Slowly starting 2019, after a year of having this blog and still not being able to write as much as I wanted to or intended to. I am exploring reasons here with a note to myself as an encouragement moving forward to show up as I want to. If you find yourself stuck with whatever creative projects you are working on and meaning to bring to life, projects that you absolutely adore with all your heart and can’t wait to bring them to life but you are waiting.. waiting for the right time, waiting to have all the answers before you even start, waiting to have the assurance that you are not going to fail – here’s what I have learned in this past year and here’s my encouragement for you as well as for myself moving forward.
It is okay to not have all the answers.
It is perfectly fine to *not* have all the answers in front of you before you start. Often times the best work comes forward when you experiment, follow your curiosity give yourself permission to listen to your intuition.
I’m about to share a product design analogy here. I remember struggling with this exact same thing while working on product design projects while in college. We were given a problem, a problem that needs solving and you needed to come up with solutions which will help solve that problem for the masses. (Catering to the masses was the pre-requisite to becoming a product designer as per the demands of the consumer culture). You start researching not only on existing solutions but also on possible solutions that you could think of and you start sketching ideas for those possible solutions. Most of the times you didn’t know what the end product will look like and often times, that blurry vision that you had in mind wasn’t something that actually came to life when you finally were able to solve that problem. The solution you thought will work after all the nitty-gritty and reaching a stage of prototyping, most often was not working. You had to start all over again from the very first step by gaining a better understanding of the problem you were trying to solve and using the knowledge of on hands experience of what’s not going to work. It was all trial and error and by going through that process of trial and error you finally were able to land on something that served the purpose.
Do you see where I am getting at? It is okay, actually an important part of the process that you don’t have all the answers in front of you. It needs you to not have all the answers in place. It needs your understanding of the problem you are trying to solve and that understanding comes from actually trying to solve that very problem in real time.
This exact same phenomenon applies to life and to any creative venture. Often times we do not have all the answers but have a teeny tiny feeling that leads us to a recognization of something that’s not working and it needs to be changed. You might not know for sure how you can make it work but you start by trying out different possibilities and hopefully land on something that works for you.
I no longer practice product design as a profession and I no longer resonate with the consumer culture like the way I used to and I wholeheartedly believe that there is no one solution fits all when it comes to making our creative dreams come true.
It is okay to let the process guide you towards the clarity you are aching for.
It’s a-okay to let the process guide you towards the clarity you are aching for as that clarity of thought comes with you walking the path and struggling your way out of that mess. Be courageous and show up and walk that path of discovery. Sometimes it is going to be easy and other times its going to be very hard but that’s part of the process. Keep an open mind towards what you want and what you don’t want and that subtraction process of what you don’t want will bring you much closer to what you really want.
It is okay if it takes time.
It is going to take time. It’s okay if it takes the time it takes. We all are wired differently with a different set of skills. For some people, it might not take the amount of time it might take you to get from the idea to the execution stage and that’s okay. Don’t let yourself feel the overwhelm and any kind of pressure just because for everyone else that you are following online, it’s been taking much less time than you.
It is okay to have opinions.
Actually, it is not only okay but necessary to have opinions. I feel as women, we are raised to not to have opinions, stay behind, quiet and the perfect good girls. I had to wrestle my way through this limiting self-belief that I was not allowed to have opinions. If you struggle with this idea too I want you to encourage yourself to have opinions, have some courage to share them and live your truth out loud.
It is okay to want what you want.
When I first started working towards building a meaningful, creative and sustainable online business for myself, I was scared to share that I wanted this – a meaningful and creatively fulfilling business that will give me the freedom that I crave for. I have learned that it is really okay to want what you want and it is a-okay to ask for it and work towards it. It is more like a permission slip that only you and you can give to yourself.
It is okay to take it slow.
Very often the normal we see out there is hustle and set patterns of time and hard work modeled to us. I have learned and I am slowly embracing the idea that it’s okay to take it at a pace you are comfortable with, a pace that works for you. Allowing yourself to take it slow if that works better for you and understanding that things take the time they take.
It is okay if your version looks wildly different than anyone else’s.
Every now and then, I see on the internet people sharing their six-figure and overnight successes and I started to question yourself. In that process of comparing my pace and success, I was forgetting the nuances of who I am as a person and how my version of success is wildly different from theirs. Success is relative and it’s okay if your version of success and how you are measuring that success is wildly different than anyone else.
It is okay to let go of control and embrace the play.
When we are trying too hard to make things work and be in control we somehow scare inspiration away and don’t allow magic to happen. By embracing play and by letting go of the need to be in control is where most of the magic happens.
I look forward to hearing what lessons have you learned on your way to making the magic happen for you.
Pin for later:
Such wise words to start off and inspire the new year.. I especially love the points about not having all the answers and going ahead with the work anyways as a way to clarify your focus. I’ve been telling myself lately that done is better than perfect.
Dee, that’s exactly what I repeat to myself, ‘Done is better than perfect’, It wasn’t an easy transition to accept that good enough is better than not having to show anything for it at all. So very happy that it resonated with you.