Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.- Rilke The process of making changes in your life, is just that, a process. A process that will be arduous, frustrating, amazing, exciting, liberating, tedious, hilarious and even heartbreaking at times. It’s a process that works as much, or as little, as you allow it. If you want the process to work, you’re going to have to work. You’re going to have to keep things in perspective. Let’s say you’re trying to reclaim your creativity, and you reach out to an organization you admire, offering to teach workshops, or volunteer, or whatever…and no one replies. It took all your courage to believe in yourself enough to send that email and you feel crushed. Before you decide that yes, it’s true, you’re a loser, before you renounce your hopes and dreams into a gallon or three of Cherry Garcia…whoa. Step back from the ledge and remember that the world doesn’t revolve around you. If this group didn’t respond, maybe they have a new intern who isn’t doing his job. Maybe they couldn’t pay their cable bill and their Internets were shut down. Maybe they’re super disorganized and you shouldn’t allow their issues to become yours. Maybe you should keep trying elsewhere. This may seem like a stupid point to make, but so much of the process of regeneration is re-building your confidence in stages. At the beginning, when your confidence is most fragile, there will be set-backs. You CANNOT take those set-backs personally, because more than likely, they have shit all to do with you. More than likely, the person you left a message for is overwhelmed, NOT judging you. You’re the one wasting your own time with the poisonous judgment. If you decide that every set-back is the universe’s opinion of your choices, um, you’re going to have to get over yourself because the universe couldn’t care less. If the universe doesn’t care about all the children who will die of malaria and starvation and physical abuse in the next 24 hours, then it certainly doesn’t give a damn about your internship or your Kickstarter campaign. I remember reaching out to a certain institution to offer a workshop, and my contact there couldn’t even bother to respond, instead telling a mutual friend, “Oh, there’s no way we could afford Carlota.” Um, I was actually offering the workshop for free. She was so convinced I was going to reject her group, that she pre-emptively rejected me. I rolled my eyes, took a deep breath and called her again, explaining that I was offering the workshop pro bono. And that workshop was pretty much life-changing for me and my business. But it only happened because I didn’t let that person’s (boring) issues become my own. If you’re engaged in the (wonderful) process of re-creation, that’s awesome. But have some empathy for our bruised world, and yourself, and don’t get caught up in other people’s fears, insecurities and incompetence. Do your best, and keep moving forward.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 13:42:27 +0000
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