What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
Working with pain.
I have been wanting to do some writing about the realizations I’ve had while working on and through the pain in my arms.
It’s just that I keep getting tangled up around how to start.
It’s hard to draw a map of the healing process when you don’t have arms that work.*
*Also — when you’re me and you get kind of grossed out every time someone uses the phrase “healing process”? It’s even harder.
And it’s hardest of all to explain something like this to people who aren’t familiar and/or comfortable with the idea of doing deep, crazy internal work on their stuff.
This is very hard for me to talk about. But I’m going to try to do it anyway.
Steps.
There are a bazillion threads in any “healing process” (I said it again, I know), so I won’t be talking about all of them. I just want to track the understandings that are helping me interact with my pain and rewrite the patterns that are related to it.
I’ve known from the moment it started that this pain had serious emotional components, and that my body — usually my greatest ally in these matters — just didn’t want to talk about it.
Since I’m used to getting a lot of information from my body, this whole “we’re not talking about it” thing was almost as painful as not being able to use my arms.
Following the thread.
What am I holding on to?
The first thread came out of a conversation with my massage therapist. He described the tension in my arms as being like a desperate grip on something.
As those of you who work with my Procrastination Dissolve-o-matic program know, when you’re working on a pattern, any thread can lead you to the heart of the tangle.
So I decided to start my work with questions about this thread:
- What am I holding on to?
- What am I not letting go of yet?
I took these questions into my next acupuncture session as the intention I would set in my heart.*
* Translation for non-tree hugging hippies: I determined to have these questions in the back of my mind while the needles were doing their work.
The very first needle went right into a heart point. I burst into tears and didn’t stop sobbing for forty-five minutes straight.
The information I received:
- There is a part of me that’s afraid that if I let go of my hurt, pain and anger, I’ll forget about it. This part of me thinks I need to keep my pain with me as a reminder.
- And a new understanding: “I’m allowed to have the memory of experience without having to have the pain of it.”
What am I protecting?
I took the new understanding into an intuitive healing session with Hiro Boga, whose work I can’t recommend highly enough.
She had all sorts of mind blowing insights, but the thing that really rang true for me was this:
My arms were covered with heavy, old, rusted armor — cutting into me and weighing me down.
Of course!
I’ve written so much about the way that something intended to protect us (like fear) can actually have the reverse effect. So much of the work I do is somehow related to deconstructing these false forms of protection and connecting to a deeper place of safety.
So now I had new questions, another thread:
- What am I protecting?
- Can I find protection in a new form that doesn’t involve pain?
I took these questions into my next massage session as my private intention — but even though I had planned to tell Chris what I had learned from working with Hiro, for some reason I didn’t.
But it didn’t matter.
He’d already decided we needed to try something new, so he used a technique that involves tapping stones against each other to create deep vibrations in the muscle tissue.
Closing my eyes and listening to the steady rapping of stone on stone, and feeling the emotional resonance of the pain I’m carrying (yes, clearly carrying), I had a fleeting sensation — almost a memory — that my armor felt cared for. That I had found the right blacksmith. And that this was the sound of something really old and stuck letting go.
Who am I protecting?
The next series of realizations were all about the connections between my pain and my defensiveness.
I started uncovering bits and pieces of a pattern where my urge to defend someone triggers a flood of emotion, which in turn leads to frustration and shame over not having a kinder, gentler way to be protective and caring.
This in turn — combined with a serious hot buttered epiphany following a ten minute Shiva Nata practice — gave me a ton of information about my mechanisms of internal criticism.
And how I’ve traditionally dealt with internal and external criticism. Or not.
I shared some of this with my acupuncturist so that we could work on it together, and here is the realization that came from that session:
- My arms hurt because they yearn to help everyone and know they can’t.
Intellectually, I know it’s not possible to help everyone. I know that it is detrimental for me to even try. But my body isn’t there yet.
I felt deep grief and sadness and helplessness … and then I watched them leave me.
“What got you here won’t get you there.”
This was the next realization, and it actually made me laugh.
It’s the name of a book I reviewed a while back, and though I didn’t like it much, that title is brilliant!
Every illness I’ve ever had has come at a point of transition, and every recovery has launched something new and crazy and exciting. I know that I am on the verge of something big. I can feel it.
And at the same time, I know that all of this clearing out is useful. Obviously I’d be a lot happier if it didn’t hurt so much, but I can feel how important this is.
My sense is that I can only become or access this new thing once I’ve cleared out my old patterns of protection and resistance.
They can’t coexist with this new thing — and yay new thing!
Vulnerability is power.
The next insight came to me in meditation.
My new armor will not be armor — the thing that will protect me the most will be openness. Not hiding.
Ironically, this is also something I’ve written about in the blogging therapy series.
I’m experimenting with different ways to apply the concept in my body and in my work. To use light and space instead of metal and chains. To let my relationship with my weaknesses become my strength.
This is about time.
And then … more sessions.
More meditation. More acupuncture. More massage. More Hiro.
The more work I did on this, the clearer it became that the core of this whole thing is time.
Time and my relationship to it.
My hands hurt when I try to slow down my progress, to keep time from flowing the way it wants to.
My latest understanding is that I can be more generous with giving time to myself. That one of the accidental benefits of this pain has been the amount of time I have given to working through it.
That this work is valuable enough that I cannot just give it my morning meditation and my afternoon yoga. That my priorities around time need some attention.
Okay, a lot of attention. My relationship with time… needs time.
In one of my conversations with Hiro, she told me that the thing I am working on needs more time for gestation and that I can stop pushing so much.
My arms are happy to hear that.
When I learned how to drive, my father would sit next to me, his foot madly pumping an invisible brake. That’s what my arms have been doing. Stretching out, full of tension, trying to slow it all down… and at the same time trying to hold and push things into place.
But this is not the time for that. This is the time to wait and breathe and let things happen at their own speed.
This is where I am right now.
Six weeks of insights. It’s a lot.
I don’t think I need to understand it all or be able to fix it all right now. Every time I learn something useful about my pain, I get that much closer closer to releasing the things that block me.
And every time I release a new piece of stuck, I’m making it easier for my body to get well again.
It’s a matter of time. So time is what I’m working on.
A note about comments:
These posts about my meditations and my talking-to-stucknesses are a way for me to let you to hang out in my process-thing. They are not an invitation to tell me what you think I “should” be doing to work through my stuff. They are a way for me to model one possible version of how someone might interact with their stuck.
You’re more than welcome to leave comments about your reactions and about your own stuff and about whatever else comes to mind. Please remember though that this is a highly personal experience that I’m sharing, and that I’m not looking for advice or how-to-ishness. Thanks.
Friday Check-in #34: “Arriving by Iron Horse” edition
Because it’s Friday AGAIN. And because traditions are important. In which I cover the good stuff and the hard stuff in my week, trying for the non-preachy, non-annoying side of self-reflection.
And you get to join in if you feel like it.
Has it been a week? Seriously?
I’m confused.
Oh, well. Let’s go.
The hard stuff
Ow. My arms. Still.
We’ve been making pretty solid recovery. Or at least giant steps in that direction.
But you know what? I am so over not being able to do things.
Everything takes a thousand times longer. I get impatient. I get frustrated. I am not fun to be around.
People saying, “Have you tried …?”.
Yes, I have.
Or, I would, but it comes in a container that involves twisting the cap and I can’t twist caps so I can only take it when someone opens it for me.
Or no, I’m already on six dozen other treatments.
And I have two acupuncturists, a massage therapist, and three healers working on me, in addition to all the deep emotional healing work I’m doing on my own.
I know everyone really wants to help. Which is generous and kind and beautiful. And makes it even worse, because then I feel bad for not feeling grateful. But I really, really wish that people would say, “Wow. You have no hands. That must be really challenging for you.”
And then leave it at that.
Writing is my entire day.
Talking a post out with Stu (my voice-to-text software) or dictating it to my brother or my gentleman friend takes at least twice as long as typing one.
My personal stuff about time and needing more of it, or needing to use it more efficiently … buttons being pushed here left and right.
Haven’t solved this one yet, but something’s got to give.
Really soon.
I had to go to the mall.
Blech.
And there was no way out of it.
Nothing like forty-five minutes of soul-sucking empty-minded trapped-in-a-windowless-hell to trigger my most claustrophobic misanthropic semi-deranged mental ramblings.
*shudders*
The good stuff
Meeting! People! In real life!
One of my wonderful At The Kitchen Table With Havi & Selma members was in Portland for a thing and — very enterprisingly — set up a dinner with some of the folks who are local.
And oh wow! Somehow I hadn’t realized that we had a pretty decent chunk of Table people right here.
Or that I’d never actually met any of them except for one.
So Selma and I went to dinner with all these people and each one was as lovely in person as online.
And there was macaroni and cheese, which makes me happy. And I baked. There’s even a picture.
My arms. They are improving.
Despite all of my complaining, the moaning-in-agony part of my hurting-healing arms is actually over.
Because I made a salad this week! My arms worked well enough to make a salad!
Well, not a whole one. I got almost to the end and then I had to stop. But chopping happened. And slicing.
Considering that two weeks ago I could barely brush my teeth without yelping in pain, huge huge huge change for the better.
Hiro. I love that woman.
One of the people who has been doing magic on my arms is Hiro Boga, who is also one of my Group Leaders at the Kitchen Table.
And it’s been phenomenal. I am convinced that I am going to come out of this pain with so many new skills, insights, understandings and wacky magic powers that I won’t even know what to do with them.
But I’m ready to find out.
And Hiro is doing an incredible job of facilitating this whole healing thing. I cannot recommend her work highly enough.
Lots of calls.
My duck and I taught a class this week on the basic self-work principles that I think everyone should know but actually they don’t. And it was hot.
Then I interviewed Naomi about money and strategizing and coming up with a work-able vision for your business. And that was hot.
Then Molly Gordon interviewed me (and Selma, who didn’t say anything) about dissolving procrastination and general destuckification. And that was hot too. Molly is so great!
So I kind of feel as though I spent the whole week on the phone. Which normally is not my thing, but it was just so much fun.
It still amazes me how much useful information is out there and how many smart people I know.
My favorite uncle!
Came to visit. Actually, he sent an email saying “Arriving by Iron Horse” and we walked to the train station to pick him up and find out what his plans were.
And since he never has a plan — which I adore — we had adventures.
I should say “our” favorite uncle, since my brother feels exactly the same way, and my gentleman friend loves him too. So a dose of Svevo is good for everyone.
We went on long walks. And did yoga together. And talked about the value of not doing (he is my role model in every way).
It’s so great to have someone in the family (aside from my brother) who I can sit with and think, “Yes, it actually does make sense that we’re related.”
I love him so much! Especially for modeling what and who I want to be when I grow up.
And … STUISMS of the week.
Stu is my paranoid McCarthy-ist voice-to-text software who takes pleasure in misunderstanding me.
Some of the gems from this week:
- “ex-Journal of cleaning” instead of external clearing.
- “how to snack helpfully” instead of how to snack healthily.
- “that’s the turf in question” for that’s a terrific question
There are more, of course, but I can’t find them. Though my gentleman friend — in a Stu-ish moment — did call me an unpredictable wench. A huge improvement on Boldy McSchmoldy which was what he called me last week.
That’s it for me …
And yes yes yes, of course you can join in my Friday ritual right here in the comments bit if you feel like it.
Yeah? Anything hard and/or good happen in your week?
And, as always, have a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious weekend. And a happy week to come.
A gigantic block. And some destuckifying.
Here we go again.
If you’ve been reading this for a while, you know that I have long conversations with my stucknesses. I meditate a lot. I talk to walls.
And I occasionally let you eavesdrop on my internal dialogue.
This is because I have no boundaries secretly hope that you’ll be able to benefit from some of my crazy insights without having to go through all the hard stuff.
I also secretly hope that you’ll be so intrigued by this whole working-on-your-stuff process of learning about your patterns and how to change them that you’ll start building your life around this learning, instead of around resenting your patterns for being there.
But enough talking about my secret mission. And more about this gigantic block of mine, and the extremely weird things that happened when I took a look at it.
The wall of resistance.
Encountering the wall.
At the moment, I’m dealing with a considerable amount of physical pain. And my body has been pretty clear about the fact that it is not ready to go through the process of healing yet.
So the whole point of yesterday’s meditation-thing was to get some more information about that resistance. About the stuck.
And yet again, my block was a wall. A gigantic wall of resistance. It circled my body. It was just high enough that I could see over it if I stood on tiptoe.
Not that there was anything to see since everything else was pitch black.
And it was at least a foot or so thick. Gooey and gummy in consistency.
Darkness all around. Darkness and this never-ending Nothingness. Like a wall in the middle of outer space. Composed entirely of resistance and struggling-with-the-way-things-are.
When I tried to touch the wall, it was slimy and pulsating, with this zappy, almost electric energy. It was unpleasant being by my wall.
Letting the wall be the wall.
It was hard to figure out anything about the wall when the darkness around it was so thick and overpowering.
I said, “Let’s have some light here.”
The light came. It was just the right amount of light. Not harsh or intrusive, but not too soft or ethereal either. It was a sensible sort of light.
The wall tried to hide from the light. It was not liking the light. It couldn’t hide so it got all writhe-ey and wiggly.
I said, very firmly, “Wall. Listen to me. I am not trying to destroy you. I am trying to find out about you. No one is going to make you disappear. You are allowed to be here. We will even help you stay grounded for now, but we need to shed some light on this.”
The wall was still wiggling, but much more half-heartedly. More like a kid shifting back and forth on his feet than a full-on fidget.
Me: “Wall, you are safe. Here is what is going to happen. We are going to ground you and I am going to look at you. You can stay for as long as you need to stay. I will not try to hurt you.”
And then I had chords of light stream down from above to center it, and come up from below to hold it in place.
(This is not my style at all, but it’s a technique I learned from Hiro Boga, who does astonishingly powerful work, so I’ve been experimenting with expanding my repertoire of wacky.)
Seeing the wall for what it was.
Now that I could really see the wall without all the distractions of the darkness and the zappy, pulsating, fidgeting stuff, I discovered something.
I realized that my wall was translucent.
Beyond a dirty, grainy outer film, it was almost clear. And with all the light coming down now, you could see right inside of it.
You could see what was inside of it.
Because right there, trapped inside of the wall, was an enormous clock. I knew that clock too. I knew what it meant.
Oh. Stupid symbolism.
“Oh, wall,” I said.
The wall didn’t say anything. It kind of shrugged.
“Oh, wall! This is how you keep me safe. You have frozen time for me so that the bad things that are sure to happen won’t come.”
The wall stopped pulsing. It waited.
I said, “Wall, do you know what’s really happened as a result of your trying — which I appreciate — to keep me safe?”
The wall looked suspicious.
I said, “Wall, I also want to be safe. Here’s the thing though. Time doesn’t work for me. Time has become so constricted and constrained for me that I feel as though I never have enough. This wall is keeping me from what I need to accomplish.”
The wall was very still.
I said, “Wall, are you sure we need to wall it off from me like this? What if we didn’t have to stop time? What if there were another way of protecting me from things that might go wrong?”
And that’s when the weird stuff started.
The wall began to shift and soften — just in that one spot — as though molecules were scooting around in new formations.
And then the clock popped out of the top of the wall and came to rest in a new little indentation that hadn’t been there before, clicking and whirring happily and then POW!
The clock exploded and its little pieces went everywhere.
I was (forgive me for the awful pun I am about to make but I crack myself up) alarmed. No, it was scary. But only for about a second.
Because then there were these tiny, pretty golden flecks everywhere. Little fragments of time.
And I remembered that there will always be enough for me.
My whole body softened. I could breathe easily again. The wall didn’t seem as high. The dark wasn’t as dark. The light wasn’t something I had called upon. It was just there, lighting up the wall so I could see all of it.
And the wall itself seemed friendlier. Now that it had released the clock, it wanted to show me everything that it was hiding. It pulled me along to different parts, pointing out the stuck bits and revealing what was there.
A lot of stuck.
Next was the bag. The guilt/shame/money bag that taught me that collecting and saving are things you have to be ashamed of.
Once I’d looked at the bag, the wall released it. I said, there is enough. And breathed that enoughness into my body.
Next the pool cue that taught me that trying new things is bad. I cried. It came out of the wall. It split into pieces and disappeared.
Next a picture of a box. A cardboard box taped together and crumbling. It was underneath the bed of my ex. A reminder of broken-heartedness. Of hurt. The wall let it go.
And then there was nothing left inside the wall. And the wall opened up and made a space and a little round room appeared there. Like a room in a tower. A tiny little house within the wall.
I went in.
A place to breathe and learn.
At first I didn’t like being in there. There was too much pressure from my wall of resistance on either side and I was afraid it might accidentally crush this new space.
But I said, “Wall, you are hurting me. I need protection that doesn’t come with pain.” And it stopped.
I sat in this new space (on a red cushion, yes, I told you it was weird) and I said, this is where I will be able to learn about time, money, space and love. And about trying new things.
I said, this will be our new protection. Our safe space to be curious about these things. And this safe space will be there until it is no longer needed.
And then the wall was gone. It had somehow drained into the space below it … and all the resistance was cleared away.
The only thing left was this little Häuschen. This mini-sanctuary. Rotating in the orbit that was once the wall that surrounds me.
And I watched my sanctuary pod spinning in its place. Until I was done watching.
A note about comments:
These posts about my meditations and my talking-to-stucknesses are a way for me to let you to hang out in my process-thing. They are not an invitation to tell me what you think I “should” be doing to work through my stuff. They are a way for me to model one possible version of how someone might interact with their stuck.
You’re more than welcome to leave comments about your reactions and about your own stuff and about whatever else comes to mind. Please remember though that this is a highly personal experience that I’m sharing, and that I’m not looking for advice or how-to-ishness. Thanks.
For Artists. (And anyone else who sells stuff online).
Six things I’ve learned while buying your art. Or trying to.
I’ve been realizing lately that our magical Hoppy House needs some Beautiful Things on its empty, empty walls.
And since I know my “extended network” (ew ew ew, I just said extended network) includes about a gazillion talented, creative people who live to make such things, I set out on a grand adventure across the internet.
Well, not really a grand one, but it has been pretty entertaining.
I’ve gotten some gorgeous pieces. Met some interesting people. Plus I have the joy of supporting people who create. Which I LOVE.
But the interesting part — to me at least — was observing the process.
I am completely fascinated with figuring out what makes me buy one thing as opposed to another. What makes me want to buy from you instead of from somebody else.
And I have thoughts. Oh, the understatement. It hurts.
So if you’re an artist or an Etsy person, take notes. And if you’re not, believe me — most of this is applicable in some form or another anyway.
Six important [substitute a word for “marketing” that doesn’t make you want to throw up] lessons.
And three tiny little bonus points. Let’s go.
Be around. Hang out online. Talk to people. Write stuff.
This one is not exactly news. Every marketing book/class/blog on the planet will force-feed you the whole “people buy from people they like, know and trust” thing until you can’t stand it anymore.
But ohmygod it is so true. Everyone I bought from? Either people I know on Twitter or people I heard about while I was on Twitter.
It was so much easier to fall in love with something, after having been guided there by someone I like. Does this make me a horribly shallow person? Possibly. But really, it’s just proof that I’m a human being.
If you’re an artist or you’re craft-ey or even if you’re a service professional, you might as well take advantage of this.
People who come to you through friends and connections are going to be more likely to feel comfortable throwing money at you. So be around. Be visible, so that people I know can mention you.
It’s the only way I’m going to find you.
Tell me stories.
I must have gone to dozens of sites and looked at paintings.
And all the paintings that spoke to me had stories attached to them. Leah Piken Kolidas has a lovely way of telling you about the elements of her work as well as sharing bits of her own creative process. Totally not preachy or over-intellectualized — it just gives you a sense of who she is.
Some artists tell stories about some of their pieces and not about others. Everything I bought except for one piece had some sort of story attached to it.
It doesn’t even have to be a painting. My wonderful friend Miya (whose Etsy store is down right now, argh) names all of her gorgeous little plates and bowls and tells you these hilarious stories about them and the goofy things they do or think.
Your story can be funny or serious. It can be about you or about the thing you’ve created. But let me in on the inner life of your art. Or at least let me peek.
It’s sexy. It makes me want to know more about what you do. And it makes what you do seem both more real and more valuable.
Make it easy.
I bought a painting that I love. But I almost didn’t get it.
Because the artist didn’t have a shopping cart or any way that I could buy online.
So we had to arrange for me to send a check and give her my address. And I had to get her address to send the check. And find the checkbook. Which meant all this back and forth.
Meanwhile, she sent the information as a Direct Message on Twitter. I get about a thousand of those a minute, so it got buried and lost for quite a while.
At least a dozen things had to accidentally go right just for me to end up with the painting.
If I hadn’t loved it and I hadn’t remembered and I hadn’t double-checked my buried messages and all these other things, she wouldn’t have sold the painting.
One PayPal button could have fixed that. And you might as well make it easier for people who kind of want your art and mostly want your art and want it right now but might forget later to buy it too.
I know those aren’t necessarily your all-time ideal Right People, but at this point? You might as well be selling your stuff so that you can keep making more of it.
Have stuff that I can’t buy.
You want at least a couple things that have already sold.
Whenever I’m on Sarah Marie Lacy’s site, there are always a couple of things I love that I can’t get. Because someone else has already bought them. I can’t even tell you how hot this is. HOT!
If you’ve sold stuff*, keep it up there — with the price — so that I’ll know that I was too late. That other people want this too. Give me a little urgency.
You don’t have to shout “Buy now!” or anything because you know, ick. Just remind me that people buy stuff.
*Even if it was just to your mother’s best friend or something. Even if you bartered it for something. I don’t care. Stick a big SOLD tag underneath it.
Surprise me.
I have to mention Leah Piken Kolidas (who also has a terrific About Page, by the way) again because she did something super smart.
She sent a lovely thank-you note on a card. A “this card is so pretty that I need more of them” kind of card, a card that just so happened to feature one of her paintings.
It wasn’t an upsell (because it was just her being sweet and wonderful), but it totally worked as one in the most subtle way ever.
Uh huh. I’d been on her site and hadn’t noticed that you could get gift card versions of her paintings. Now I know.
And the next time I need a birthday present for someone, that’s where I’ll be getting it.
Be human.
Man, I talk about this so much. Really mostly just so I can keep linking to that one Betty Boop video with the cow-punching episode, but I cannot overemphasize how important this is.
Okay. So I bought five small pieces of art last month.
Four of them came with warm, friendly, personal little handwritten notes. And the other one had “We appreciate your business” written on the invoice.
Seriously? We appreciate your business?
You’re not — gott sei dank — BlandCorp USA or anything. You’re an artist. In a basement. In Eugene. Which is great. That’s why I’m buying from you. So what’s the deal?
It is so easy when you’re an itty biz to take the extra effort to connect. It can be a hand-drawn smiley face. A warm email (or just a template that sounds like you’re really nice). SOMETHING.
Make it easy for me to think of you as a person (you in all of your quirky fabulousness!) and not as some faceless website, and I’ll tell the whole world about you.
Bonus advice. I’ll make this fast.
1. Tell me what’s going to happen next.
It’s easier for me to press the buy button if I know what’s going to happen. You’re going to mail it to me? It already includes shipping? It doesn’t? Your prices are in Canadian so this is going to SAVE ME MONEY?
Let me know.
2. Don’t price by size.
I know galleries do this. But that doesn’t make it not stupid. Plus, the internet is not a gallery. You have space.
If you set things up so that big paintings cost more and small paintings cost less, you are educating me as a consumer to believe that the value of what you create has to do with how big it is or how long it takes to make it. Which is Bolsheviks.*
*That’s Stu, my voice-to-text software, who refuses to say “bullshit”.
3. Blog about your process.
I love reading Barbara J. Carter’s blog. She’s a painter who also has a PhD in astrophysics. So she does cool geometric science-inspired wackiness and tells you about it.
Which is so, so great. She blogs about the process of creating and then you can buy what she’s just made. Smart smart smart.
I’m done.
Not buying art. But I’m getting off my soapbox now.
It’s not that I want to rant all day about business-related stuff. It’s more that I want to give you money. I want your art. I want to be a part of your business.
And it’s not just me. Honest. There are plenty of us out there who want your paintings and your crafted bits of genius and your whatever-it-is you have for us. We think about you. A lot.
And then something happens that keeps us from remembering why it is that we need your stuff right this second.
So everything you can do to remove those somethings makes us happier.
And it makes it easier for you to keep on doing your art and sharing it with the rest of us. Please?
Ask Havi #20: Am I just giving in?
Note: it is almost impossible to get on the Ask Havi list. This person got in by a. being one of my clients or students, b. flattering the hell out of my duck, and c. making life easy on me by being clear about what the question was and what details I could use.
Thanks to the lovely and thoughtful Maryann Devine for today’s Ask Havi. With permission, as always.
The question.
Hi Havi
I can’t tell you how much you’ve helped me between the insights you provide daily in your blog, and the techniques and concepts you put together in your ebooks and audio. Seriously, thank you.
Here’s my question:
I think there are just some things that are not in one’s nature, and there’s no reason to force yourself.
But how can you tell if you are being true to yourself, or just giving in to what feels safe?
Here is a concrete example from my life: I’m an introverted person. That doesn’t mean I don’t like people, or don’t enjoy being with them, or even meeting new people, but it takes a *lot* out of me.
I’m not afraid to stand up and talk in front of people, but it is completely draining for me.
I hear a lot of advice about the importance of face-to-face, and even get great opportunities to do in-person stuff like this.
Part of me says, you should do this, everyone says it will help, and another part says, you just don’t have this in you, and it doesn’t make sense to force it.
p.s. I also think I’m procrastinating about _________.
And an answer.
Ohmygod. This is a really, really rich question that pretty much deserves an entire book to be written about it.
Here’s my off-the-top-of-my-head answer, though:
Assume for now that you can’t tell if you’re being true to yourself or just giving in. Have that be your starting point.
And then give yourself permission — temporary permission, if that feels better — to not do the thing you don’t want to do.
In fact, let’s make it easier. Selma and I will give you permission to Not Do The Thing, and that way if you have resistance to giving yourself permission, we can sneak around it.
This is how the experiment works.
If you consciously and actively allow yourself to Not Do The Thing, and you consciously and actively observe your reactions, then you’re not “just giving in”.
You’re experimenting.
You’re experimenting with being kind to yourself. You’re finding out what happens when you do things without guilt. When you — whoah — make a love-based decision instead of a fear-based decision.
And then you pay attention to what comes up.
Removing guilt from the equation makes everything clearer. If you’re not doing the thing just because you think you should, and you’re not beating yourself up for giving in, then you just happen to be Not Doing The Thing.
And then you can find out whether that feels okay or not.
As long as you’re doing it (or not doing it) mindfully and without guilt, you’ll get the right result.
The right result? What does that even mean?
I don’t know. But you will. For example …
Maybe you’ll discover that when you allow yourself to Not Do The Thing instead of guilting yourself into it, that you’re not as scared of it as you thought you were. Could be that you were just stuck in resistance mode.
Maybe now you will want to do it, but your own way. And you’ll get some insights into what that way is.
Or maybe you’ll discover that Not Doing The Thing is not giving in at all, but just gathering the information that will help you find a different way to achieve what you want.
Or maybe you’ll discover that you really, truly, 100% don’t want to Do The Thing, in which case, good for you. Now you know for sure. Don’t do it!
In this specific case …
Okay, I totally identify with this one because I’m also an extremely introverted person.
Not only that, but I’m also a Highly Sensitive Person in the Elaine Aron sense of the word, which I suspect you are too. This means, among other things, that we take a lot longer to recover from social interactions than “normal” people.
Anyway, you have my permission to deshouldify!
Did you know …
In 2007 I was teaching live events twice a month and in 2008 I only taught a couple live events?
And I made way more money. And had more time. And taught a lot online which was really fun because you can have 100+ people on a phone call while you’re snuggling in bed with your duck …
So let me ask you a question …
What would happen if you made a commitment to yourself to help yourself feel SAFE AND SUPPORTED this year in whatever form that took? So you could give yourself permission to just not teach live for a while.
And then you can work on figuring out which patterns are the important ones. Maybe feeling safe and supported will mean that you’ll start taking steps to make live teaching easier for you.
Or maybe it will mean that you’ll want to build in more recovery time. Or maybe it will mean that you’ll want to experiment with teleclasses.
I would never say “Oh, you just don’t have this in you.”
Because you don’t know that yet for sure. You still don’t even know what you’re like when you’re not swimming in shoulds and guilt. Which means that you can’t know what you want or need yet.
But maybe you’re allowed to not know.
This is what I would practice saying to myself in your case:
“I don’t have to force it right now. Right now I don’t feel comfortable with this, and this is where I am right now. Maybe it will change. In the meantime, I’m going to go back to this conscious, intentional, being-kind-and-patient-with-myself thing.”
That’s what I think.
p.s. About _________. No, it’s not procrastination! Absolutely not.You’re obviously thinking about it and processing with it and interacting with it. You’re fine!
And her response …
Havi, your advice is, as usual, comforting and thought-provoking at
the same time — thank you!Hearing your recommendations makes me realize that I attach a lot of
“shoulds” to issues around face-to-face networking/workshop-giving/teaching, etc. — “Important People think I should do these things! So, I should, right?”And I feel guilty when people are generous with opportunities like that — I feel obliged to do whatever I’m offered.
It sounds obvious now, but I really didn’t realize all that, in working it out on my own. Thank you!
And now the part that’s for you.
I know the thing you’re working on isn’t exactly the thing that Maryann is working on, but I also know that you’re smart enough to start applying the principles to your own thing.
So I’ll just say: there is power in consciously, actively and intentionally Not Doing The Thing and seeing what happens.
And there is also power in consciously, actively and intentionally trying The Thing. But either way, at least we’re shifting the focus away from the guilt and towards the “what am I learning about myself here” part.