Grow With Soul: Episode 144 - Longing Q&A
Today is a Q&A episode with questions around longing and curiosity and what to do when things feel impossible. We have questions about getting started when things feel out of reach, openness, the hard in-between, what to do when work is all-consuming and how to stop going after the new and shiny things.
What I talk about in this episode:
Removing impatience and expectation to open up possibilities
Just taking the first step - and then doing the next thing
The struggle of the inbetween
Prioritising to resist the new and shiny
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Read the episode transcript:
Today is a Q&A episode with questions around longing and curiosity and what to do when things feel impossible. We have questions about getting started when things feel out of reach, openness, the hard in-between, what to do when work is all-consuming and how to stop going after the new and shiny things.
As I was writing the responses to these questions and points I kept thinking “The First Step goes into this”. The First Step is a free offering of a ten minute podcast-style audio and a ten page workbook all about using those sticky feelings around making a change and turning them into actions and certainties. So, if you haven’t already signed up to get it you can do so at simpleandseason/signup - or if you have downloaded it but haven’t opened it yet, this is your sign.
Can you talk about longing for a thing that feels out of reach and how to make it feel possible
Possibility is in your perception. I don’t want to belittle the hopelessness you are feeling but also… it is possible, it just might not be possible in the really easy and immediate way you would like it to be. If we remove impatience and expectation from the equation then possibilities really open up. Like me with my book. It feels impossible when I want to get a book deal by the end of the year - there is not enough time to re-pitch to agents and to start writing more widely and get 100,000 Instagram followers, so it feels out of reach, and like I’m never going to get there. But when I want to get a book deal at some point in the next five years, weirdly, it feels closer. The steps to get there reveal themselves, I can see how a plan can form, I can see what I need to do and how much time it will really take. When I remove my impatience and my arbitrary expectation based on that impatience, the impossible becomes possible. This goes back to what Sasha was saying two episodes ago: the trade off of willingness. What you are and aren’t willing to do, and how your expectations must adjust accordingly.
Here this question intersects with another one I received: I have big dreams but how do I even get started?
Even when things feel big, even when they feel out of reach and impossible, do something. I have always said that the only difference between the people doing what they want and the people who aren’t is that the people doing it are doing it. Don’t give yourself time to overthink what to do or make the perfect plan or the perfect first step, do the first thing that comes into your head. This is the equivalent of scribbling out the first page of a journal, or block colouring the canvas - make any kind of messy start so you don’t have to worry about starting anymore. What can you do in 20 minutes after you finish this episode? Do that.
When our dreams are so big and meaningful we have to disconnect from them a little bit. We have to be here doing the actions and not second guessing or letting the enormity of what we want scare us off. Very rarely do I think about my book launch party, or my cottage in a field of flowers or the months I’ll spend in the south of France; sometimes I do, to keep myself connected to why I’m working and not just, lying down. But mostly I think of what I need to do this week and the next launch and this quarter because I know as long as I keep doing that I will find myself doing the very same things from a field in Provence without releasing I’d even got there.
Being open to transforming and re-inventing yourself
This is an interesting question. I always find the ones without any context intriguing as so much is unsaid; I often receive them as a kind of howl, a basic, almost desperate expression of want that belies what I am certain is a busily overthinking mind. The first thing I’d say is that you are open - you’ve howled this across the internet to me, you are actually following me and at least somewhat engaging with what I say. You are just not as open as you would like to be.
Therefore, something, or things, are preventing your opening. You are pushing against the door but it is blocked on the other side. Implicit in the statement is a hint of self-blame, as if you are seeing your lack of openness as a failure, and that you should simply be able to push hard enough against the door to get it to open. How about you stop pushing, and peer through the keyhole to what’s on the other side?
There could be any number of fears and beliefs blocking the door, and I could spend all day going through a detailed list and still not hit on your exact combination. This is your journey, to figure out what’s blocking you. Notice the unquestioned stories you tell yourself, notice who you feel resentful of, notice what reasons you give for not doing something, notice discomfort and ease in your body and the conditions they appear in. The more you start to understand it, the more the door gives a little way and the more you can see what’s on the other side. The more you see what’s on the other side the more you start to change and strengthen and the more the door will open.
This isn’t one of those old makeover shows. This isn’t a few days with Gok Wan and then you’re a re-invented, transformed person. Do you know how long it takes to invent something? It doesn’t happen in one sitting, it happens across prototypes and happy accidents and big mistakes and periods of nothingness. You are open enough - everything else is conditioning, stories, untruths. Be brave. Look through the keyhole.
Can you talk about how hard the in-between is? Setting up a new foundation is slow and there’s no money
The in-between is so hard. It might actually be the hardest bit. Starting is scary and there’s so much unknown but there’s also the excitement of possibility and the pleasure of doing something new; finishing can be rife with perfectionism and anxiety but you also get the brain chemistry hits from completion and the satisfaction of your finished thing. But the middle is nothing but drudgery - it’s not novel anymore, the excitement has worn off and now it’s just normal and it’s effortful and things go wrong and it’s endless. I think this is why so many of us go after the new and shiny things, to get the dopamine hit and to distract us from the discomfort of this middle bit. When I made my course Do Your Thing, I made it in three parts to start, continue and finish your Thing, because wow carrying on and continuing is hard.
This is the part where your belief is most tested and the part where you need it the most. This is the part where you need more money than you have and you’re not sure if and when more is going to come in. This is the part where your attention starts to stray. This is the part where support starts to wane. This is the part where you need to keep going. Even when you don’t believe it’s going to happen, even when you’re under-resourced, even when you feel all alone - all you can do is the next thing on the list. Don’t give yourself choices, don’t give yourself time to overthink or leave a door open for doubt. Just do the next thing, and the next thing, plod through the miles and only then stop to look at the view.
Can you talk about work in life, mine feels very work consuming life right now - this is making it very hard to get to where I want to be without feeling burn out
As wanky as it sounds, I think I see “work in life” as a guiding principle rather than a standard to achieve. It is a reminder that there is only your life, and work is something that must fit inside it at a size and importance that you decide alongside everything else you want in your life - work is not an equally sized bucket that sits next to the bucket of your life. We may not ever have the compartments of our life existing in the ratio we want them to - sometimes work will get a little bigger or shrink, sometimes family will unexpectedly take over, sometimes health will quickly expand and then contract. For me, the point of work in life is to keep remembering that there is this one life no matter how much the world wants to give work equal prominence, and to make my decisions about whether to go for a walk or whether to visit friends from that place.
Which I’m sure you’re listening to thinking “wow that’s great for you but I am in a HOLE”. The thing that no one wants to hear is that these things worth doing take time and incremental steps. We want to arrive at the life we want with banners and fanfares welcoming us in, but the reality is that you just start living it a little bit at a time until one day you maybe look around and think “oh, this is it, I’m here”.
You are in a tunnel, and sometimes you see the blinking of light at the end and sometimes it is just dark. We do not have the technology to teleport you to the end of the tunnel; I’m afraid you have to get there yourself and keep walking forwards even when you can’t see the light and even when it feels safer to say in the tunnel and take on extra work because you’ll never get to the end anyway. What makes this easier is a map and a timeline. In Mapping one of the worksheets is to make a Time Pipeline - all the commitments you have to meet, the weeks or months it will take to complete current projects, the milestones of freeing up your time and space. This isn’t necessarily going to make your time in the tunnel go quicker (although you may see things you can cut out), but it does help you to see your way out, to feel in control and create some momentum.
And seeing as you are going to be in this tunnel for a while, why not make it nice? Rather than spend this period of your life scared and worried and out of control, why not make a cosy den in the tunnel where you drink hot chocolate and light a candle. You are likely experiencing a lot of stress right now so it is important to soothe your body, look after yourself as much as possible. Start practicing for the life you want to live by doing little things that feel like it - maybe that’s reading two pages of a book a week right now, maybe it’s walking to the end of your road, maybe it’s jotting down notes for a future project. Don’t pin all your hopes on the light at the end of the tunnel - be your own light.
How do you keep yourself within boundaries you’ve set; how do you resist the new and shiny?
This is an important and pertinent one. I think that we can very easily find the reasons and excuses to abandon our plans and fly after the new, shiny things: we can tell ourselves that this is the point of working for ourselves, that it is the definition of freedom, it is innate in us as creatives, that we must follow what flows. We can build a really good case that way, but we can also build a really long, impossible to do list too. And when we are constantly picking up new projects we’re not completing anything, which erodes our confidence in our own competence. A metaphor I’ve often used with clients is that you’re running up and down the side of the road not knowing why you’re still not on the other side.
I am someone who is susceptible to the new and shiny, or at least to the wanting to do it all. Most recently this has taken form in Substack, the paid email platform for writers. For a few months I’d been umm-ing and ahh-ing about Substack, about how it would fit within my business model and whether doing a subscription was something I wanted to commit to. I turned my focus to building out and launching The Cabin and short course offerings and then, obviously, the Substack idea clicked. I could use Substack as a place to put my more literary, less self-help-y content, and in so doing prove to agents and publishers that there was demand for my more literary work. That was how Substack made sense within my business and content model.
So then I turned my attention to reading all the set up guides on Substack’s website and signing up to other people’s lists and basically just devoting all my energy to it. This was around the time I was working on the third part of The Evolution of my Work series, and I began to feel very stressed about getting everything ready for that episode - a restructure on my website, The Cabin sales page live and a fully-functioning Substack. It was like I had a wobbling tower of plates all stacked on top of each other, plates I really wanted, and it was taking everything I had just to keep them stacked, let alone appreciate them.
I am lucky to have a person in my life I can talk this through with, and as I was writing out texts to her about everything I had to do before Friday I managed to catch myself and think “do I?”. Do I have to do all of this right now? So, rather than keep the plates in the stack I took each one and laid them out, one after the other, on a long table. I could not look at them all at once on this table, but I knew that I would get to each one, in time. I prioritised.
And the prioritisation was easy because financially a $5 a month Substack was not going to bring in the income I needed at this moment in time like a programme launch would. The main driver for prioritising isn’t always going to be money, but that was the reality of the situation I was in. I put Substack off until the autumn, when hopefully my finances would be a little more stable and I’d have the space to devote to a more creative project with a longer term goal.
I think the key to resisting the new and shiny is not to resist it. Not to make it a tantalising forbidden thing that is all you can think about. I haven’t banished Substack from my mind - I still get the emails from them and look things up but rather than go from there to action I just say “not yet”. This is like a pressure valve in my head, I am releasing a little bit of steam so the temptation doesn’t boil over. And then I stay within the boundaries of my current projects because I have a strong why for them and actually because it feels so much better. It feels good to have a project to devote myself to, and it feels good to know that there will be another Substack-shaped project to devote myself to after that.