by Jenna | Aug 22, 2012 | Writing Articles
A few weeks ago, someone said to me, “I don’t know how you do it all.”
The truth is, I don’t.
I’m doing a lot, and there is a lot I’m not doing.
How I do what I do
The key distinction I see between me and other people I know is that I have learned — through pain staking trial and error — to put the hard stuff first.
In other words, I schedule time to do what’s most important to me first, which includes my writing, my work, and my family.
I work on screenwriting first thing 6 mornings a week, give or take time off for good behavior.
I have time scheduled on my calendar for marketing, learning time, administrative and financial time, writing my non-fiction articles for my site and for my ScriptMag.com column. I block out time on Fridays for longer stretches of time to write.
I have time set aside for my family, fun, and taking care of the house.
But I still don’t do it all
And, I don’t always accomplish all those things in quite the way I’d like. I learned from Miriam to use “time blocks” — to set aside the time each week, so that if I have to miss an activity one day, I know I’ve got the time for it next week for catching up.
Where I drop the ball
The biggest place I’m dropping the ball is housecleaning. My house is much less clean than I would like it to be. And, I’m okay with that. Seems to me there are more important things than a sparkling clean house.
I also give up time with family more than I’d like, and my social with girlfriends is in need of repair. I’m not so okay with that and still working on it.
Another place I drop the ball is with “extra stuff.” Lately I’ve been dealing with a slew of unusual medical appointments, paperwork, and challenging decisions. And there’s stuff I lump into the “extra” category that needs a regular time slot too, like filing.
So clearly, there’s room for improvement here.
Looking from the outside in
I think it’s always worth keeping in mind that what looks easy from the outside isn’t always so. Whether we’re looking at someone else’s relationship, business, finances, or life, we just can’t truly know what it’s like. So even if it looks like I’m “doing it all,” trust me, I’m not. And I’m mostly okay with that.
Next week — tricks I know but don’t always use.
Warmly,
by Jenna | Aug 15, 2012 | Writing Articles
There’s a lot you want to do.
It’s important to you, or you wouldn’t be doing it.
In fact, you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t believe you had something worth sharing with the world, even if you aren’t 100% clear on all the details yet.
My experience of being a creative, an entrepreneur, and a sensitive soul is a bit like navigating through a misty swamp. There are days and times when I catch clear glimpses of exactly where I want to go, and other days when I’m deep in the swirling fog and I can’t see my way through it.
Sometimes, I flounder on those days and lose my way.
Other times, I soldier on anyway.
Either way, it’s not easy.
If you’ve lost heart, try one of these:
- Reach out to people who remember who you are, even when you can’t. A good chat with a mentor or best friend is a soothing balm at times like these.
- Remind yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing in the first place. There IS a reason — a core message, idea, or purpose you care deeply about.
- Find it within yourself to do your best, even when your best on that particular day is just showing up.
- Do something different — get a new perspective, expose yourself to new ideas, or watch or read something inspiring.
- Remind yourself that what you’re doing takes courage, it’s normal to falter now and again, and carry on doing the work anyway, trusting that you’ll get to the other side one way or the other.
Once you’ve made it through the morass to the other side, see if there’s something you can set up to help remind yourself quickly and easily about why you do what you do. A beloved client and I were just talking about Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why” talk and devised a way for her to post her why, how, and what in front of her as she does her work. She’s going to post it on a bulletin board to help remind herself of what she’s about.
Warmly,
by Jenna | Aug 1, 2012 | Writing Articles
Last week I wrote a post called, “Stop buying stuff and do the work.” It resonated for more than a few people — and I had promised to write more about WHY we don’t do the work.
So why don’t we do the work?
First, an example.
For years (literally) I said I wanted to write, but I managed instead to fill my plate with training after training after training, and volunteer job after volunteer job. I studied with Coach For Life and Sonia Choquette, pursuing certifications with them. I started and ran organizations like the Sensitive Professionals Network, Six Sensory San Francisco, and a Coach For Life graduates forum, not to mention working as a youth leader with a youth group.
I read (and bought) countless books on coaching, intuitive development, angels, high sensitivity and so much more. Some of them I hardly even opened.
Then I spent more time, energy, and money on learning business skills and developing my message with several high business coaches, and completing hand analysis training.
And while I don’t regret what I was doing — after all, I have tremendously deepened my self-knowledge, grown as a person, learned a ton, and met wonderful people along the way, I was keeping myself so busy that I wasn’t pursuing my true dream of writing.
Throughout that time (and for years before it), I had a nagging feeling that I was “waiting for my life to start” and yet I wasn’t taking action to change anything. Instead I was filling my time doing all those other wonderful things.
And they were wonderful — but in hindsight, it was still resistance.
What’s that about?
It’s all too easy to think we are too busy, that we don’t have enough time. Or that we just need to get better organized. Or just get this one more thing done first.
And the thing is, we feel good that we are contributing great things to the world and our community and that we are learning so much.
And we are. We do.
ALL of these things are true.
We are not bad people after all, we have good intentions and we are interested in so many things.
But why does the one true dream always fall to the bottom of the pile? Why do we make choices that keep us from our dreams?
This is not a new answer
In my case — and I suspect it is true for many people if not most — it’s fear.
This is why we buy stuff we don’t need, keep ourselves too busy to think or connect inward to our deeper selves, procrastinate, spin in circles, get apathetic, and all those other things that add up to resistance.
Because it is scary.
Pursuing your truest, deepest dream is the most frightening thing imaginable — you might not even consciously recognize that you are afraid.
It’s your own hero’s journey
Pursuing your true dream — your art, writing, business, or passion — requires massive amounts of courage. It’s your own personal hero’s journey. Every single day you have to be willing to face down your personal demons, fight the resistance, and forge ahead.
It’s no wonder we want to avoid it, right? And we are so clever that we don’t even know that’s what we’re doing.
Time to clear the decks and answer the call to adventure. It’s waiting for you.
Warmly,
by Jenna | Jun 20, 2012 | Writing Articles
Over the last week, I’ve seen a lot of conversation about being professional. In part this was from a writer’s perspective, but it also came up in the broader context of reading Steven Pressfield’s new book, Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life’s Work, which is a book for “artists, entrepreneurs, and athletes whose ambition is … to pursue their heart’s calling and make it work.”
If I had to pick one role model to follow, I’d be hard pressed not to choose Steven Pressfield. He’s inspiring, practical, and amazing, and a man after my own heart. If I stand for anything, it’s about helping you get out of your own way and do what you were put here to do.
Do the work
What I love about Steven’s work is that he doesn’t say that it will be easy, that you should do what you love and the money will follow, or any of that.
What he says, instead, is that doing the work is hard. That we have to face our fears everyday and get our butts in our seats no matter what to do the work — whatever it is.
Passion is a misnomer
I also read yesterday that passion is a misnomer (I’ve written about this subject before myself). In this guest essay, Joshua Fields Millburn points out:
“Just because you’re passionate about something doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy every aspect of it.
“In fact, I’ve found the opposite to to be true. While writing my first masterpiece, Falling While Sitting Down, it was a miserable experience 80% of the time. Seriously, much of the time I wanted to put my head through a wall. But the other 20% was magical and exciting and made all the suffering and drudgery well worth it.
“The key is pushing through the tedium of the 80%, so you can find the beauty beneath the banality; it’s there, plentiful in that remaining 20%. You have to tolerate the pain, if you want to pursue your dream.”
Turning pro means being a grown up
When I talked with Elaine yesterday about writing, we agreed with Joshua. Pursuing anything meaningful is hard, a lot of the time. It takes being a grown up and facing the hard sucky parts to get to the other side of completion. It means surfing the waves of pain and self-doubt, sitting on the throne of agony, and doing the work.
It’s time we started telling the truth about that.
Remember, even Ray Kinsella went through his own kind of hell before people came to his field of dreams.
What if we loved even the crummy parts?
And while it’s tempting to pursue one’s calling with the focus on the magical 20% — the epiphanies, sudden insights, and flashy Elvis moments — I can’t help wondering, isn’t it worth it to enjoy ALL of it?
Someone asked me recently, “What’s your story of ‘turning pro?'”
Here’s my answer: The day I turned pro with my writing was the day that I realized that if someone offered me $10,000,000 with the condition that I could never write again, I would turn them down. I knew with incredible conviction that I want to write — I must write — and I will allow nothing to stop me. Not even the bad days where I think I can’t write myself out of a shoebox let alone put a whole script together.
Now the only questions about my writing are: What to write, what to write next, and how to make my writing better and hone my craft. And then what to write after that.
That was the day I turned pro.
When you just can’t do anything else
Steven Pressfield tells a similar story. He talks about how despite his doubts and failures, he knew that he simply couldn’t do anything else but write, and when he tried anything else, he couldn’t stand it. So he had no choice but to keep writing. And he did.
I’m with him.
Bottom line
There’s an idea out there about making “life decisions.” These are unalterable, no-turning-back decisions where you are all in. To me, that’s what it means to turn pro. What about you?
Warmly,
by Jenna | Jun 6, 2012 | Writing Articles
In a “get unstuck” session I had recently with the multi-talented Jamie Lee Scott, screenwriter and author of Let Us Prey, about a TV sitcom pilot she’s been working on, she mentioned that she kept bumping into the thought: “In the real world, that wouldn’t happen.”
In response, I helped her devise a way she could USE that objection. I had her make a list of how things work in the “real world” and then brainstorm what could happen instead in “sitcom world.” It was freeing for her to USE her doubts and concerns rather than trying to find her way around them.
Turns out, those objections were darned useful.
Get out of your own way
I think your biggest job is to get out of your own way so you can do what you were put here to do, whether it’s writing, painting, healing, speaking, coaching, creating, or some other beautiful way that you’re sharing yourself in the world.
A big part of the way I help you do that work is helping you address your fears, doubts, unsupportive questions, and inner critic’s rants — to reframe those messages and beliefs into more supportive thinking so you can carry on fulfilling your life’s calling.
It’s also worth knowing WHEN to listen to those voices of doubt and HOW to use them.
Wisdom from Walt
Walt Disney used three separate work spaces to develop his projects: One each for the dreamer, the realist, and the critic. The critic wasn’t allowed to speak in the other rooms.
A wonderful neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) technique based on Walt’s wisdom is to walk your project through each stage of development, first taking it to the dreamer, then to the realist (the planner) and finally to the critic. When you reach the critic’s room, the critic is only allowed to ask constructive questions.
The dreamer decides
And the critic is not allowed to answer the questions.
That’s the dreamer’s job.
The realist gets to help too, once it’s her turn again.
This or something better
This is when it’s useful to listen to those inner voices of doubt — when you’re ready, willing, and able to use them and turn them into something better.
On Monday I talked to my screenwriting mentor about my latest project. I told him, “It’s good but not great. It’s slow, the world-building isn’t there yet. It’s not a contest winner.” I wasn’t being negative, though it may sound like it. I was in an objective state, standing outside my work and looking at it. By brainstorming together, I got kick-started down a path that I’m even more excited about. Tons of new ideas have been cascading as a result.
The reason? The DREAMER solved the problem — brainstorming is dreaming — coming up with new ideas, looking at things from new perspectives, and being willing to shift in new directions as needed.
Put it into practice
With any creative project, there will always be doubt. Hesitation. A chance to turn back, to do it differently.
What if you took those hesitations — those objections — and used them to make your work even better?
Warmly,
