Why You Never Need to Be Afraid of Saying 'This Isn't Working for Me'.

I’ve been feeling a lot of Resistance to writing. That’s not an easy thing to admit as a top coach for the habit “Write a blog post”.​ 

I’ve been using my personal 7 Day Blogpost Workflow for a good few years and I have great success as a tool for helping my clients establish a writing and self-editing process. It’s not my workflow that’s at fault. Something deeper is going on.

The ugly head of the Demon of Disconnection has reared. The Demon of Disconnection is right at home in the barren land of Resistance and trial by ordeal has taught me that he’s a wily enemy. When we disconnect we shut off any communication with our inner voice on something very important - or lot’s of things!

The Danger of 'Must'

Experience has taught me that when I find myself in the Land of Resistance it’s a sure sign that something needs to change. And in fact, when I set my intentions for this year, I knew that I wanted to do things differently in terms of this blog - that’s why you’ve been seeing more stories and videos.

It’s been a surprise to me how much I enjoy making videos and how, right now, I prefer it to writing. Perhaps that shouldn’t be a surprise, given that visual creation is my preferred form of communication.

It’s difficult though. As artists we’re ‘told’ that we ‘must’ have a blog. And as a creative coach, that’s even more the case. 

I recognise that there is a danger with the intersection of these things for me. Sometimes I feel as if I have to always be coaching. 

The feeling that you, dear reader, ought always be learning something from me, pervades my writing even when I’m writing about my own art. 

I realise I’m bored with that. I don’t want to be permanently preaching. Or acting as if I’m always getting everything right.

Being a coach isn’t about knowing the answers. It’s about a willingness to explore what those answers might be - whether alone or with the person in front of me.

But it’s also true to say that I am a coach because I’m intrigued by the process of discovering those answers. And part of the fuel for my own creative process lies in that. And when I discover something, I do love to share it in the hope that you too might get benefit from it.

But I don’t discover something new about the creative process every week. And sometimes I feel that I don’t have anything to say. Or - like this week - I start to write a post but realise I haven’t fully processed the insights I want to share and that the post needs more time to complete. (I filed that one to come back to.)
​

The courage to embrace Resistance

So in the absence of something concrete and insightful to say, I decided to give myself permission to simply investigate out loud the Resistance I’m currently experiencing and what it’s root might be.

To recognise, once again, the importance of acknowledging Resistance as an opportunity for meaningful growth. A call to face up to questions we would rather avoid. A reminder to dialogue - or dance - with the Demon of Disconnection.

We should never be afraid to say,

“This isn’t working for me, is there a way I could do it differently and still get the same effect or even better?”

An artist friend of mine who had a tremendously successful blog, a couple of years back took the decision to close it because it was taking too much time away from her art-making, and switch to posting only on Facebook. Guess what? Most of her loyal fans followed her there and she gained lots of new ones.

She was brave enough to ask the hard question and come up with a workable solution.

Contrast that with the attitude of a recent came-and-went-in-a-day client who told me how much he dreaded writing his monthly newsletter and yet insisted that writing it (i.e. not putting it out as a video, an audio, a slideshow...) was ‘non-negotiable’. 

I believe that part of being a creative person is our willingness to stretch and grow even when a lot of that process involves ‘not-knowing’.  

But never fear, loyal readers, I won’t be shutting down my blog! I’m simply wrestling with questions about what kind of content I want to produce and how I can make that dovetail with content that is the most useful for you.

​(Suggestions welcome!)

Have you wrestled with any hard questions lately?

​Or are you avoiding a daring duel with the Demon of Disconnection?

​I’d love it if you shared in the comments!