga game and be with whatever it is that wants me to know it. And I also know, if history is any indicator, that it is better if I can do this sooner rather than later. Though I am aware, too, with deep certainty, that the wisdom that wants to come through always arrives at the perfect moment: when I am ready for it.

Do you find yourself avoiding opening up to your insights, getting quiet enough to hear them? What allows you to listen? I’d love to hear how this process works for you.

What’s the Essence of What You Want?

/ Jill Winski / 4 Comments

Lately, I’m feeling really excited about things. There’s a lot I want to do, a lot I want to create. The thing is, the more I’m in “doing mode,” the more I see that needs to be done. It’s kinda like when you tell yourself to look for all the red things in a room, you suddenly see a ton of red.

So on Tuesday, I was feeling frustrated because I hadn’t done a lot of what I’d planned to get done. I sat at my desk at the end of the day wondering where the day had gone. My cat jumped up into my lap, and I began breathe more slowly. I began to relax. (Ever noticed how cats tend to have that effect?)

I asked myself, why am I so upset that I haven’t accomplished what I wanted to accomplish today? The answer was, because I’m really excited about my writing, my coaching, and all my projects. And I want to get them out there, I want to share them with people.

I asked myself, why do you want to share them? The answer was, because I want to connect with my peeps. I want the feeling state of sharing myself with, and giving to, my right people. And I don’t feel like I did that today.

I asked myself, Really? What did you do today?

And then I started laughing. I’d spent the morning with one of my very favorite people, talking and laughing and feeling very connected. Then I’d spent the afternoon with another of my very favorite people, talking and laughing and feeling very connected. Then I’d rushed home for a coaching call with another of my very favorite people. We talked and laughed and I felt very connected. Then I got an email from another of my very favorite people who asked for some coaching.

At that very appropriate moment, my cat dug his claws into my thigh. You’ve already got it, silly, he said. You’re already very connected to your right peeps. And you forgot about me! You’re so worried about not being connected you forgot that your most favorite, er, person, is sitting right here in your lap! He looked up at me, as he so often does, as if I were the most astonishing, frustrating alien creature.

The more I’m able to get a little distance from myself, the more I’m able to be the observer of me, the more I see how much I fret about not having what I already have. This realization doesn’t mean that I’m not open to more good stuff, to more connection with my right people. It just means that it’s not “out there” somewhere, something I need to try to grasp. It’s in here. I already have the essence of it in my life, in spades.

What’s the essence of what you want? Is it possible you already have it in your life? Try noticing.