If consciousness means anything, it means learning how to interact with the pressure that comes along with being human. Using it to my advantage, not just letting it build out of control because I am wired in to old ideas about how Life Should Be.
I swim in our Endless Pool daily, thinking about writing. Noticing so many other admonitions from other writing coaches and writers: just write, you must! Frequent reminders with lots of pushing energy.
Nothing wrong in any of that, but I am sensitive to pressure. Call me old school if you like, but I actually enjoy many aspects of protocol, etiquette, and keeping my commitments to others.
So I feel the pressure of commitments I have made to others and I do my best to honor them. My client and nonprofit donation work come ahead of my personal pleasure if there is a Saturday available and I am behind. It is a chain reaction of course because I perhaps scheduled too optimistically or sometimes people die – literally – and there goes a week of time I had planned to use otherwise.
So for my writing – something that to me feels so precious – I don’t want it to be filled with negative pressure energy. I want to to be filled with ease energy when I write – as that is part of my subject matter.
In the pool every day I think about it, I get ideas – I jot them down afterwards in Evernote – and some days I take more time than less filling out the scope of the idea. Most days I just put down the bullet points and a few tags or save a link from something that fills out the case I am making for one of my ideas.
I then move my attention from writing as I feel the pressure to prep for a 10 am training or a report is that is promised or a meeting I agreed to attend or even host.
I do hear the small self yammering away; she quotes those writing coaches pretty close to perfectly, with a nice dose of judgment tossed in for flavor:
“What is wrong with you? Why are you always behind, why do you put everyone else first, why can’t you just stop all that bullshit and write? When are you going to exit this ‘business’ business and enter the world of consciousness?”
This type of conversation is why I don’t read too much of the writing people. One or two mild “you should” messages and my small self goes to town all dressed up in Self-Righteousness on the Criticism Bus. I actually only read one person right now – and usually only the title not the body of her emails and posts. This is because I am studying how she crafts her words with her emotions – she is very effective in that regards.
So back to this amazing inspiration I also get from the presence on a more than daily basis. Today it was:
Don’t worry Roxanne – remember that is exactly not the point. Enjoy the pressure you feel building – the ideas coming to you, the desire, the concepts that are forming – and stop thinking you Must Act Now on All of Them. The times are teaching this. I am helping you pave the way for a divine space to allow this writing – these ideas, this stuff that may or may not morph into a book (it could be something else, who knows) – to come to you in Its Own Time. No Pressure Required. No Pressure Desired.
There is So Much that is being created – to be consumed in theory by someone somewhere. It is Possible To Do Anything now – just go to YouTube and look up how! This creates enormous pressure for all you newbies to this level of freedom and of opportunity. It is of little use to enforce last century’s rules and guidelines – no matter how insightful and useful they were to you all previously.
Now is the time for a new manual. The skill to be learned first and foremost is to Relax. Now that you can search for anything, you don’t have to save it to your personal nest. Now that you can learn how to do anything, anytime, you don’t have to do it all this week. Now that you, Roxanne, have skills others want, that are in short supply, you don’t have to say yes to everyone, you can, in fact YOU MUST (for your own sanity, which leads to consciousness for others via this osmotic quantum learning that is taking place at ever rapid pace) think about and set your terms.
Then stand by them as You Both PRACTICE how it is to be a human in the midst of this massive transition in consciousness. Now go post this to your blog and have a nice day!
Whew! That felt awesome! And look how much nuance there is to p-r-e-s-s-u-r-e! Now, to limit myself to 5 minutes to find an image to accompany this post. That is one of the areas where I fall for the “perfect is the enemy of the good” thing.
Photo Credit: Me! Pressure moves up and down all day and all night long in our world, and it is especially visible to me in this sunrise on Maui. You can Favorite on Flickr if you like.
