How to make choices when it all seem hard
Dear friend,
I thought I would share with you today how difficult it has been for me to write in the last few years and particularly since starting my own business two and a half years ago.
When I worked for an organization, writing felt removed from me, rather than my voice, I would write in the voice of the organization - according to its strategic priorities, or even in collaboration with others. It was impersonal and any form of reaction to it also felt impersonal.
Now as a solopreneur and business owner, separating my own individual identity from my work is a challenge. I care deeply about my work and the clients I work with - it’s why I do what I do in the way that I do it. AND, it makes it very difficult to not feel like everything I do “at work” isn’t a representation of who I am as a person. The venn diagram of “who I am” and “what I do” is very easily conflated leaving very little space for trying new things and experimenting without a tremendous amount of resilience to the vulnerability that evokes. This has made sharing my writing difficult. Shout out to everyone out there who wants to “get it right” the first time - I’m right there with you resenting the uncertainty of public-facing experimentation.
One question has been supporting me to get through this - don’t get me wrong, it’s still a struggle, it’s more becoming a “doable struggle” and I’m finding that has made all the difference.
What do you want to practice? In other words, when things are hard, what is the choice you make and the action you take that honours you?
This question has been a gift from my partner (and a gift that I often resent in the moment because I know they are shining a light on my inner truth and it disrupts a momentary desire to indulge my more immature tendencies). This question supports me to access and hear the wisest parts of myself and choose differently than I have in the past in similar moments.
I’m practicing recognizing the internal pull to move away from hard things and pivoting to interpreting this feeling as an indicator that this is actually the moment that I need to move to action (aka DO the hard thing and sit down and write). As someone who deeply wants to avoid all the imagined possible fallout resulting from a vulnerable action, this is hard. But I’ve learned that not doing the hard thing doesn’t offer the reprieve I’m hoping for. It actually doesn’t feel good at all. It’s internally frustrating, takes a ton of my energy doing mental gymnastics to justify my inaction, and feels like not having my own back. It lingers with me, permeating the overall vibe of my day. Done over and over again, it erodes my sense of confidence and self-efficacy. So it becomes a choice between two flavours of hard. And I’m practicing tuning into identifying the “right kind of hard”. Not a hard that feels wrong, a hard that actually feels like it’s meeting a deep need.
For me these moments can look like knowing I need to sit down and write, but instead I start washing my bedsheets and making soup and I’ll be spinning the internal narrative that “I need to be doing these things anyways”, but there is a sense of restlessness that comes from feeling internally partitioned with warring factions inside me and it isn’t until I actually start writing that I feel the sense of alignment and solidness inside myself. It’s still hard, but it’s the hard thing that moves me closer to where I want to be and how I want to be turning up for myself.
What hard moments are you encountering in your life?
What do you encounter when faced with your “right kind of hard”? (Fear? Avoidance? Procrastination? Impulsiveness?)
What do you want to be practicing that moves you closer to where you want to be?
Is there something you feel compelled to try even if it’s just once to see what happens?
I’m here in solidarity with you - here’s to doing hard things together.