For many of you, this is your first Love Letter!
WELCOME WELCOME WELCOME!
I hope you've enjoyed your first week of 2019!!
I write to you from the quiet of an empty home.
The kids just got on the bus.
The coffee supply is never ending,
And the only soundtrack I've got is the crackling of the wood stove.
I won't lie.. it's kind of blissful if I can let myself appreciate it.
If I can quiet down the voice of lists, and to-dos!
Still on my Instagram Hiatus,
I feel like I've shielded myself from the 'New Year New You'
rhetoric that comes along each year.
The pressure of choosing the right Word of the Year,
or wondering if a Vision Board really is fun to make
(it IS, it's the best!)
Or fretting about goal setting and wondering if THIS is finally going to be your year?
(spoiler alert:.... every year is your year!!)
Sometimes we can fall victim to all the good stuff we plan out.
We can mistake the plan for the action.
And get so lost in the details
That we forget the present moment.
Because the plan?
It's a bunch of words.
A list of things your mind wants
A something to project onto.
If I learned anything from those 100 silent hours
(will she EVER. stop. talking. about that? ....Nope)
it is the following:
When you focus on what you THINK you want
You are blind to the beauty of what IS.
As a RULING QUEEN OF PLANS + EXPECTATIONS.
Who has been planning
my life
my house
my projects
my everything since I was 10...
Whose field of expertise is making plans
and then watching life set them on fire
over
and over
and over again?
Each time, I gather the ashes, I learn the same lesson:
I can PLAN for my new garden beds
and know that the flowers might not grow.
No matter how much I plan.
And if I focus on the flowers,
I might not see all the beautiful spontaneous tomatoes....
I can PLAN to launch 4 new collections a year,
but that doesn't protect me from the e-motions
that those collections require.
Nor does it guarantee that I sell any pieces.
If I focus on the plan, or the outcome, I lose the
Value of the experience of producing them.
You can move your entire family,
Change your business
Lose 100 pounds
Run that marathon
And still find that same person on the other side.
For many
many
many years,
I thought that if I planned it all
I wouldn't fall
I wouldn't hurt
I wouldn't break down
But you and I both know that's not true.
A plan is there for you to attempt to figure out
What the next right step is.
It ain't no crystal ball!
It's a surface onto which you can project
your fears, your hopes and your limiting beliefs.
And as duality would have it,
Plans are NECESSARY.
They demand of you to live in the future
They require you to pause and think.
They establish an order...
They let you develop the language
You need to communicate your ideas.
But plans can be a hiding spot for
The Trickster.
For Resistance.
They can be the sparkly thing
The distraction from the real life that is happening
All around.
It requires far less strength
To live in the 'what ifs'
than it is to announce your next project,
To invite people to that thing
Or to press send
You can clean your studio, your desktop, your pantry
Until it is GD spotless.
But if you clean only to guarantee an outcome your mind has chosen,
(when __________ then ___________)
You, my lovely friend, have fallen prey to the Trickster.
Whatever project you're sitting on...
Whatever plan you have scratched onto paper...
It is not going to look like what you think.
It might be easier,
More beautiful
It might reveal to you things you never knew about yourself.
It might open the door to a whole new world...
The one where you do the work because you love how it feels.
The one where you have faith that, in it's imperfection,
Your life is nothing short of a miracle.
Re-member that on the other side of the plan is YOU.
No amount of accomplishments and defeats can change that.
Now Plan or no Plan,
Go and make something!
Here's to love letters, new projects, and all the unexpected!
xo |
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