In our on-line blog book group run by Jamie, we are currently working on chapter 7 of The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women by Gail McMeekin. I never managed to post last week for the chapter on saboteurs. I thought a lot about it and put notes all over the margins of my book but never sat down to put my thoughts to paper or to screen as the case may be! So, I thought that this week I would tackle my saboteurs along with my guides as I really see them as two sides of one coin and on both sides is an image of me!
I am my own worst saboteur. I am really my only saboteur. It is not what others say about me or to me that sabotages my efforts; it is how I react and interpret their spoken and unspoken messages. I choose to give what they say (or what I think they are thinking) weight and this sabotages my efforts. I can blame them and vent my anger towards them but it is essentially my own choices that create the feelings of less within me.
The section of chapter 6 about Joanne Rossman and her inability to ever have money in savings resonated strongly with me. Money is an ongoing issue in my life (as, I expect, it is with many). I live in a city where the cost of living is very, very high. The combined incomes of myself and my spouse just barely cover the basics of rent, bills, food, retirement savings and clothing/caring for our daughter. I so appreciate the feeling of never having enough money; as I write this we have $6.37 in our bank account and no money coming in for a week. This panics me. There is nothing to fall back on in case of emergency. I hate feeling that there is not enough even though I know in my heart that we have all we need to get through this week. There is food in the fridge, clothes for our bodies, a roof over our heads. We do not need more but I want the peace of mind that comes with knowing we have more if we did need it. I know in my heart that my negative, worried energy about money helps to keep the money from flowing in; it keeps us from being in a place where I don’t need to feel the panic and stress.
I know that I am choosing to feel this way. What I need to believe in and focus on is the abundance and wealth already in my life in order to have money come to me. I need to stop feeling surprised when someone buys one of my pieces from the gallery. I need to take the risk and try to get my work out in the shops here in town and stop feeling afraid that no one will want to carry my work because “it is not good enough”. I love the quote from C. Diane Ealy where she says that “once we clear out our negative messages, we are free to reconceptualize and redefine money, embracing its spiritual aspects. Money then becomes a partner on our journey toward expressing our unique creative selves.” I want this for myself. I want to silence my inner saboteur and move forward in a positive way.
The other fear that totally resonated with me in chapter 6 is the fear of having it come too easily. I experienced this years ago when I first tried to write a novel. The writing came to me so easily. I would sit at the computer for hours and the writing would flow out of me and through me and, before I knew it, I had over 400 pages written. And then…I stopped. I became afraid. I was writing too much, too easily. There was no way what I was writing could be good enough. No way that any publisher would want it. No way it would rank up there with the writers I so admire. The novel has sat, unfinished, on my computer for the past 5 years. Whenever my husband suggests that I work on finishing my novel I literally get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I no longer write anything more than a blog post or a lesson plan. I have channeled my creativity into other, less scary, areas such as my jewelery making or sewing. There is still some fear in these activities but there is a much greater since of control and, therefore, of safety.
A huge part of my fear came from the feeling that I was the conduit for this novel - and that truly terrified me. How could I be writing this? How could what I was doing ever be good enough? This is what Elizabeth Gilbert is talking about in her live lecture about creativity. The idea that there is something greater than myself out there, something that channels creativity through me is very scary to me. But I have experienced it! It was an amazing feeling and a truly, truly terrifying feeling at the same time. I have experienced it and yet I can not accept it willingly, I fight against it. I am not able to just let go and allow the creativity to flow through me without judging the work I am doing. I am not able to take my self out of the picture and to just let it be. I am not able to accept that there is something greater than myself at work here. I am my own worst saboteur.
As to guides in chapter 7, I do have people in my life who encourage my creativity, who praise what I do and my efforts to do new and different things in my art. They are few but they are ever so important in my life. I appreciate these people greatly; they are guides of the flesh who help me move along my chosen path. I cherish the times I get to spend with them being creative, talking, connecting with each other. However, I also know that, as I am my own worst saboteur, it is I who have to be my own greatest champion. It does not matter how wonderful someone says my work is if I do not believe it myself. It does not matter if they encourage me to spread my creative wings, to fly beyond where I have gone before, if I can not see for myself that I CAN fly without crashing to the rocks below. I can produce piece after piece but, if I do not welcome my own creative process, I will never be happy. It will never be good enough. If I am unable to believe that I am a PART of my creativity, a part of the whole but that not ALL of it comes from me, I will forever be trying to live up to my expectations for myself instead of accepting that I have done the work of spirit and that the work is exactly what it is meant to be. There is a void in my life where spirit resides; the door is shut tight and I am the one piling the furniture in front of it to keep it from being able to open. I am afraid.
This is what I want to focus on in my creative life. I want to give myself permission to let go, to stop holding everything so tightly in my fists that I am, essentially, crushing it beyond recognition, to breathe deeply and allow the spirit to work through me. To move the furniture from the doorway, to welcome spirit without judgment or fear but with joy and happiness. Just the writing of these words feels frightening. Knowing that I am both my worst saboteur and the portal to my own most profound guide is difficult for me. Each day I wake up and choose what I am going to follow; comfort or the unknown. I know that most days (pretty well all of them really) I choose the safe, comfortable path of the saboteur. He is not always very vocal , he may say nothing at all that day but I know that is the road I am on. I am not on the road of spirit, of the unknown, of the slightly uncomfortable. Today I picture myself at a fork in the road and, I hope with all of my heart, that I will choose to travel more often the road of spirit and open myself to the possibilities. That I will begin to follow the words that I collaged here (scroll down to see) on a daily basis.


