Did you ever start something and know it was the right thing to do, the right direction or even just the right time and then something stops you? So often we feel the urgency of to release something inside of us and we recognize the authenticity it holds, but like a vivid dream, once you pull it out in the daylight it often seems foolish and unrealistic.
Letting our old feelings get in the way of our emerging selves is a one step forward and two step back approach that is not only confusing but exhausting; stamping out the slightest spark by pouring doubt and fear all over it.
Sometimes it takes a few tries for our creative energy to get enough momentum to break through. While failing is one thing we all try to avoid, avoiding to start is a worse fate. Drowning out the music that is rising within you is poison no matter what way you look at it. When old feelings arise, they generally appear to be friends, but is really just misery and it’s gang looking for company to take out, help you forget the present but tell you they told you so and that, from now on, you should all stick together. Don’t listen to them. Thank them for their concern and care and let them go or you will be forever stuck paying the bill.
If you have a dream but keep hearing the same message playing, stop and ask yourself why? Are there limiting family beliefs that play like a record in your background noise? Is there a past hurt that you have experienced that feels too familiar in the present and therefore becomes a road block to trying again? Are you just scared of failure? Success? Neither?
When I finally started writing, I was scared I would fail and I was even more terrified I would succeed. Guess what? I neither succeeded nor failed. Nothing really happened. I put my stuff out there to crickets. Surprised by this, I realized I had not prepared for indifference. The world had not spat in my face and no one congratulated me on a job well done. I just put it out there and there it was. That was a whole new unsettling experience. It was only then I realized that my feelings and beliefs about who I was were so self-centered and wrong, but by believing them, I stopped growing like a goldfish in a small bowl. And with no new growth, I was stagnant. In stagnation, not only could I not move, I couldn’t set any type of goal because I saw no way forward. I finally understood that my new goal shouldn’t be for either success or failure it should be for simple agility and movement towards being authentically me. All this time I was thinking I would fail, I never thought I would just move forward. But by moving forward I was able to battle my dragons better because I didn’t die and the sun still rose and as I did, slowly it was the old feelings and thoughts that started to appear silly in the light and not the emerging self.
Today, see what emerges. Trust it and nourish it. Know the old feelings and beliefs are ways to keep you safe, but in a way that is not letting you grow at all. Thank the old beliefs for being there but ask them to sit and stay. Reach instead for growth. So often when we fear failure, we become paralyzed, but what is failure? Ask yourself that. Embrace the possibility of failure and success as just landscapes in the movement. Today, step out there. The world is waiting to see what emerges.
Photo credit: Unsplash.com Matthew Hamilton