Challenge: Admit your dreams to yourself

Dream chasing is a funny thing. The term gets bounded around like there’s nothing easier in the world. Yet we don’t really speak about our dreams. Often not even to ourselves. We may have our vision boards in Pinterest (stay tuned for an upcoming post on using Pinterest to create your Vision Board), we may roughly have a few goals written down, but they’re somehow distant and in that land of ‘somewhere, someday’.

(Or we’re told to just wait and they’ll appear, so we sit and wait for them to happen. But that’s a rant for another day.)

I think it's one thing talking about telling other people your dreams, but sometimes it's just as scary admitting our dreams to ourselves.

And sometimes we don’t even acknowledge our dreams.  Or they're resigned to the page of a beautiful notebook that we're too scared to write in. They’re too overwhelming. Or we’ve convinced ourselves we would fail or it wouldn’t work out even before we’ve started thinking about them properly.

But sometimes they force themselves up from where we’ve been hiding them.

And they come out in a rage of bravery, when we're feeling on top of the world and everything feels possible. This happens when we allow ourselves to really dream big for a second and our inner critic goes away long enough to let us go to places we're usually too scared to go.

And that feeling doesn’t usually last too long.

But it’s crazy exciting when we get to that place, but it’s also terrifying. It’s like admitting that we have to act on them, that we need to find a way to handle our inner critic(s) and shit does get real.

And they’re actually possible. *Gulps*

I only started writing down my actual real-life-shit-this-could-happen-fuck-me-this-is-scary dreams down recently.

And it took guts.

Real fucking guts.

It was scary.

I was led there on my bed at 1am, almost paranoid that the world was judging me. I might as well have put my arm around what I was writing like a primary school child who doesn’t want to be copied on a test.

I didn’t realise my dreams were as big as there were. I’d never taken the time to actually write them down, and like what usually happens when we put pen to paper, they developed. They became more lucid. They became concrete things to work towards. And in that moment, they actually felt achievable. They felt like they were something legit I could work towards.

That was 1am in the morning when I was feeling inspired and the courage was raging.

And since then I’ve thought about them in a whole variety of moods. And they’ve felt unrealistic, unachievable, absolutely within my reach if I work hard enough, possible, stupid and everything inbetween.

What would happen if we all spoke about our dreams?

This dream chasing stuff is scary shit. Don’t get fooled by all the pretty pictures into thinking that it’s not.

Because it is really scary when you come face to face with something you really want. Our minds are so programmed to think about how we would deal with failure and things going wrong that we don’t often go to that place. We don’t go to the place where we actually envision it happening.

But I’m working on it. I’m working on finding creative ways to display my dreams around me so they become the new normal, and an actual real life goal instead of this mini-fantasy film in my head. (I’ll share them with you as I find them).

So this week I have a dare for you. And that dare is to join me.

Create a space for yourself that feels safe. Do it on your own in the dead of night or in the hustle and bustle of a busy coffee shop.

Write your dreams on a post it note. Forget the beautiful notebook for now - just get them down. And don’t judge yourself.

Put on earphones or your headphones with music that makes you feel alive and let yourself daydream. Give yourself five judgement free minutes and play around with those two powerful words ‘What If?’

And then put the post-it somewhere you’re going to look at it. This could be in your purse, it could be on your bookshelf, it could be a note in Evernote on your phone.

Let it become the new normal.

We can do this.

Guest Post: How Consumption Influences our Creativity by amber thomas

When I started writing for NaNoWriMo last November I dedicated myself to reading a half hour a day. It seemed annoying some days, why not spend that half hour writing instead? I noticed my progress wane on days I’d skipped my “warm-up reading” and felt a nudge that quality consumption was influential in my creativity. As a soul who loves answers to seemingly proverbial questions I created an experiment.

An experiment

Two days a week I began my writing time with a book. Two more days I’d write without any use of transitional materials. And the final two days a week (assuming I take a day off), I’d prime my mind with Facebook or Instagram or even a recorded TV show. I needed to see how my choices affected my creative output. You’re not going to be entirely surprised to find out my word counts and the quality of my writing suffered immensely on the free-for-all consumption days.

Your mind isn’t critically engaging with your Facebook friends, it’s merely surveying their current state of life. You aren’t thinking about the tone or theme or depth of characters on your Instagram feed, instead you’re making binary choices: double tap or scroll. Television can be educational, but it’s a passive brain activity not requiring you to opinionate about storylines or perspective. However, you do all these things while you read.

I proved to myself (and now to all of you) that the way I started my writing time was a valuable source of inspiration and creative energy for the work laid out ahead of me.

Nourish yourself

Draw your creative process back to lessons we’ve learned in nutrition: in order to expend energy (creative or otherwise), you must nourish yourself with rich sustenance. While marshmellow fluff is delicious (never before have a refused a serving of that cloud-like heaven), it doesn’t leave me feeling fuelled and hardy in the way scrambled eggs do. Are you taking in all kinds of light, airy treats without providing your creative process with the fuel it needs to keep momentum? Often the answer is no, but we avoid the real work of cleaning up our habits of consumption.

It’s simple, really, to avoid empty forms of inspiration. The hard part is identifying where the empty sources lie

Three ways to clean up your consumption

1.     Avoid being a voyeur

We’re all guilty of keeping our eye on the trainwreck as it’s happening.  But then the carnage and mess traumatize us. So, why not unfollow the mess before it gets started? You know those people you can see ruining their businesses with angry backlash at dissatisfied customers or those hate forums on the internet or the Facebook friends who could star on a soap opera they're fascinating. But your fascination turns into valuable time wasted keeping tabs on their mess instead of pouring into your latest project.

2.     Be honest about your viewership

This seems easy and natural. But as a fan of the Real Housewives of Orange County from the beginning, I’ve dedicated an hour a week to watching the women get together and raise hell in each other’s lives. Just recently my husband watched an episode with me and when it finished he turned to me and said, “So you watched women fight over fancy dinners for an hour?” I wanted to defend myself, but couldn’t. Because that’s what I was watching, grown women –who are my mom’s age- fight over nothing. And suddenly, my diehard fan-girling seemed pathetic, not loyal.

3.    Track your time.

I know you’re hearing this all over the web and beyond. Have you tried it? Honestly, I was terrified at the end of my work day. My day job is balanced delicately with my Etsy shop and blog and plethora of writing and marriage. I feel like I manage my priorities well and may have been known to brag about my ability to get the work done. But the serving of humble pie that I was served after tracking each minute of my time for three days was enough to make my brain explode.

Another experiment

Though I’d like to claim the title of quick learner, I am not. So when I opened my handmade art Etsy shop, I assumed my mind would always overflow with ideas for new pieces. Alas, it did not.

So I tried the experiment over again: two days started with reading, two with visual observation online, and two with no outside inspiration. And the results were the opposite of my writing habit.

On the days I scrolled through Instagram or Pinterest ideas flowed, colors complimented, and my time in the studio was fruitful beyond belief. In contrast, the days I started with reading were slow-moving, awkward, and frustrating.

Be mindful

Be mindful of how your eyes allow inspiration into your brain. Be aware of the way one creative endeavor is different than another; so different, in fact, they may be opposites. All these words and examples boil down to one thing: your consumption matters for your process.

Amber bio-2

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Learning to choose yourself over unrealistic expectations.

A lot of us set ourselves high expectations. Sometimes they're not realistic, and we spend time beating ourselves up, full of self sabotage. That's why I want to share my story of 'failure' with you today.

A month ago, I wrote here on my blog about this year being the year to complete NaNoWriMo (50,000 word novel in a month).

Well, it didn't happen.

I can officially say, I failed.

What actually happened?

Well, I got about a week in, got to just under 7,000 word and decided the pressure I was putting on myself just wasn't worth it.

I was starting to feel a sense of dread about writing every day; I knew it was unlikely that I would make the word count, and it even got to the point where I was starting to feel a bit nauseous and very stressed at just the idea because I've had so much else going on in November.

Because that's the thing about NaNoWriMo - you have to be willing to put most of your life on hold to complete it, and be able to completely 100% dedicate yourself to just your novel.

And you never know what will happen in a month.

Not to mention, that when you start off with a (very) vague plan and not much else, it's pretty hard. I mean, I didn't even have an outline of my story. I was a bit doomed from the outset to be honest.

Not that other people haven't managed it, but I for one didn't.

So I've officially failed.

But, what about unofficially?

Well, I'm fucking proud of myself.

I might not have finished but I made a great start. Writing aside, I was able to make the decision not to continue, instead of putting myself through the stress like I would have a couple of years ago. And I stopped when I was still enjoying myself, so I know it'll be a project I return to some day.

I had a good look at my expectations and chose myself.

I may have not been able to write a 50,000 word novel, but I've been blogging consistently, three times a week for the past three months (which works out to be about 30,000 words, with additional top secret side projects on the side). And that's no mean feat.

But it is not about the word count. It's about the fact that I've loved writing every single blog post.

I've got lists and lists of future post ideas, I feel really inspired, I feel confident with my writing and I'm enjoying it! 

Isn't that the point?

You can apply this to any of your goals. Reframe the situation: you might not set out to achieve what you wanted to, but on the way, I'm sure you'll do things that you didn't think you would, and you'll find things that you've been wanting to do for a long time, that you're already doing without even realising it!

So I can officially say I'm ending 2014 without writing a novel, without achieving one of my dreams. But on the way, I collected more goals, that I have achieved and managed my expectations.

And they're worth their weight in Harry Potter books.