Let’s start with my butt

Earlier this year I got a seriously bad butt spasm.

I was really struggling for about six weeks, just managing for another month or so after that. At the height of it, I was in bed for a week on hospital-grade pain-killers and valium.

The spasm made me excruciatingly aware of every little twitch, every twist, every slight activation of that muscle – who knew how much we use our butt muscle?!

My mind became razor-focussed on how to avoid pain. All brain power was diverted to anticipating the next move, planning the series of careful manoeuvres that would get me from lying on my back, to lying on my side, to sitting upright, to standing, to shuffling towards the bathroom.

My world closed down to four walls, my butt and my pain.

Amidst all this, an idea was planted

I got advice and treatment from a GP, physio, oesteo, acupuncurist and yoga teacher – some helped more than others. And there was no miracle cure. Even now, six months later, I get twinges (and I’m still doing weekly bodywork sessions).

However, in all this I started absorbing an idea my yoga teacher kept repeating – sometimes she only touched on a part of it, and sometimes she said it in different ways, but the gist (in my understanding) was this:

You can’t ‘work at’ a tension or misalignment in an athletic, driven sort of way. Focussing on that one point simply strengthens the knot. Tightens the noose.

You don’t want to tighten. You want to release.

Become intimate with your whole body, like a lover, and gently invite each and every part (not just the part in distress) to release and open. When you do you will rediscover your natural balance and ease. Your body and your deeper self know the way, they’ve been waiting for you all along.

What does any of this have to do with business or writing?

Around the same time I was working with a client who felt really stuck. She could sense the general shape of what she wanted to put out into the world with her business, but she couldn’t articulate it in a way that satisfied her. She wasn’t confident others would understand what she was talking about.

When I received her response to my Discover Your Core questionnaire* I immediately noticed an incredible focus on process.

Describing your process is an OK place to start, but a functional description of what you do will never adequately capture the essence of your business and it won’t help you communicate that essence to your ideal people.

Wherever I had asked questions designed to lead from process to a broader view (such as how her people benefited from her services), this talented woman would circle back to describing how she did step 1, then step 2 and so on, coming up with ever more intricate metaphors for the process.

I realised she had a spasm, and she was having trouble focussing on anything else.

*Note: there are no wrong or right answers to the questionnaire. When answered freely and honestly, it is simply a window through which I can see what’s going on for you.

The spasm of self-doubt

I think focussing on process, process, process whenever you talk about your business is a hint you may have a spasm in your self-confidence muscle.

This particular client was feeling a lot of self-doubt, and being questioned about the value of what she does was setting off that spasm. She was trying to anticipate the pain and carefully plan every move to avoid it. Her had world closed down to her, in a room, with her process and her self-doubt.

No wonder she was having trouble conceptualising anything outside of that – like her people, and the qualities she brings to the partnership, and the ways they are transformed by her work.

Don’t tighten the knot …

Great ways to tighten the self-doubt knot: “Hey, you do good stuff so snap out of this and let’s get on with it” or “OK, you think you suck so why not just fake it ’til you make it? Ready to go now?”

Yeah, I wasn’t going to say either of those things.

… look around for other places to release and open

It is useful to have a third party to help with the looking – someone who’s not closed down in that room with you, someone who can offer some little ideas to start opening your view (without blowing the roof off and freaking you out completely).

With my client, we acknowledged the spasm and I explained I wasn’t going to try to ‘talk’ her out of it. We just looked for openings at the edges – we started with people she had worked with previously and their feedback, moving more into their experience.

I think that opening ideas and perspectives in other areas flows back to help release the self-doubt spasm, much more effectively than trying to ‘fix’ the spasm directly. It’s the opening through which you can glimpse your essence, which has been there all along, waiting for you.

I come back to the release approach again and again

It’s been fascinating to play with the idea of ‘don’t tighten – release’ in different situations.

When I can recognise myself in that closed-down, frustrated, pain-responsive state (and recognising is half the challenge!), I think, “OK, I’m tightening the knot here. How can I let go of this specific point of spasm and look around for other places where I might get some opening – can I go sideways, can I go underneath?”

It’s not precise, it’s felt more than thought, but, for me, it’s about finding possibility in last-straw situations. Maybe it can help you find some possibility too.

Magic.

Not the Harry-Potter-wave-your-wand kind of magic, or the hocus-pocus rabbit-out-of-a-hat kind of magic. I’m talking about the deep, old stuff that runs through every thing.

As a kid I was enthralled by stories of nymphs – spirits of woods or water – and wise forest women. They didn’t conjure or cast. In fact, most of the time they simply lived in harmony with the world (something that distinguished them from every other player in the story).

If they knew things before others, it was because they listened deeply. If they had a knack of getting what they needed, it was because they knew how to fold their will into that which was already in motion.

You see, they didn’t create magic, they attuned themselves to the energy that already flowed through the world.

They didn’t command with spells, they murmured invocations in the language of magic itself. It was a conversation. And the words were a conduit, a lens to gather and concentrate the flow of magic. It was powerful but it couldn’t be forced – there was always a natural order to be maintained.

What does this have to do with writing?

Good writing, true writing, the best writing, is not conjured from nothing. Instead it’s drawn up from the deep, rich soil of experience and knowing. It gathers from the flow of what is. It gently pulls in what is already there (though perhaps unseen by everyone else) and concentrates the essence of it until it shines.

It resonates with us because it connects us to the old magic. What is this magic but life force, energy, spark? It is the very thing we cannot quite define but feel within and everywhere if only we listen.

There are a few lines from a Wordsworth poem that have remained with me over many years. And even now, when I bring them to mind, I am moved…

Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder—everlastingly.

The power of these few words never fails to instantly transport me to a beach, facing out to sea with the wind tugging at my hair, hearing its deep moan in my chest. These words invoke the magic of the ocean, and my connection to it.

Business writing is no different.

Your business is your invocation. It’s your expression of the magic you feel within, the light you want to bring into the world.

The words you use for it and around it should hum and thrum with the same energy, the same magic.

When I work with business owners and when I write, I listen for the magic and put down what I hear.

I want to feel the deep vibrational thrum of me aligned with every thing around me.

I want you to feel that same thrum, to feel the energy pulse from the very core of your pelvis, expanding your chest and bursting out as the most enthralling chant. And for you to know that this *is* your song. And that it will resonate in the world as you need it to, and that other people, the right people, will hear it and feel its beat and hum and thrum right to their core.

All business writing can (and oh so should) pulse with life, and magic.

Do you believe in magic?

So, I realised that I don’t want to hide anymore. I’m done with agonising over whether I’m a really, real writer or not.

I am a writer.

Funnily enough, realising the thing you do or do not want, does not automatically make it easy to do, or, you know, not do. Who knew?

I hung, between wanting but not moving for a week or so and then came to a decision. I needed *help* with this, and I was going to get it.

A rather smart woman had recently recommended her Buddhist, lesbian, New Yorker writing coach. (There’s something irresistible about that little snapshot bio, don’t you agree?) I wrote an apologetic enquiry email to this fabulous lady – I didn’t feel worthy of help.

She replied and our work began – wonderful, terrifying, thrilling, BIG work.

So what?

People ask for help all the time. I know. I see them reaching out to friends, acquaintances and even strangers, picking up the phone, suggesting coffee sometime, asking for feedback or advice, ‘activating’ their support network.

They make it look so easy. I’m incredibly jealous of this ease.

It’s taken me a long time to be barely competent at asking for help and I’m a very long way from doing it with ease.

This is about why it’s so hard for me (and maybe you?) to ask for help, and how I climbed to where I am now – the dizzy heights of barely competent.

Lessons In Asking For Help Part 1

When I was diagnosed with a chronic illness (Crohn’s Disease) at age 20, I attacked the challenge largely on my own. I had family and friends but I didn’t turn to them for help. It was just starting my first full-time job and paying my own way. I was officially an ‘adult’ and thought that adults handled these sorts of problems on their own.

Someone commented to me, probably in the first year or so, how strong I was, how well I was coping with it all. I remember the comment because I was very surprised. I didn’t think what I was doing was particularly strong or accomplished – my thought at the time was ‘what else could I do?’

In the following years there was some good and then mostly bad. I even stopped seeing my doctor at one point because he wasn’t doing much good, but I had not yet learned how to be my own health advocate. I thought if that one doctor couldn’t do anything, then I was out of options.

It was SEVEN years after diagnosis that I finally:

• joined the national association
• registered on an online forum and spoke to people with Crohn’s for the first time
• went along to a support meeting and met someone with Crohn’s for the first time.

And, of course, it was all incredibly helpful.

By that time I saw that certain beliefs had been stopping me asking for help:

I thought being responsible meant doing everything myself.
I thought asking for support was the same as asking for pity.
I thought admitting I needed help would mean being judged as weak.
I thought allowing others to help meant losing control.

Lessons In Asking For Help Part 2

When I quit my day job to start my own business nearly two years back, I had to learn the lesson all over again (damn you cyclical learning). I was great at taking the courses and buying the books – doing it on my own – but not so great at asking people for advice or support.

It took me a while, but I finally caught on to the fact that getting specific, targeted help for myself and my business is really, freaking awesome.

Which kinda coincides with what I was saying about information anxiety, and how “feeling compelled to research and research again other people’s experience, advice and 5-step programs before making a decision myself” was suffocating me. I couldn’t create in the barrage of information. And so I made “a conscious decision to shut off the flow of how-to for a while. To turn inward and mine my own resources.”

But here’s the sweet, little twist: mining your own resources is WAY easier with a good helper.

Someone outside the bubble who can see through our blind spots, someone whose view of our strengths and weaknesses is, perhaps, not so distorted as our own.

It’s truly hilarious how easily we accept this as a ‘good thing’ for other people but not something we deserve for ourselves. (And by ‘we’ I mean me because obviously you would never have a problem asking for help!)

One of my own clients said it best when she emailed me for the first time:

Finally, (after nodding in agreement for years) I really DO get the concept of not doing everything myself, but instead bringing brilliant people in to help with my business. I think you could be one of them. Can we talk?

(Such a perfectly simple request. I often make the mistake of thinking I must perfect the question before I can ask it – in effect trying to solve the problem I need help with before I give myself permission to get the help!)

Some of the brilliant people I’ve had help from include Naomi, Charlie, Hiro, Havi, Danielle and now Bindu. Each have helped me access different aspects of myself and my business, helped me solve different problems, helped me grow in new ways.

And yet, despite all this awesome evidence, I’m still barely competent at asking for help. For example, I’m getting better at paying for help but often cringe at the thought of asking a friend for a little advice or support.

Because, of course, I’m still running those stories…

That I should work things out for myself because getting help is somehow the ‘lazy’ way out.
That asking someone for their advice is burdensome, bothersome, even rude.
That people would think I’m stupid, needy or presumptuous – all terrible things.

And, to be honest, the stories are so well run-in that it doesn’t even occur to me that asking for help is an option. When someone asks me, ‘How can I help you?’ my mind goes blank.

So, this stands as a gentle reminder to that most revolutionary idea: It is OK to ask for help

And to those nasty little voices in your my head, squawking that asking for support (or, god forbid paying for it) is weak and self-indulgent and all the rest, I say: Fuck ‘em. Fuck. Them.

Just over a week ago I had a Firestarter one-on-one session with the White Hot Truth teller herself, Danielle LaPorte.

We were chatting about what fires me up, my website, what I’m creating and what I want to create and she said:

“You know, it’s all here. You’ve got it. You’re already doing it. But you’re hiding.”

And I said, “Yes.”

Just like that.

I hadn’t thought about it that way before and yet as soon as she said it I knew it was true. (In fact, I felt it so fast and deep it was as though my heart knew it a second before she said it.)

See, I already knew I was afraid.

Afraid of looking stupid, afraid of not meeting people’s expectations (and my own), afraid of getting it wrong (in some impossible-to-define way).

Afraid above all of TRYING and failing. Because when you’re not trying, you can always give yourself an out. You can always believe you had the potential to do more, if only you’d TRIED. The land of potential unrealised is a kinda safe place to hang out. Sad, but safe.

So, I knew all about this fear, and I was working with it.

Talking to the monsters. Turning over the old stories and seeing what lay underneath. Questioning. All useful stuff that was helping with internal shifts.

And in the meantime I was, I thought, ‘putting myself out there’. Talking about how to get to the sweet spot in your business, and the dirty M-word and giving up on being a know-it-all. Stuff I believe in. Stuff straight from my heart and gut.

But something didn’t feel right.

The writing, my message, wants to rip itself out of my chest, yet the process gets so constipated, so suffocated by fear.

Enter white hot truth teller. Realisation.

It’s not the fear precisely (there will probably always be fear). It’s what I do with it. And what I’ve been doing is hiding.

A very sneaky sort of hiding* where I write something that screams to be written, hit publish and then tell no-one. Where I sigh with relief as each post slips from the front page into the archives. Where I give cryptic links to the ‘sign up for updates’ page.

* Sidenote: That’s not to say hiding is always a bad thing. I think it can be a very good thing. It’s done plenty for me. It’s helped me get here.

I don’t want to hide anymore.

Never fear, good readers, that doesn’t mean I’m going to start flashing you with indecent sales pitches or fleshy tales of my awesome expertness.

This ‘unhiding’ is about inhabiting my power. Owning this thing that is, in fact, already working through me. Letting it burst out. Testing it. Savouring it. Taking it places I haven’t even thought of yet. Stuff I can’t do while I’m busy hiding.

Here’s the funny thing.

Back in January I was talking about yearning for wholeness – and part of that was being wholly me in my business. I said:

“When I work with people to uncover their core message, many have some element of their business or themselves that they’re trying to hide or gloss over. Because it’s not ‘special’ enough. Because they think other people aren’t interested or don’t want to hear about it.

Often this is the very thing that becomes an important part of their core message — that in turn gives them the confidence to go out into the world as their true selves and really connect with the people they want to serve.”

It’s important to ask what you might be hiding. The true gift we give to others is often the gift we need most ourselves.

As Danielle said to me: “You’re really good at helping others shine their message, shine their work in the world. Your evolution is now to shine your own message as well.”

Shine on.

Who the hell do you think you are?

What makes you think you have anything worthwhile to say?

You are one deluded chickadee if you think anyone wants to listen to you.

You are so boring. So self-involved. Don’t you know that everyone would be a lot happier if you just kept quiet and let us get on with whatever we are doing?

Who the hell do I think I am?

I’m a life unravelling. Alongside 6 billion others.

I’m told I’m an incarnate soul. I’m not sure if I grasp the meaning of that, but I know I’m a complex thing.

I’m conscious. I’m aware.

I can be transported by the flickering shower spray caught in the beam of sun coming through my bathroom window.

I’m having this experience. I’m creating this experience.

I’m infinitely unimportant. But I can decide.

I’m one leaf fluttering and flipping its way to the ground. Delighting in the flight.

I’m the boss of me.

I think. I write.

Sometimes I think I’m a person whose thoughts and words and actions are of no use to anyone. But then, I remember they’ve already been of use to some.

I’m telling you a little of what it’s like to be me. And you might tell me a little of what it’s like to be you. No moment can be a waste in this way.

I can be only who I am.

I’m a vulnerable explorer. Who are you?

.

Gut Time is an occasional series in which I talk with my gut — my figurative gut (as in, the place where gut feelings come from) and my literal gut (as in my somewhat broken digestive system). Because, in mindful business and in life, knowing yourself is important.

A month ago I gave a presentation to a group of teenagers with IBD (inflammatory bowel disease). I had so much I wanted to say, it was hard to decide what to leave out. That’s probably the greatest challenge of any speaker or writer — letting go of almost everything so that what is left is clear and unemcumbered.

What was left with is partly to do with IBD, but mostly to do with life. It’s what I’m still learning everyday. This is what I talked about…

IBD (read: a lot of stuff in life) SUCKS
and no amount of positive thinking will change that.

On the day, everyone in the group shared their number one suckiest thing about IBD. And nearly every example was different (one person’s sucky can be another person’s OK, and vice versa).

We all have really hard days. And it sucks. (Knowing that other people have hard days too in no way reduces your own suck in that moment. People who tell you to ‘think positive’ also suck.)

I’ve lain on the floor of my shower and cried from the pain. Nothing will make that suck less.

I’ve felt angry. And helpless. And alone. I’ve felt sorry for myself and wanted to give up. And that’s OK. Now, I try to let myself feel that way and stay there for as long as I need.

Then, at some point, when I’m all cried and raged out, I roll over onto my back, open my eyes and think, “I’m still here, I’ve still got IBD, what am I going to do next?”

We’ve got one life on this amazing planet

I’m not trying to be all Monty-Python-Always-Look-On-The-Bright-Side-Of-Life here, but when you think about the whole globe and everything in it — the cities, the wilderness, the oceans, all the creatures, all the sunrises and night skies, all the people, all the experiences you can have; and you think about your body which, for all its faults, keeps going and it holds you and allows you to move around in this world and do so many different things; and you think about you, thinking about you, aware and creative and sensitive… well that is pretty freaking amazing.

On the day of my talk, everyone shared three things that don’t suck (for me it was my cats, beautiful days spent watching clouds go by, and chocolate – just for starters!).

This does not make the sucky stuff suck less. But it’s useful to remember that there’s also a lot of stuff that doesn’t suck.

This is your show.

It’s up to us what happens next. But it’s really hard to remember that all the time. We feel limited. By our bodies. By other people. By our circumstances.

Yet we always have choices. And that is not an easy thing. When we get that it really is our show, it’s a big thing to live up to, all that possibility. When we do stuff because of other people, in reaction to what other people are saying or doing, we lose a bit of that bigness, we make ourselves smaller.

I’m not talking about doing the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ thing – I’m talking about making conscious choices. I’m talking about being in charge of your own show and deciding what you want to do with the amazing life you have on the planet.

Like I said, it’s hard to remember we have this power, because we feel limited. And here’s the reason…

We always have choices except when we think we don’t.

There are conversations happening in your (and my) head. You know, when you are deciding whether or not to do something, or thinking about something already done, and a certain kind of response pops into your head:

I have to be strong and do this by myself.
Because of ______ I’ll never be able to ______.
Why do I always mess things up?

And then you debate it. Who’s doing the debating? They’re the voices, stories, beliefs, assumptions, standards we carry around with us, often without even realising it. And the most powerful thing we can do is take part in these conversations. And ask questions. And push back… gently.

I limit myself far more than any sucky disease ever could.

I know this.

And it has everything to do with those voices, stories, beliefs, assumptions, standards I carry around with me.

But I can’t fight them or hate them or drive them out (well I can try, but not much good will come of it). Because they are part of me. And in a beautifully crazy-making kind of way, I can see that beating on any part of myself is just another story, another standard, that’s keeping me limited, that’s keeping me from realising my BIGNESS.

So my final advice to the lovely people I met on the day of my talk, and what I try to remind myself (not always successfully) every day is:

Please, be gentle with you.

(And make friends with your gut.)