Are you in the business of regret management, or of dream fulfillment?
Whats your relationship like with your dreams?
Picture this: You have a good idea — no, you have a great idea. The type of idea that makes your bones vibrate with the possibility of creating this very thing. Of how deeply nourishing it will be. Of how deeply fulfilling it will be. The type of idea that has its way with your imagination until everything else in the world falls away and it is just the two of you engaged in a passionate embrace.
Yeah, that type of idea.
You decide you’re going to act on it. Your fingers type faster than ever before, getting it all down so you can share with your audience how this thing is going to change their life.
You re-read it, and you see how someone might be offended so you add some more information.
You check over it again and you redefine some pieces to a more neutral definition.
In the end, this pure beauty of an idea is smashed full of “what ifs” and information that it’s lost its spark, and so have you.
When my parents got a divorce, my brother and I reacted completely differently.
He decided that when the time came, he would become the best husband in the world; so his marriage would never end in divorce.
I decided to always expect the worst of people and situations; so that I was prepared when it inevitably happened.
I’m sure you have a pivotal moment in your childhood too, where you decided something about the world and it stuck. These meaning-making moments weave their way through our entire existence, and mostly when we decide to look at these — with a therapist or a coach — we stay in the same lane as it was learned. For example, I would look at what I learned from my parent’s divorce and see how it affected my relationships. This, of course, is worth doing. But stopping here is a crime against healing, especially when I know this truth in my bones:
Everything is relating.
Every. Single. Thing.
Is you relating to it.
Your beliefs about relating, your ideas, your defense mechanisms, your avoidance, your worries, your strategies for getting love and approval — they will show up everywhere.
“Everywhere Erica?, as in my business, and between me and my goals?”
YES.
When I decided that the world was a place where bad things — like rejection and separation — happen regardless of your best intentions and regardless of if the divine had tapped you on the shoulder and whispered the dream in your ear, the best thing to do was to present myself and my dreams as beige and palatable as possible even at the cost of the dreams essence.
This meant my focus shifted from actualizing the dream to managing the inevitable disapointment that hadn’t even happened yet — and might not even happen.
In this world where rejection and loss are inevitable, you can talk yourself out of a dream before you even give it a go. You end up putting a lot of work into avoiding bad things, rather than energy into nourishing the good things.
And while those things sound like they would produce the same result, they don’t.
One of them, makes you really good at preparing for the worst, and the other means you make the best happen.
Take substack for example (for my email only buddies: substack is the medium I use to send my e-mails. It’s a blog x newsletter x community feed for writers and readers), if I’m writing what I am inspired by, what moves me, and what I feel like would connect and nourish my audience: the process is easeful, enjoyable, light.
If I am writing to be likable, palatable, and to avoid rejection— well… I don’t usually write a single thing.
PSA: sometimes this looks like writing things I think will be “viral”.
I’ve discovered that things like writer’s block are more a reflection of our relationship to our inspiration and our dreams, than of our worth or “vibrational alignment” to these things.
When we see the world as a place that is going to shoot us down, reject us and belittle our dreams and ideas, we distance ourselves from hope and inspiration. Eventually, we break up with it all together. After all, what’s the point stringing our dreams along if they aren’t going to work out anyway?
So, ask yourself, what are you actually doing? Are you micro-managing to avoid potential rejection? Or are you doing everything you can to support yourself creating what you actually want?
Do you want a life full of regret management, or the life of your dreams? They are drastically different skill sets, and you get to choose what you are an expert in.
Love the big questions here and appreciate your filter and expertise on this Erica… I sometimes write faster than I can type in the car, on a train, on a walk and those pieces all get woven over at Creatively Conscious. I’m glad to have a space for that… it’s not just a space for that but I have a space for that magic.
"Are you micro-managing to avoid potential rejection? Or are you doing everything you can to support yourself creating what you actually want?" what potent questions to reflect on. The thought that came to my mind was when I notice myself micro-managing to avoid potential rejection, to remind myself of how many times the 'rejection' I received, became a really good thing and exactly what I needed. Also, how it often comes from young versions of myself and to approach those thoughts as I would a child, when I approach them with love, I always remember their good intentions to help and protect me and this helps me, instead, create nourishing boundaries, plans and intentions that support who I am and help me to feel safe, whilst creating what I want at the same time. Thanks for this Erica. 🌼