Perfectionism

How to tell if perfectionism is running the show

/ Jill Winski

Here’s the second article in my May perfectionism series. You can read the first one here. And there’s plenty more on this site about perfectionism — just check the “categories” listing on the right.

Sometimes — often — I get into a space of confusion where I’m aware that a rather ugly shift has occurred, but I’m not sure why.

It’s when I’ve been doing something I’m really excited about — something, like writing, that may be hard and challenging, but it’s also energizing because it feels like I’m doing what I’m meant to do. I’m humming along, excited, full of enthusiasm, with a feeling of deep rightness. Or maybe I’m just feeling pretty okay. It’s going well. Well enough.

And then: the shift. Something starts to nag at me. I feel a tightness in my head, my chest. I notice I’m tired. I notice I’m a little angry. Suddenly, that feeling of deep rightness is gone and in its place is fatigue, a bad mood, depletion.

When this used to “happen to me,” I thought it was because I was just moody. I thought it was because I was emotionally unstable. I thought it was because I was doing something wrong.

Now, I know it’s because perfectionism has taken over. Without my awareness, I’ve shifted from the challenge and joy of the aims of my inner enthusiast, to the futile agenda of my inner perfectionist.

The truth is, I don’t “suddenly” shift from a space of enthusiasm and energy to Suckville. There are some “middlemen” that I typically don’t notice because they’re so subtle and automatic. Those middlemen are: 1) my physical sensations and 2) my thoughts.

“The shift” happened to me last night. I was at my computer working on something with my cat in my lap, feeling content, peaceful, energized. Everything was humming along; for about an hour or so, I was in a pretty blissful place.

And then: I started to get a little bit sleepy. That was all. Just a little sign from my body that it was beginning to be time to call it a night. (Middleman #1 — physical sensation.)

Not a problem, right? I’d put in a good hour of work (and it’s unusual for me to get much done in the evening anyway, so this was a plus after a day that had been pretty “productive” already.)

However, when I started feeling physically tired, my mind spewed out the following thoughts: You’ll never get anywhere if you always stop when you’re tired. You know tomorrow is a busy day and you won’t have the evening free to work. Why don’t you ever have the energy to make a real dent in the important stuff? You really need to push yourself to do more. (Middleman #2 — my thoughts.)

This was just a sampling of my thoughts — there were probably dozens triggered by the simple fact that my body was ready to call it a day and my inner perfectionist, a.k.a. that part of me that believes I’m not enough and I must constantly prove myself by doing more, wasn’t having it.

Last night, I was able to catch the poor little inner perfectionist and assure her that we’d done more than enough for the day and she was going to have to take a nap, which she badly needed. Sometimes, I don’t catch onto her as quickly. I believe she is telling me the truth. I push myself to do more and more, and I burn out.

The aims of my inner enthusiast feel inspiring, expansive. They challenge me, open me up, make me feel “greater than” I was before. The aims of my inner perfectionist feel like a clamping down. They tighten and close me. They make me feel “less than.” They may look like valuable ideals that are meant to get me to a better place (this is the tricky part), but the truth is in how they feel.

During my life coach training, Martha Beck liked to remind us, “You can tell it’s enlightenment because it tastes of freedom.” The pursuits of my inner enthusiast ultimately feel like freedom — even when they’re challenging as hell. The agenda of my inner perfectionist feels like punishment — even when it looks good on paper, even when it looks awfully appealing to my “social self.”

Saying “enough for now” does not mean my inner enthusiast won’t propel me toward my dreams again tomorrow.

I’d love to hear from you. How do you know when you’re in the grip of perfectionism? And how do you move out of it?

For more on this topic, check out my article on how to tell if you’re stretching or pushing yourself, here.

Don’t let perfectionism keep you from getting started (or from finishing)

/ Jill Winski

This is the first in a series of several articles I’ll be publishing on perfectionism and how it keeps us from doing what we most want to do, or from enjoying it when we do accomplish it!

I finished a first draft of my novel yesterday. I had to declare myself finished. This draft had been sitting for more than three years when I returned to it early this year.

I had a hard time starting the novel way back when because I wasn’t sure I had the “just right” story, and I wasn’t sure I had the “just right” point of view (I even wrote 200 pages of it in third person and then rewrote it all in first, which, if you write fiction, you know is a lot harder than just changing “she” to “I”). I kept rehashing and rewriting these 200 pages, polishing scenes, cutting scenes and creating new ones, changing the order. At one point I went back to third person and wrote from multiple points of view. Then I went back to first.

At some point, I realized I needed to make some choices, stick with them, and continue — even if the draft wasn’t exactly the way I envisioned it.

So I did. And as I finally neared the end of my draft this week, everything felt bittersweet. I didn’t want to say goodbye to the writing of it (generating the writing is my favorite part; I like editing and rewriting much less). But mostly, I wanted to feel I had the best possible ending. I wanted to feel like, wow! This ending rocks. (That was how I felt when I finished the first draft of my other novel, a few months ago, which you can read about here.) I’d venture to say we all want that from our endings, and our readers, of course, want that too.

But this was a first draft, and at some point, I realized I needed to call it enough. As Anne Lamott tells us, it’s totally okay for first drafts to be shitty. My friend and mentor Jenna Avery said, “How about calling it enough for now?”

Yep. “Enough for now” felt exactly right.

Those of us who tend to be perfectionists can forget the concepts of “enough” and “for now.” We want it to be right, we want it to be brilliant, we want it to be perfect. Only the thing is, in wanting that so badly, we often don’t actually do our work, don’t get it to those who can benefit from it and appreciate it, because we don’t get started, or we don’t ever allow ourselves to finish.

A first draft is just that. It’s something rough, something messy, something that takes chances and probably contains lots of mistakes.

That is good. What if we could apply a “first draft” mentality not only to our first drafts of our writing, but to our lives? I know I love the things I love in part because they are messy, and rough around the edges, and imperfect. Not because they’re polished to a high shine, but because they move me, in all their imperfection.

I’d love to hear about your experiences with starting and finishing. What helps you begin something you’re afraid of, and what helps you say I’m done, for now?

Also: Today, May 10, is the last day to register for Jenna Avery’s Just Do the Writing Accountability Circle. It’s through my participation in this group that I’ve now completed drafts of two novels. (I’m also one of the coaches.) If you can’t seem to get started on something you’d love to create, or you’ve gotten stuck, check it out here!

And: I have a couple of spots open for new one-on-one coaching clients. Find out more here.

Making Friends with Discomfort (even when you don’t want to)

/ Jill Winski / 2 Comments

My mother once told me that she sometimes skips to the ends of the books she reads because she can’t stand waiting to know what happens.

“Mom!” I said. “That ruins the whole experience of reading it!”

“No it doesn’t,” she said. “It allows me to calm down enough to really enjoy the book. I don’t have to be anxious. I know what’s going to happen.”

Although I don’t share my mom’s inclination to skip to the ending of the book I’m reading (in fact, if it’s really good, I don’t even want to skip to the next paragraph, because I know it’s going to be delicious), I get where my mom is coming from. Probably too well. I’m the girl who’s always wanted to skip to the end of her own life so I can know what happens. So I don’t have to make any choices (because what if I make the wrong one, and that creates another wrong one, and so on, and pretty soon my entire life is derailed?). So I don’t have to be in process.

But let’s face it: When are we not in process? Our lives are one giant process, and each day of our lives is made up of tiny processes. And the thing about process is, it’s a big question mark. We talk a lot about results and outcomes, but as soon as we reach one, it’s already in the process of changing. Our lives simply don’t stay the same for very long, because, if we are committed to our own growth, we don’t stay the same. And even if avoid change like the plague (and some of us do!), somehow it happens to us anyway.

But this process stuff can be really, really uncomfortable. And because it’s uncomfortable, and we read discomfort as pain, we try to do anything to get out of the discomfort.

For me, that has sometimes looked like:

* leaving a relationship before I really understood what was going on because I felt so uncomfortable, and then recreating the same relationship elsewhere;

* leaving a job before I really understood why I didn’t like it and then recreating that same job situation elsewhere;

* impulsively getting into a relationship or taking a job I didn’t even want in an attempt to outrun my discomfort;

* eating when I wasn’t hungry;

* buying things I didn’t truly want or need.

You get the idea. Here’s the thing: We can’t outrun our discomfort. In fact, if we’re in a big hurry to do something, or to get away from something, it’s a pretty sure sign that we are attempting to outrun some kind of negative emotion.

Changing the situation is not going to get rid of our discomfort. We can’t outrun ourselves. I can move to Australia or outer space to try to get away from my discomfort, and once the dust has settled, I’ll still be me.

So what’s the answer? Acknowledge that if we are going to live fully, connected to our emotions and committed to creating the lives we want, we are going to be in discomfort regularly.

Being in discomfort does not mean something is wrong.

If we’re in discomfort, we can:

* Stop (for the moment). Feel the discomfort in our bodies. It’s nothing more than a sensation. What does it feel like?

* Notice whatever emotion is coming up, and, if we are in a safe place, let it come up. Let it come up and out.

* Notice the thoughts we’re having. Our thoughts create our emotions. Our thoughts create our discomfort. Notice your stressful thoughts and work with them. Do The Work of Byron Katie, or talk to a friend or a coach or a therapist you trust who can point out to you what you may not be able to see yourself.

Being in discomfort does not mean we need to flee, look for jobs, relationships, or projects that don’t trigger discomfort (there won’t be any), or resort to the go-to belief that there must be something wrong with us. It just means we need to find a way of creating a relationship with our discomfort. Because it’s not optional — discomfort is going to be there from time to time, whether we like it or not, and especially if we choose to do things that challenge us.

Note: I’m reinventing my free Creativity Consultations, and I will not be offering them in this format again beyond the first week of May! So, if you’re struggling with a creative project or feeling stuck (or really, really uncomfortable!) now’s the time to grab one.

And: Stay tuned for my article series on Letting Go of Perfectionism — for People Who Really, Really Hate to Let Go.

Things I’m noticing while I write, list #2

/ Jill Winski / 2 Comments

Here’s the second in my series of lists of things I’m noticing as I work on my novel.

1) It’s fun to write with friends. This morning, some members of Jenna Avery’s Just Do the Writing Accountability Circle sprinted with me. We checked in with each other before and after the sprint. Writing can feel so solitary. And sometimes that solitude feels good. But it’s also nice to know there are others out there doing it too, struggling with the same stuff I am.

2) It’s okay to go back. Although I’ve been really encouraging myself in this draft to move forward, forward, forward (since I have a tendency to go back and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite, and therefore not to finish my drafts), something kept nagging at me and I knew I’d taken a wrong turn. The story didn’t feel as alive as I knew it could, because two chapters earlier I’d gone left instead of right. So I went back, and made that right turn. And that right turn, was, well, the right one. My story felt alive again, and it just starting writing itself (righting itself?). When a story writes itself, fun things happen. (Like, who knew there was a ghost living in my main character’s apartment? The ghost wouldn’t have revealed itself if I hadn’t gone back and course-corrected.)

And by the way, you can do this in life too. You can always course-correct, no matter how far off the path you’ve wandered. And sometimes, wandering off the path becomes your new path.

3) I do better when I write earlier in the day. In keeping with my last post, about trusting my own process, I’ve noticed that there’s a world of difference for me when I write earlier. Maybe it’s because, often, writing is the most difficult thing I have on my plate, and when I get it done earlier, I know I can handle anything else that comes my way that day.

4) When I’m writing what I know I must write — when it’s coming through me and I’m aware that I’m not really the author, I’m just the conduit — I’m not concerned with how good it is.  This doesn’t mean I won’t look at it with editor’s eyes later on in the process and see how it might be improved. It’s just that there’s a huge difference between “I want to write something terrific” and “This writing was just waiting to be born. And now it’s here.” (Am I making the writing, or am I allowing the writing?)

And by the way, the more I make it about me, the more blocked and stuck I get.

What are you noticing while you write? I’d love to hear how it’s going for you.

Trust your process. Yours.

/ Jill Winski

I was thinking this morning about my process, of creating, of living, and about how often we hear “Trust the process.” And I think this is important. We can trust that creating is a process, and that things might not look like we thought they’d look, or work the way we thought they’d work, and that’s okay.

But I think it’s not so much about trusting the process as it is about trusting your process. You trusting yours, and me trusting mine.

Because yours, I can guarantee, does not look like mine.

You might be able to borrow something from mine, if it feels right to you. And I might think something you do sounds terrific, and might be able to add that to my process, too. And there might be something that works great for me that doesn’t work for you, at all.

I remember a while ago when a friend quit her job of many years, and she had the next job lined up so she could start it the very next day. Without even a day in between.

“You’re not taking even a couple of days off?” I said incredulously. “No,” she said. “That would make me too nervous. I don’t want any time to sit around thinking about starting the new job. I just want to start it.”

That is her process. It isn’t mine. I want time in between my biggest endeavors, so I can let go of one a bit before jumping into the other. This works great for me. I show up for the next thing rested, with fresh eyes. This is my process, now. It may not always be. But adopting my friend’s process would make me feel crazy, and mine, for her, would feel like she was forcing herself to slow down when she wanted to move right along. For her, her process creates sanity. That’s why it is hers.

We can learn a ton from others whose process rings true for us when they talk about it. Anne Lamott, Geneen Roth, Natalie Goldberg, Tori Amos — I’ve learned so much from reading and hearing these women, and many other creators, discuss their process over the past fifteen or twenty years. Because their way of processing sparks my own.

But my process is still mine. It’s not like anyone else’s. I can learn what works for someone else, and 100% of the time I’ll find out that it doesn’t work exactly that way for me.

Sometimes I hear myself complaining, “Why isn’t this working for me the way it does for her?”

But there’s a better way to phrase this. “I wonder how this could work better for me.”

This is good. This means that when I feel like I’m in new territory, and I get a suggestion from someone else and it doesn’t work for me, nothing is wrong. I’m just discovering more about my own process. Which, really, is just about the most exciting thing I can think of.

Are you struggling in your process? You don’t have to. I have openings for new clients in April. Find out more here.

Are You Stretching or Pushing Yourself? How to Tell the Difference.

/ Jill Winski / 4 Comments

I wrote recently about how perfectionism can be such a creativity killer. It may seem like perfectionistic striving helps us get things done, but its constricting energy actually puts a stranglehold on the flow of our creativity. Still, most of us learn from an early age that there’s value in pushing ourselves, in being hard on ourselves. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to someone who’s feeling scared and stuck, and at some point in the conversation they say, “I just really need you to give me a kick in the butt so I can get going.”

Sorry, but I’m never going to do that.

What I will do is suggest that you look at how it feels when you have the thought, “I really need a kick in the butt to get going.” How do you proceed from there? Does it feel enlivening? Does it instill confidence in yourself? And, even more importantly, does it create a feeling of trust in yourself?

When I attempt to proceed from that thought, I feel angry. My stomach tightens. My jaw clenches. I also feel some sadness, because I am attempting to motivate myself through force and fear. And I decided a long time ago that that’s not the way I want to live.

The “kick in the butt” method is an example of motivating ourselves by pushing ourselves. If someone pushes me in line at the grocery, I will probably refrain from pushing them back (or maybe I won’t!), but I really want to push back. And similarly, when I push myself, something in me pushes back. I may be feeling resistant to whatever it is I want to do, but pushing myself only creates more resistance. When I proceed from a mentality of pushing myself, I create an inner struggle.

So what’s the solution? For me, it’s changing my mentality from the concept of pushing to the concept of stretching. I’ve always loved the feeling of stretching myself — whether it was stretching my arms and legs in a ballet class as a child, or stretching myself to write that one more page in my journal last night that was just dying to come out, even though I was getting tired.

For me, stretching feels good. It may be uncomfortable and unfamiliar — as when we are beginning to use muscles we don’t usually use, whether we’re in ballet class or starting our first novel — but it’s a challenging sort of uncomfortable. It feels juicy, a bit scary, maybe more than a bit sometimes, but what stretching says is: I trust you to grow toward what is life-enhancing for you. I trust you to more fully become yourself.

What pushing says is: If I don’t push you, you’ll never do it.

I much prefer the message of stretching.

Also, stretching is a good antidote for resistance. If I focus on the feeling of excitement and challenge and discovery that comes with stretching myself, I feel less resistant to doing whatever it is I want (but am scared) to do.

I’d love to hear your experiences with stretching vs. pushing yourself. What have you discovered?

And don’t forget, I offer free Creativity Consultations. Check them out here!

Join Me for Muse Office Hours, tomorrow!

/ Jill Winski

Feeling stuck, scared to begin, or flat-out immobilized around something you’re creating? Does it feel like you just can’t stop procrastinating? Do you need some support to get going again? I really know how you feel, and I want to help you get started. To that end, I am offering Muse Office Hours, tomorrow, Feb. 24, from noon to 2 p.m. Central Standard Time. (If you need help figuring out the time zone difference, click here).

What are Muse Office Hours? They’re a two-hour window of time in which you can call in and get fifteen minutes of free, focused coaching from me on any creative issue you’re experiencing. If you’re feeling stuck, scared, so excited you’re freaking out, or anything at all around something you’re creating, and you need some feedback or support, this is totally for you. And the “something” you’re creating can be anything from a novel to a business to a new way of life.

The “muse” in Muse Office Hours does not mean that I, Jill, am your muse — no way! You carry within yourself your own very specific muse, precious and utterly unique, and my purpose with Muse Office Hours is to help you awaken it. Or maybe you just need to get back in touch with it, cheer it up, or knit it a fancy scarf so it will feel warmer and more connected to you. I can help with all that, too.

I love talking to creators about their fears around creativity — and by the way, if you’re having these fears, you’re totally normal. We’ve all got ’em. It’s talking about them and getting support that allows us to get unstuck.

To take advantage of Muse Office Hours, call in to +1 708 689 9480 at any time during the two-hour window, up to fifteen minutes before the window ends — if you get my voice mail, it means I’m coaching someone else; leave a message and I will call you back as soon as I’m able! Muse Office Hours are first-come, first-served.

Thanks to my friend and fellow coach Melissa Wirt for dreaming up Muse Office Hours. 🙂

And stay tuned for my article on the difference between stretching and pushing ourselves, coming soon!

Image is FAIRY © Darrenw | Dreamstime.com

Perfectionism vs. Creativity: The Gloves are Off!

/ Jill Winski / 2 Comments

Note: Scroll down to the bottom of the article for a free opportunity for coaching with me!

Last week, the topic of perfectionism arose in several conversations. Each time, we reached a consensus that perfectionism contributes heavily to burnout, which is a huge creativity killer.

Perfectionism tells us we need to drive ourselves. And it’s a pretty tricky little devil. It can wrap its tentacles around an innocent thought like, “I want to create more.” Sounds like a good thought, right? So let’s say your form of creating is writing your novel, and you work on your novel for thirty minutes one day. You feel good, satisfied. But a shrill little voice pipes up and says, “Only thirty minutes? Surely you can do more than that tomorrow!”

So the next day you sit down and you find it’s a little harder to write for thirty minutes than it was yesterday. And on top of it, now you feel like you have to write for more than thirty minutes, because you have to make sure you’re besting what you did yesterday. So you manage to write for sixty. It’s not much fun. You feel like you’re grinding it out, because you’re so focused on how much you do (making sure it’s “more”) that you’ve lost sight of the fact that you wanted to create in the first place because it enlivens you, because it’s a way of using your gifts, of exercising your creative muscles.

The next day, not only do you feel like you’d better write more than you wrote yesterday, but you talk to Jane and she says she writes for three hours every day, getting up at 5 a.m. to do so. The shrill little voice pipes up again and says, “Look how much Jane is doing! Surely you can do that much!”

The following day you get up at 5 a.m., determined to write as much as Jane writes so you can “be a real writer”. Then you read an interview where someone mentions that Philip Roth writes 365 days a year. So now, not only do you need to get up at 5 a.m. and write for three hours a day like Jane, but you need to write every single day of the year. Naturally, it’s already way too late for you to be Philip Roth, but maybe you can still salvage some semblance of being a “real writer” if you write every single day of the year.

You manage to keep this up for about two weeks. By the fourteenth day, you’re so frazzled from keeping up this frantic pace and sleep-deprived from getting up at 5 a.m. — and by now Jane is telling you she’s writing four hours a day, not a wimpy three! — that you never want to write another word, ever, ever again. You get irritated when you hear people talking about how great it is to “create.” Who wants to create? you think. It’s exhausting and it makes you feel bad about yourself. Screw creating!

You don’t do any writing, or any other form of creating, for months (though occasionally you catch yourself doodling in the pages of your journal, in which you scribble illegible fragments that describe how uncreative you feel … hmm). Now you are so not Jane. (Darn that Jane!) You are so far away from Philip Roth, it’s not even funny. You had such good intentions. What happened to how fun, how joyful, it felt to write, way back when? You just wanted to recapture that. What went wrong?

Perfectionism is the behavior created by black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking. If you’re not writing four hours a day, 365 days a year, you might as well not write at all. If the short story you submitted to the literary journal was rejected, it’s because it was sucky and you just don’t know how to write. If the writing isn’t flowing today, you might as well quit, the well has run dry. Perfectionist behavior looks like this: Drive yourself, push yourself, force yourself. And when this doesn’t produce the results you want, quit. For months. For years. Forever.

Cynthia Curnan, in her terrific book “The Care and Feeding of Perfectionists” (which appears to be out of print, but is well worth finding if you can), writes that when we drive ourselves relentlessly with perfectionism, we create burnout, and burnout creates what she calls the “backlash.” The backlash is a long period of “underachieving” to balance out our “overachieving”.

Here’s the solution: Notice. Awareness is so, so powerful. I’ll get more into the topic of awareness and how to manage your perfectionism in my next article, where we’ll talk about the difference between pushing ourselves and stretching ourselves.

By the way, despite the title of this blog post, I encourage you not to duke it out with perfectionism. The more you fight perfectionism, the more formidable it becomes, because it engages with that defensive, fearful aspect of you that’s afraid you’ll never have enough, never be enough. It’s better to deftly swim out of perfectionism’s way, and let it go to battle with itself, like the shark in Jaws thrashing the empty underwater cage. (Sometimes I just have to get in a Jaws reference, because Jaws is awesome.)

And finally, here’s the freebie I’ve been talking about in my last couple of posts: Friday, Feb. 24, from noon to 2 p.m. CST, I’ll be hosting Muse Office Hours. This is a two-hour window in which you can call in and get up to fifteen minutes of free, focused coaching from me on any creative issue you’re having. My purpose here is to reconnect you with your muse! It’s a great opportunity to talk about why perfectionism is getting in your way, why you just can’t seem to get started, or how to continue if you’ve gotten stuck or stalled. Call (708) 689-9480 at any time during the two-hour window; if you get my voice mail, leave a message and I’ll be sure to get back to you in the order the calls were received. I’ll be posting updates about Muse Office Hours in the coming days.

Image is GIRL AND LAPTOP © Geraktv | Dreamstime.com

There’s Enough Time. Really.

/ Jill Winski / 8 Comments

This week, I had quite a few conversations with creators around the idea of time. The general consensus seemed to be: There’s not enough. I have too much to do — which, by the way, I wish I’d done ten years ago — and there’s too little time in which to do it. Frequently when I hear people say this, I want to agree with them, so they know that I sympathize. “Oh, I know, isn’t it true? There’s just not enough. There’s too much to do. No wonder I can’t get to my (fill in the blank — novel, artwork, yoga, relationship).”

Here’s the thing, though: It’s not true that there isn’t enough. Whether we’re talking about time or money or love.

What we really mean when we say “There’s not enough time” is: I’m trying to outrun my painful thoughts about not accomplishing enough. I’ve got to hurry up. So let me add more and more to my to-do list, so I don’t see more evidence for what I haven’t accomplished. If I can get it ALL DONE, I’ll feel better.

Do you see how backwards this kind of thinking really is? (Because, fellow creators, it doesn’t come down to time — it comes down to our thinking. Always.) The thought “There isn’t enough” creates feelings of urgency, anxiety, sadness, regret. In a nutshell, fear. Then we take desperate, urgent, anxious actions based on these feelings. And no matter what results we get, they don’t feel like enough, because all of these results have, as their backdrop, the belief that there just isn’t enough. We’ve cycled right back into our original thought, and it all continues — no matter what we have, no matter what we’ve created, it isn’t enough, because our belief is that there isn’t enough.

Unless: We look at our thoughts about time. Is it true that there isn’t enough? How much time do I need to feel good about creating today? To feel good about anything today?

I’m going to suggest that the “time issue” is not about time at all. It’s really about our stressful thought that, at some point, our lives will be over and we won’t have done what we wanted to do with them. It’s really about our lack of self-acceptance, about the fact that we’re afraid to meet ourselves, to accept ourselves, exactly where we are. It’s about a belief that there’s a finish line we should have crossed years ago, and we haven’t even made our way to the starting gate.

What if we were to believe that what we need more of is not time, but acceptance — of ourselves, of our lives, of where we are, who we are, now? How would we move forward from that belief? If we are okay exactly as we are, my hunch is that we are more likely to create for thirty minutes today and celebrate that, rather than wait two years for the day when we have a block of six hours to create.

As my awesome mentor Jenna Avery says, “Start small and start now.” What we really fear is not that there isn’t enough time, but that we won’t accept ourselves if we don’t live up to our perfectionistic standards, if we don’t do more, more, more. Do me a favor: do less. Write for fifteen minutes. Sketch for fifteen minutes. Dance for fifteen minutes. And do it today. It takes no time to accept yourself exactly where you are, right now.

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.