The Liberation of Starting…Ready or Not

What a week! Is it just me, or is it simply human nature to want to get a little (or a lot) more “ready” before we start something or step what we have begun into the world? I seem to especially get this when it comes to taking creative projects into the world, or when I hear the inner call to now move outwards and share and contribute more of my core self with others. Deep within I’ll feel the brakes slam on, and get deafened by the careening screech of metal on metal as a chaos of sparks fly off in all directions. Maybe you’ve had your own version of this…

That voice.

You know the one…

Not. Just. Yet.

Over the past few days I have been experimenting with an orientation that has helped me take the whizz out of my “tizz”, so to speak. It goes something rather like this quote from Arthur Ashe:

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. 

When I first came across it a few days ago, I freaked at the suggestion. It seemed so counter-intuitive to me. Yet I had to admit a part of me felt calmed by it.

You see, last week I had my second Skype call with a mentor who is helping me energize and birth the new in my professional life. For the weekly homework I was invited to do create a simple starter website and its basic content, and write my first newsletter and automate its delivery. I froze. My mouth went dry, and my stomach just curled up and went into hiding. In my mind a voice was whimpering, “But I don’t know who I am yet.” Other voices chimed in: “’I need to know a whole bunch of things and have them fleshed out before I can start! I don’t create the way he is suggesting…I can’t…I need time to brew and concoct things!” Reservation upon reservation joined the throng.

For two days was stressed. I told my husband I felt I couldn’t breathe and that it was going to be impossible to get all of that work done in one week if I haven’t been able to do it for the last four years. I declared that I wasn’t going to do it and that my mentor would just have to understand the way I create and accept it. I even started asking myself if I had made an error of judgement in hiring him in the first place and if I should cancel. I took no action in favour of the creations. Which did much to quell the more immediate inner tension related to the tasks themselves.

But still there was anxiety.

You know, sometimes it is appropriate to wait, and to allow the space so that you can receive the new. But I had been waiting four years. I knew that right now, I was at war with myself and draining all my creative energy. I knew I must do this homework and stop deflecting with tactics designed to keep me in my comfort zone where I believed I would be safest.

And yet…I balked again.

On the third day after my Skype call, I went for my early morning walk along the water. Amazed, I saw two flame-orange clouds, shaped in the distinct form of swordfish flying through the air! Their message and energy was clear to me:

“Forge ahead Caroline, playful in the knowledge we at home in our true nature!”

As I drove home the penny dropped. Part of what had been paralysing me with the homework was my deep-seated unconscious belief that I have to be perfect in order to be OK in life, and that what I put out into the world has to be perfect otherwise I will be rejected and won’t survive. In a moment of epiphany, I saw that because I had not been game to release something “imperfect” or “half-formed” into the world, I had been reduced to playing the waiting game and hiding. More than this, the waiting game and hiding had been the perfect unconscious strategy to avoid an even greater fear: the fear that the more I show up to who I truly am at my core (as expressed through my new professional offerings), the more I may not be received by the world – the more the world may not want it, may not want ME. This would be devastating. And to be avoided at all costs.

That’s when I knew that I had to stop fighting with myself, go home, and just make a start on my creations. After all, as another great mentor of mine says, the time is always NOW. And when life goes to the trouble of sending magical prompts such as two flying-swordfish clouds, I find it almost always inspiring to then try my best to heed its messages.

So I began. And it’s been a full-on week or so, I’ll admit. Tears. Angst. Late nights. My husband helping out heaps with WordPress. But I completed my homework tasks, I am on to stage two of the website content, and I even managed to write my first blog for the site when it goes live. I realise that all of this – even how I will evolve into speaking with you here on this newsletter – will be a continuous process of create and adjust. As it is with life.
And it’s funny, but my other “remembering” in all this, is that action begets more action. So on top of all those completed tasks, I found the answer regarding what the best way to broaden my exercise regime might be, right under my nose courtesy of my pole home, which has 71 steps from the pavement to the middle floor. In the spirit of the quote, I started right there with those steps, using those steps and doing what I could – which so far has included running up and down them 6 times in a row, three days in the week. It sure does get the blood pumping, harnesses the “stress energy” and repurposes it, and revitalizes me for sitting down to work. As a bonus, I even get yapped at in frenzied cheers of “support” (yes, that’s a reframe) by the lap dog next door as I sprint up and down like a crazed gazelle that’s going for something worth running for.

So anyway, I have begun. I feel vulnerable. Scared of failing. Fearing I will be exposed as some fake or phoney. But the swordfish reminds me to play with all this. And that I am always at home in my true nature – which is, after all, the most heart-opened way to walk myself out into the world.

What about you? Leave a comment below and chat with me! I’m going to “‘unpack”‘ all of this a bit more in a forthcoming blog post, so I am definitely curious to “‘lean into this” with you. In what way do you find your heart shuts down when you don’t feel ready to take action on something…and how might you apply and power the same nudge of: “’start where you are, use what you have, and do what you can”?

I’ll stick the kettle on.

With love, Caroline x