I often say when teaching or coaching, “You become the person who can do the thing you want to do by doing it.” You become the person you want to be.
By which I mean you aren’t that person when you start your project, but you grow into being that person through the act of creating.
By writing the book.
By leading the retreat.
By starting the side hustle.
By moving across the country.
By going on dates.
By recording your podcast.
By standing up at Toastmasters and speaking.
This is what makes taking action on our desires so harrowing.
We want to be ready before we begin.
We want to know how before we take the first step.
We want to know we can do it, handle it, and be successful at it.
We want it to be familiar, to fit.
But it can never ever be. And frankly, that is part of what makes creating so damn exciting. You don’t know.
You can train your brain to be okay with not knowing.
The first step may just be to say, “I am not yet the person who can do this, and that’s TOTALLY 10000% THE WAY IT IS FOR EVERYBODY.”
You start, you do, you try, you make, and you become the person you want to be
Then you watch for who you are becoming and make adjustments to become the person who can both keep creating and be seen as the creator.
This is the next phase of becoming, I’m discovering.
It took me many years to become the person who could write my new book Why Bother? Discover the Desire for What’s Next (May 5, 2020). It took a lot of writing ten of thousands of words to become the person who could write this book.
My becoming happened up to the first last draft!
And now? Now I have to become the person who can talk about and promote the book! Who can be seen as the person who wrote a book she is so completely in love with and proud of.
Who can be seen as happy, thriving, successful, and fully bothering.
Who can embody my message in front of many people’s eyes.
My friend Hiro worked with me recently and I saw a vision for the woman I am becoming; the woman who can be seen. She has no worries that she doesn’t have all the answers about how to get her “bother on.” She was leaning against a table of books, wearing a cute outfit, and the best boots. She was ready for whatever came her way, open-hearted and strong, confident in what she knows, and knowing that is enough.
In my retreats, we end with an affirmation circle. During this last retreat, my affirmation was, “I am becoming the woman who wears the boots.”
How am I doing this?
- Seeing through her eyes: calm, confident, and full of wonder. She asks, “I wonder?” a lot!
- I am coming to the present moment again and again where the past has no hold.
- Walking my talk by using the ideas in my book; by following my desire! Letting go of old identities!
- Witnessing my old stories without fusing with them.
- Asking for help from friends who are successful authors to design a marketing plan that feels fun, connected, and doable.
- Noticing old ways of doing that included over-giving and over-complicating, and stepping away from these again, and then again.
- Forgiving myself for my past bumbles and missteps. Again and again.
- Staying out of fantasy and big dreams, and focusing instead on chopping wood, gathering water.
It’s a bit of a mystery, this becoming the person who can create what you want and then be seen having created it.
It’s not a linear or neat process to become the person you want to be, but acknowledging that there is a natural process to attend to creates a distinction that is powerful in itself.
Realizing that being seen, sharing in whatever way you wish what you created, is often the hardest step of all.
Recognizing that being seen completes the circle and grows you even more, perhaps, than creating.
Doing it (all of it) is the only way to fully become the person you want to be.
Into the unknown we step together. Becoming by being seen!
