Are you creatively potty trained?

Topic for today – Poo. 💩

Yep we went there. I mean we can’t talk about Growing up without talking about Poo at some point. 

Maybe it won’t be the type of poo you are thinking about, but that’s the point… You’re interested in finding out now 😉 

So, what am I talking about? Because as much as I hope your bowel movements are regular, I do not really care that much about them. What I am more interested in is talking about sharing work that we would consider to be ‘poo’. You know the type of thing that you create and aren’t sure of, so you shelf rather than send it out into the world, because it’s really hard to want to show your poo to the world. Firstly, because well you don’t want other people to see your poo, and secondly because you don’t think there will be any value in it and perhaps thirdly you believe that if they see your poo they will never come back to see what is next. 

Lots of reasons to want to keep it to yourself. 

But the problem with keeping it to yourself, is you never get feedback to learn how to make it less shit, you don’t find your audience or people who want to engage with you, and finally you don’t practice the bravery that it takes to share any work with the world. Because we all know mostly the challenge part of creative work, or doing anything where you put yourself out there, is the part where you share it. The part where you give people the chance to judge your work and perhaps you as well. 

It’s easy to not want to, it’s scary, uncomfortable and feedback or rejection can be downright painful. But without it there is no growth, and there is certainly no satisfying self-expression. I am realising more and more that the fear, the discomfort and the pain doesn’t go away. It is part of growing up. The question is how do you want to feel that? Because you tried or because you didn’t. Either way it’s coming for you. 

Which is why I want to talk about poo – and remind you that at some point in your life pooing was scary, it was something you had to figure out how to do on a toilet, which probably had many accidents along the way – which I have no doubt were scary, uncomfortable and maybe even painful. But you didn’t it. And maybe your Mum or Dad even congratulated you for your efforts. Which is what I think we can learn from our toddler selves. 1. It’s ok to get it wrong, because eventually the practice helps you get it right, and 2. You need the people to be congratulating you for your bravery. So, find your support squad, and dive in (Not to poo – gross. But to the sharing of it!) 

It’s just like learning to ride a bike

You hear that alot right. Everything is just like learning to ride a bike.

But what if growing up actually was?

I talk a lot about the bigger ideas of life, you know things like the point. I mean it’s not huge, But I feel like most people would consider it a reasonably large topic. Or at least ‘overarching’. It’s easy to look to the big things like trying to find your purpose, define your values, live responsibly deal with change yada yada yada. All good and well meaning. But life isn’t lived in the overarching, it’s lived in the everyday. And I am pretty convinced of the idea that ‘how you spend your days is how you spend your life’.  (hang on I thought we were talking about bike riding?? We are, stick with me!)   So, whilst it’s nice to think the big things will make the difference (and sometimes they do) but actually it is perhaps more realistic that every small choice matters even more than the few big ones. I like this idea, not only because it makes everyday a celebration, but it also gives us a lot more chance to practice the small things that ultimately become the big thing. 

And let’s face it when it comes to the subject of choice, practice feels helpful. 

Practice is I think mostly the point. We aren’t born riding a bike it takes practice and a bit of bravery. Which I think is one of the best metaphors for an interesting and varied life. Because it is with both these things that we can find our balance and speed to go places. Of course, there is a chance we are going to fall off, and of course it hurts when we do, but we get through it and learn in the process something about riding a bike. Adulting is 100% this. 

Which means the joy of everyday practice probably trumps the ‘work’ of figuring out our purpose and values. In fact, I am almost certain they aren’t discovered but made just like everything else one day at a time. 

As a result, I am trying to get more into the everyday. To show up today and make the choices that come my way the best I can. And instead of worrying about not getting it right (because let’s face it adulting and decision making is hard) instead just tick off another day of good practice. Even if all we really practiced was napping. In the end when you are living a life it all counts 🙂

Cha Cha Cha Changes

The title of this article is my attempt to sing to you via an article. It probably failed. Which makes it look now like I am talking about a dance move. I am not. But that’s ok. I might as well be. 

Because change is in some ways a dance. Between us now and future us. I am bad at change. Actually, it turns out change is the only dance that I hate. And yes, I love dancing, even the macarena and especially the Robot. But the dance of a change is really not my jam. 

Why?

Well precisely because it is not straight forward. One minute you are heading in a certain direction and then next you are feeling something completely different. Change is not a journey from one state to another, or rather it is but it seems in my experience to go back and forth rather than be an express service. And with that unpredictability our old friend acceptance rears it’s ugly head.

For me acceptance is the very foundation of growing up, it is the corner stone if you will, and as a result that arduous thing that we don’t really want to do but have to worm its way into everything. 

Because change is something that whether we see it for good or bad can only move forward with acceptance. Not the kind that means it will always be like that, but more the recognition of the fact that it is like that right now. Which goes not just for the change itself but perhaps more impossibly for all the days that we move through on our way to completing that change. The emotions in between, the discomfort, excitement, anxiety, confidence, hunger, tiredness… the list goes on. The unpredictability is something we just have to get ok with not being ok with and leave it at that. 

Meta I know. But I feel like unless you accept the dance of change you are going to be: 
A) Stuck – Like when you want to move through a club to find your dance floor place and people are just always moving around you (Truthbomb – if you don’t start dancing there you will never make it out)

B) or Wasting too much energy lying to yourself – Much like waiting at the bar for a drink telling yourself you will get served, when we all know unless you push your way in that’s not going to happen. 

So, in summary I guess what I am saying is change is like being at the club, and you just have to accept the dance that goes along with it because if not you will just have a crappy time and wish you had never gone (which spoiler alert is something you cannot change – ergo acceptance – it is the only way). 

So, wherever you find yourself in the dance of change right now – accept it and if you can try and enjoy some of the moves before you move on.

Because as our friend Nietzsche would say – any day in which you have not danced is a wasted one. So let’s do this thing. 

Yes, and

I have been mostly thinking about how life is all improvisation. Which made me think that maybe improv theatre has something to teach us about how to live. One of the concepts I love about Improv is ‘Yes and’ the very simple idea that to keep the scene (story) alive you need to say yes to it, and then build something on top. 

The moment we say no to someone’s suggestions we block a direction.  The scene becomes easy to wind down to an end. No, sometimes finishes the story all together. And obviously I am not suggesting we never say no as we all know boundaries are important and there are some things that I am a no to – for example wrinkles, spitting on the street and marmite.  But the concept of spending more time in the realm of yes and is to me an intriguing one. That looking more at what life and the people around us are serving up to us. Saying yes to it and then most importantly ‘and.’. 

And is where it gets interesting. And is where we take a positive step and turn it into our own one. And is our chance to shape things, to build. It reminds me of the concept of creating more than you consume. It is where we start to be ourselves in community. The idea that it is never just taking someone else’s or life’s offering verbatim but looking at it and then thinking – what could I add? How would I shape it? What would make it even more exciting for me? 

And then adding. 

It is acceptance plus. Yes, and do you know what life this as well, because that makes me smile. 

That very sweet and lovely idea of showing up in life as ourselves. Do I have any idea if this is possible? Obviously not, but I feel like in embracing the mess it’s time to show up as ourselves and add our own improvisation on top of what the world is throwing up for us. 

So are you ready for the adventure? 

A Grown-Up’s guide to success

Where do I start? Success is everywhere. We all want it to be a part of our life. And through lots of different phases we talk about success and what it means to us. We talk about the value of being an adult and defining what success means to you. 

Successfully growing up was something that drove me to explore more and more about what it meant to be a ‘Grown Up’ like a real one not just a pretend one. Success is without a doubt a central word it is a choice we make. Whether we want to look successful, be successful, or just feel successful it shapes our choices and ultimately our life. 

A few years ago, I decided looking successful didn’t make me happy and not matter what life looked like from the outside how it felt was far more important. And so, every day I have tried to make choices that made me feel better. Have I always been successful? No, of course not. Have I tried? Most of the time, yes. Feeling to me seemed to be a good guide. And when in conversations the idea of defining success on your own terms felt incredibly attractive to me. Because what if success was feeling happy and relaxed, was connecting with people I love, doing things I enjoyed. How great. 

Defining our own success is no doubt more grown up than letting the world define it for us. But we are still somehow, we are letting success be the guide. And I am curious why? Is success a natural imperative? What if instead of being successful at something or feeling successful we could just do things and be. That the journey, the experience was worth it all on its own. 

We get caught up in success and failure. In judging the outcome as if it changes the worth. The worth is in the work, the trying – how it looks to others, how you judge it, or even how you feel about it really doesn’t make that much of a difference. 

So here is my question – What of instead of defining our version of success, what if we just let go of success defining anything and take it off the table all together? 

Do you think that would work? Asking for a friend. x

The first goal is the habit

One of the challenges of really being a grown up is stopping lying to yourself. I lie to myself all the time about things I am going to do and then, well, never end up doing. Does it feel like I am lying to myself at the time? No, of course not I feel galvanised by the plan. But ultimately motivation in the moment turns into decision making time and time again where I fail to follow through. Which means time after time, I watch myself make a plan to have a goal to achieve the goal, and then don’t do anything about it. 

Because a nice kind of lying that looks like hope, feels a lot better than making the decision on the hard day to do the thing you said you would do but can’t seem to find time or motivation for. 

But when I think about what being a grown up really means – part of it is showing up for ourselves. (for others as well of course), but it has to start with us. Grown Ups can be trusted to do the things they say they will do. Or at least the vision of growing up that I had, was the idea that we could and would follow through on the things that mattered. 

And I fundamentally believe it has to start with ourselves, taking out the well-meaning white lies and either doing the thing, or stopping pretending that we will. Personally, I am starting to think life might be a little bit richer if I did show up. And so, I am starting with the only goal that matters right now – create the habit. 

That is always the first goal. Anything beyond that does matter. Do I want to be fluent in Spanish? Of course. Do I want to have a book published? Of course. Do I want to see the sea everyday… well duh, of course?! But the goal can’t be fluency, a published book or even seeing the sea. 

It has to be practicing every day, writing every day, leaving the house every day. 

And once I do that every day always and it’s the habit. And once I have a habit, maybe I can have a new goal. But until then it’s about showing up today. 

Which of course means I will see you tomorrow. 

Experience vs Experiences; The battle of the Millenial beginner

Experience. It feels like the defining feature of our late stage capitalism. We don’t want to buy things we want to buy experiences. And for the last 10 years or so the Idea has been sold to us that what we all value is experiences. Experiences became the new consumer item. More musical festivals, food tours, paddle board yoga than you can shake a stick at (and probably some stick shaking classes as well). We are of the world where we want to go to places and do things, we make bucket lists with the full intention of ticking everything off and we tell ourselves that this variety of rich experience is the stuff of life.

So far, all very beginner friendly. 

But if you asked the same group of Inca trail hiking, festival attending, bali scooter riding millennials what they felt about being successful, you can pretty much bet that they (and by they I mean us/ me) would consider success as being good at a skill not just the doing or trying of it. Instagram feeds are full of the perfect banana bread loaf (not the 5 failed attempts before where it never rose) life like drawings of St Pauls Cathedral shot so you can’t see the amount of times it was rubbed out and redone, or the shot of you starting to scale a wall, never showing the fact that you only got a meter off the ground. Failure, it turns out, is only allowed to be shared or showcase if it belongs to 1. A ‘look how far I have come’ Instagram montage , 2. On a hen do, where the point is that you tried

Beyond that we don’t want experiences that we aren’t good at. This got me thinking? Why? Why are there so many thing I want to do and imagine myself doing and trying. But if I am honest in my fantasies there is not one single one which I am not great at. I want to try them then, because it looks fun. It looks fun to be a good surfer, a good painter, a multilingual, a photographer, A mural painter, a drummer. 

However, if I knew that in all likelihood I would not be great at most of these. Or in fact any of these (especially at the start, and maybe forever). Which leaves me with a very short list when I try to answer the question ‘what would I want to do if it didn’t matter how good I was at it?’ 

Why don’t I have an answer? 

Because in a world where success if high performance, where life is measured in not having tried and failed a lot of things but rather always succeed, It always matters how good I am. 

Which leaves me question what do I do?  Because I am a product of my generation and crave experiences as much as the next person. But I also want to be experienced. To be good. The two don’t go hand in hand. Breadth equals just that a lot of things lightly experienced. Whereas expertise is dug in the trenches of deep and continued work on the same thing. Having recently read ‘Range’ I am convinced of the value of trying new things. The only problem is my ego isn’t. 

I am used to being good at things and I want to do things well and ‘use my time effectively.’ 

Being a high achiever is what success means and I know deep down that there are many things I want to try but don’t because actually I would rather not know for sure that I am not very good. I lack the peace with being bad, I lack the tolerance and patience’s for working at something and the beginners mindset to believe actually pretty much anything I want to do can be taught. And if I don’t want to do the learning, maybe it’s ok to just do it and be bad? 

As far as I remember the word dilettante was a word trudged up in Jane Austen books about a character that you really didn’t want to be. Flighty,  not serious, and a bit a dabbler. So it made a real impression whilst reading Tom Vanderbilts book ‘Beginners’ I discovered the origin of the word is Italian meaning ‘to delight’. That in fact we had moved from the idea of delighting in the discovery of different things, to the unreliable unserious actions of a dilletante. 

I do love many things, I do want to learn many things, I want to collect experiences, Invest in a few things and a few people, but also have the pick a mix of life’s many options. It’s sort of like when you’re sweet shopping and you know you want shrimps and bananas because they are great and you love them. They fill have the bag, the rest well, whatever takes your fancy, did you like all of them (probably yes they are made out of sugar, but go with the metaphor here) of course not, but was it good to try? Hell yes. (I might be dangerously close the suggesting that pick a mix is the answer to this deep philosophical question. But when you really think about it, perhaps we need to allow this same level of risk tolerance, or failure, of trying to our time. Maybe some things are worth our time, even if they are mistakes that go wrong. What if the value of time wasn’t what we achieved or even what we learnt but the actions we took. 

What if we could be brave enough to try and fail. And maybe even talk about it? (Like that time I tried to make cheese (4 times, Cry) 

I don’t know if there is an answer. But I think it’s worth recognising the question. Because it gives us a chance to see that both the desire for experience and experiences are culturally conditioned and always in battle. So we may not always stop ourselves being caught between the two, but maybe we can be a bit kinder to ourselves when we are. 

An afternoon of rest

“Naps are essential”. A clear and strong voice whispered inside me as I woke from a Sunday afternoon nap. The kind of affirmation I needed to hear in a moment where I knew I would soon worry if I had done enough with my day or afternoon. A resounding defence of choice from the part of me that knew more than I did about what I needed. 

I have long been an advocate for napping, unashamedly telling people I try to nap everyday – in fact about 8 years ago I wrote an article. In defence of napping. At the time it felt bold, true and necessary. Now I find myself in need of reminding again. On the days where I feel the need to justify my choices and the value in my life to the world around me, napping doesn’t seem to be the choice to make. It is not the sunny, fun, carefree sunday I imagine everyone else to be having. Napping is an acceptance into nothingness, a deep embrace of the well rested life. 

Part of me jokes that I moved to Spain to be in a country that respects a nap. The other part of me knows it isn’t a joke. But I wonder why I am now struggling to accept a moment to down tools, to stop ‘living the life’ and instead just rest. It turns out stepping into resting can be a whole lot harder than you think. Despite the fact the Naps are purported to offer many benefits including increased brain function and better decision making ( get me some of those) Napping is not something that many people seem to take up as a regular habit. 

Some claim they are no good at it, which may in fact be the case for some of us. But others just don’t find the time. Instead we replace a moment of pause and rest for another injection of caffeine and the decision to power through. Because we are too busy, too important, too needed to take a step back and find ourselves in the quiet embrace of 40 minutes of sleep. 

Which has left me wondering what cruel twist of fate has caused me to lose my nap due to fomo. The fear that 40 mins away somehow imbibes others lives with more meaning than mine? 

They don’t have time for a nap. Instead of thinking about how tiring that must be, I ask myself what does that say about me? That my life is laid back enough to take a nap. Am I lucky I ask? Or just lonely? Unnecessary and unwanted for those 40mins. It is not a kind thought, but I wonder if I am alone in having it. 

Which begs the question what has Fomo done to our own self preservation to step back. And if we hadn’t all just spent a year in a more quiet, reflective, slow state would we feel such fear at doing nothing, or instead delight in the quiet moments.  Fomo for me is at its highest now, I am suddenly allowed to do things again and therefore I should and must be using all moments to ‘do’. After all if I was a worthwhile and needed human being wouldn’t that be the status of my life post covid. Full of socialising, work, creativity, connection. Not naps. There would be no time for naps. 

However much I find myself thinking, I do not want to live in a world with covid. I also don’t want to live in a world without naps. Because what we find in the quiet comfort of time away from the world is more interesting ideas when we wake and more energy to make them happen. 

This might just be growing up

The thought ‘when am I going to get a break from this’ popped into my head the other day. The sort of thought that creeps into a weary and tired mind. The sort of thought that seems to follow on the heels of lots of ‘things to do’ ‘challenges to be got through’ and if we are all honest 18months of lots of unmet needs. The kind of period that reminds of the simple pleasure of being able to go out for dinner. Something I realise now is such a privileged thing to miss.

But I digress. The question remains – when does the break come? The Answer? I am not sure it does.

Things of course change constantly. But I wonder that we have this idea of life being easy, relaxed, uncomplicated, problem free. And what I realise is often if the problems don’t find their way into our lives, we make them for ourselves. Not the life is bad or painful, far from it. In fact I would like to believe that life can be joyful, and we can lead enjoyable lives. But that there will be repeatedly be things to work out, there will always be food to make, dishes to wash, bills to pay, co-workers/partners/customers approach to navigate, needs to meet and be met. It might feel a bit incomplete, a little rocky. This might just be growing up and being aware of the world as it stands. Which means instead of hoping for the things to end instead we need to find a way to let the challenges weigh a little lighter. To not but up against all challenges and things to be done as wrong, but instead navigate them with as much ease as we can muster.

It is where resilience meets a Pollyanna approach. Finding the goodness and moving forward with the small pleasures that sneak their way amongst days of endless meetings, unhelpful customer service calls, cleaning the bathroom and well everything else that takes the shine of being a grown up. Coming back time and time again to what really matters to us and choosing that. This week I heard the quality of our life depends on whether we look at things as relationships or transactions. Are they opportunities to connect or things to be done. Through this lens even the boring, relentless feeling of adulting can become a choice to learn more, take notice, and connect in small ways with others or ourselves.

What do you think?