TELLING YOUR STORY
They say everyone has a book in them. Everyone has a story to tell. And no two stories will ever be the same because we’re all born with a unique perspective on life. A one-off lens that sees things as nobody else quite does…..
And this particular year in our history certainly seems to be offering us a renewed 2020 vision. An unclouded view of just how we have been blindly living up to now. The blinkers are coming off. But what do we see? What do we want to make of it? To write about?
A good book, in my opinion, should make us stop and think. If it’s fiction, it gives us the chance to escape. To get lost in another world where anything is possible. Where we don’t quite know where the author is going to take us. Maybe that’s part of the enjoyment. Putting our faith in someone that knows before we do.
If it’s non fiction then we’re looking to be inspired. Informed. Our old assumptions questioned and our beliefs tested. Our regular, habitual thinking similarly stopped to help us to escape again. But this time from the monotony of an entrenched mindset which has become staid and uninspired.
I knew, over the five years or so that it took me to research and write ‘Wake Up - What are your emotions really telling you?’, that my own thinking and assumptions would be tested. Sometimes to the limit. As I began to type the first words, I had no real sense of exactly where it was going to take me. And that some 80,000 words later I would be reaching a conclusion that I had no idea I would arrive at, given the tentativeness of the opening paragraphs. The process involved a great deal of trust. I hesitate to use the word belief, because my intial limiting beliefs would only have sabotaged my efforts. I just began to write like nobody was reading….
I always think the best and most moving speakers are the ones who stand in front of you without any particular script. Without any particular end goal, where they don’t want the audience to feel particularly one way or another. That is part of the excitement of the creative process. As long as we are not creating to somone else’s ‘order’, then we have freedom to step into a space. To stare at a blank sheet of paper full of opportunity. A naked canvas eager to be dressed by paints. A musical score hungry to be satisfied through lyrics. A crude lump of clay anticipating the beautiful pot waiting to be revealed from within.
They say the most fulfilling, and least stressful, jobs are those where we feel we can leave our unique mark on what we do. Where we can look back at the end of the day and realise that, without our particular intervention, something wouldn’t have turned out exactly as it did, or the person would not have been helped as they were. When, and where, we have the opportunity to be ourselves, to share our gifts, to celebrate what makes us different in how we can impact others, we are nourished. Satisfied. Fulfilled. We are all creators at our core. And our job is to create through the myriad of channels available to us in this physical realm.
I write alot about ego in my book. About how we all have necessarily have an ego to enable us to realise where we are different to, and unique from, everyone else. A vital function in heeding and following our ‘calling’. However, when we allow ego to run riot, we often compromise our uniqueness for the sake of external acceptance and approval. We seek the validation from others that who we are, and what we do, is enough to be loveable and worthy. Our free creativity becomes stifled and prescribed into fulfilling the outside ‘order’ I referred to above. We stare at that blank sheet of paper, that empty canvas, the musical score and that piece of clay and ask ourselves ‘what does this need to look like when it’s done?’ We meet external expectation and compromise our natural inherent creativitivity.
Part of being an effective therapist means being able to step into the metaphorical darkness with a client and not know where the light is. Of relinquishing the egoic agenda of looking for the magic switch that will illuminate the shadow and chase away all that does not want to immediately reveal itself. To resist the urge to fast forward to a place which bypasses the pain and confusion for the sake of meeting a prescribed, indoctrinating expectation.
Staying in our moment to moment experiencing enables us to use our creative potential to its highest expression. To liberate the energy of our deeper self to work its magic free of the restrictive yoke of ego. To start a sentence and not necessarily know how it is going to end. To pick up a paintbrush and be instinctively drawn to a colour. To enter a relationship without any expectation of where it will go….
When we can surrender to our creativity we feel our very aliveness. We cannot help but immerse ourselves more fully in the present moment. We allow life to flow through us, to become a channel to it, rather than be constantly weighed down by feeling compelled to manifest a predetermined outcome.
That takes bravery though. And trust. Given the 2020 vision of 2020, so much of our previously prescribed aspirations are being called into doubt. So much of what we were always told we should be doing to be fulfilled, where we should be heading, where we need to arrive at in order to feel complete, now holds less meaning. Without a clear end goal ego is left confused and impotent. Of course, this is uncomfortable and fear-inducing. Our old compass no longer works as it did.
When you remove the finishing line, you cast doubt on the point of the race. We are left with little else but ourselves and our story. And with the distilling, clarifying question of just how we want to tell it….
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