Situations have been a-happening lately that keep reinforcing the importance of working from the heart. Me singing my song and you singing your song. This really should be the top activity on our ToDo lists. Would that it were easier! I, for one, am still dealing with the preconceived notions of what’s acceptable—both in my own world view, and my impression of what the market will accept. All of which just serve to get in the way of clarity.

Considering how much more joyous life will be when my song is strong and clear, why would I do anything else?! Ahhh, that thing called life. The emails pinging, the apples dropping, the meetings happening…what an interesting journey we humans have embarked upon.

If you take only one thing from the newsletter today, let it be a commitment to yourself to spend a little time (or a little more time) every day doing something that brings you deep satisfaction.

Enjoy,

Shawn Tuttle
Chief Simplifier, Project Simplify
Co-editor, The Simplifier

10/22 – Guest speaker at monthly meeting, South County Chamber of Commerce, Lake of the Pines, CA. 12pm. Contact LeeAnn Hallieb to register (it’s a lunch meeting) 530-278-3000

“Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can."

-Martha Graham

by Shawn Tuttle

"Why don’t you believe you’re ready? Don’t you hear all the great things coming out of your mouth?!"

This was the question I wanted to ask my good friend Leila. “It makes no sense!” I thought. But I get ahead of myself.

Leila has healing, compassionate work to share with the world. For people who have complicated relationships with their bodies, her work is a blessing that can change lives. Through yoga, breath work, essences, and a number of other modalities, she helps people feel comfortable with themselves.

Her successful experience as a yoga teacher makes workshops that combine yoga with other methods the obvious next step. Talking with Leila earlier this month, however, revealed she was at a standstill. She was not manifesting her beautiful ideas. Her mind had done a great job of convincing her that, for one reason or another, she wasn’t ready.

Listening to her concerns and mental roadblocks was like playing back the tapes of my own experience as I struggled with my first workshop offerings years ago:

"I don’t want to commit. What if it’s the wrong thing?"

"I’ll do it after I get more credentials and training."

"I want to put the program together first."

"There are so many things to include, I don’t know how to incorporate them all into the program yet."

"I haven’t decided which demographic to work with; there are so many."

Everybody has these thoughts; some of them have merit, some are just excuses. But whatever they are, if we don’t wrangle them down, they will tie us up in knots.

By putting off our aspirations for another year, our gifts stay securely and safely tucked away. No risk required. Whether writing an article, starting a blog, submitting a painting to a contest, joining a choir, or offering a workshop like Leila, putting ourselves out there can make us feel as if our very soul is on the line. Why expose our hearts to the unforgiving glare of critics and strangers?

Sure it’s uncomfortable. But how else do you get the opportunity to grow in such an enormously satisfying way? How else can you genuinely fulfill your desire to sing your song? Unless you trust that you and only you are the one to do this very thing, and you bring it to life, the world will never get to hear your exquisite song.

You can’t have your moment in the sun if you aren’t willing to open the door and step outside. Martha Graham—dancer, choreographer, and a woman devoted to living life to the absolute fullest—said:

"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time. This expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and be lost. The world will not have it."

Your dream is rooted in your heart, and it’s your job to figure out how to express it. Trial and error are fine, exploration is to be expected, evolution is a given—just get it out there and give it a go!

It’s a difficult question to answer, but absolutely necessary:

"How to acknowledge that a challenge is scary and daunting—and then do it anyway?"

Answer: By getting your inner heckler to quit hassling you and get to work supporting you instead.

If you really are ready to flip the script, here are two ways to make the first steps.

The "soft commit"
Give yourself permission to just explore your idea. For Leila’s workshops, she could hypothetically pick an audience, a subject, and then sketch out the who, what, where, why and how on paper. Since she hasn’t said, "I’m doing it!" she sneaks past her mind’s iron grip of fear and perfectionism.

After she does this, she can wonder (hypothetically, of course) what the next step would be. Maybe she’d set a binder to organize the different parts. What would that look like? "Hey, I’ll set one up, just in case. What would a good timeline look like IF I were to hold workshops in April?"

At some point, a firm commitment is necessary. This is where the fifth “W”—when—comes into the picture. But by then, you have so much of the planning process done that the mind will be too concerned with the details to give you a hard time about the big picture.

The "H" word. (Help)
There’s no need to go it alone – reach out and ask for help! Invite someone who has done it before out for coffee. Ask them about details and their experience. If you want to break the paralysis and liberate your lyrical movement, consider working with a coach. Leila and I spent an hour at a park talking strategy and making lists while her daughter played. Just like that, she was making progress!

With another person to spill your dreams to, you can get the flow going enough to break past the Big Picture Blockade.

Whether you use these tools, or some other way to break free, once you bust the dam, you may end up with more than you think you can handle—but that thought right there is the heckler, don’t let him stop you. There are other tools like timelines and ToDo lists that will help you manage the abundance of ideas flowing. Be grateful that you’ve begun to manifest your dream!

Your brain can be trained to be your best friend, or passively allowed to get in your way. The choice is yours. The funny thing is that once you show it that you are serious about your intention, your clever mind will step up to the plate with all of its problem-solving skills to back you up–as long as you keep the goal, your dream, squarely in front of you.

As the saying goes, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” Take your journey one step at a time and the universe will help in mysterious, unexpected ways. Magic can happen when you are committed to your heart. 

—

Shawn Tuttle is founder of Project Simplify.

Every now and then we run into a Keep Smiling item that is, if not sad, then at least heart-rending. And yet it just feels right to include it in this section.

This issue’s selection, for example, features a stage performance that literally brings the audience to tears. And yet within this inventive process of visual story-telling, the themes of transcendence and transformation almost reach out through the screen and straight into your heart, teaching lessons about life and art, hope and perseverance, and a bunch of other stuff that I can’t really be sure of, because I was too busy having my heart rended and my breath taken away.

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=518XP8prwZo

Frankly, the whole thing has me reconsidering my lack of interest in both opera and art shows. ;-)

At the end of the video YouTube offers even more of these awesome art performances to check out, if your heart strings haven’t had enough.

And if you haven’t figured out what to smile about after watching it…well, I think you probably have. One woman in the Ukraine managed to take millions of grains of sands and thousands of musical notes, and combine them into a 9-minute story of war and heartache that has moved the hearts of millions of people all around the world. If that doesn’t inspire you to recognize the power of finding and singing one’s song to the world, then…tune in next month—we’ll try again. :-)