Doing the Write Thing
Compassion for Resistance Practice
This is an excerpt from the weekly News-Loveletter. If you would like it sent to your inbox directly (with all the other juicy bits, including a mini joy practice), you can add yourself to my mailing list here.
Seda and I celebrating the completion of her first draft at Nana’s Irish Pub
It’s Valentine’s week, and you all are in my heart. It’s one of my greatest joys to share words with you each week and to hear back when they resonate. It’s my way of spreading the love. And I will be sending it forth in a big way with a new book next fall.
As I write that book, I practice joy. Today, my Compassion for Resistance practice is front and center. Over the weekend, I launched my first draft of The Happy Little Book while at the coast with Seda. On Sunday, she completed the first draft of a book she’s been working on for over a year — what fun! I will keep you posted. Meanwhile, I wrote for two days straight, loving the focus.
By the end of the second night, I felt satisfied and tired. My fingers no longer danced across the keyboard. But I still felt driven. I am so excited to complete my first draft! On Monday afternoon, I got back to work after a slow start. I spent almost as much time thinking about work as actually doing it. I stayed up late, put my hours in, made my goal, and wasn’t particularly stoked.
That’s not the me I want to be. Especially writing The Happy Little Book (derrr). I decided to feel into my resistance, to approach this wall with compassion. I felt a heavy sensation — tired. I could definitely use more sleep. I felt boredom — confusing, as I was doing my creative work. I held this boredom with care, as well as my confusion, getting comfortable with the uncomfortable. And I felt irritable and stuffy in my body from too much sitting. This also struck me as weird because I had no desire to prioritize movement (universal need). I wanted to sit and get this book done! I experienced that confusion and a feeling of anguished worry that I would not achieve my deadline. I felt the fear and experienced in my body how meaningful (universal need) this project, and its timing, is to me.
So the needs I identified were: meaning, movement, sleep, and, creativity, though I couldn’t wrap my head around that one since I would would have thought I’d be meeting that need by writing. My body said not so. I decided brush my teeth outside this morning, because going outside always helps me feel better. It did.
Sitting on a deck chair in my parka under a fine mist while brushing my teeth, I appreciated the spaciousness of the outdoors. Yes! Spaciousness was a big need of mine that I realized was not being met with so much focus on my deadline. I decided to leave my mind blank as I brushed to enjoy the space. It occurred to me after a few minutes that all of my creative juice had been locked into book-production, and the bars and cement had killed my joy vibe. I decided I’d dance for twenty minutes to some joyful tunes before sitting down to write this newsletter to you this morning.
What a difference that made! I experienced myself in my body in new and creative ways, bouncing around my living room. I started to get excited to write this essay for you, sharing about how my needs for spaciousness, creativity, movement, and fun were being met in unexpected ways. In the joy of focusing on my writing — which had been joyful to a point — I had forgotten to mix it up. Our needs ask to be met with a variety of strategies to keep things fresh. After feeling the discomfort of resistance and clarifying what needs mattered most in the moment, I freed myself to experience abundance and play in new ways. Which allowed me to find my way back to my heart, back to you, back to my writing.
Happy Valentines day, dear ones! Your companionship, inspiration, giving, and receiving are some of the sweetest I’ve ever known. The accountability you provide helps me find and love my best self.
Are you loving life and your best self today? What resistance might you find compassion for?
Compassion for Resistance is one of the practices in the Core Alignment with Joy, now available as an At-Your-Pace online recorded class. See below for details.