I want to thank my friend Mick for introducing me to the work of Steven Pressfield, the author of the books The War of the Art and Turning Pro. I feel that these are important books to read if you wish to work for yourself and not anyone else. I guess I am the kind of person who always dreaded working for someone else. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. My dad had the same problem too. When he was in his mid 20s and 30s, he had 13 jobs in 12 years. He just could not stick with one job. Each job that was offered to him were amazing jobs by the standards of his days. This drove my risk-adverse mother crazy — literally.
The good thing about working for myself is that no one is there to boss me around. I have endured that from my mother for too many years. However, not everyone who cannot stand working for other are self-starters. And even if people are self starters, many quit. I admit, I am a bit of a quitter. I have been blogging since 2008 and I have never kept it up. Imagine if I had written a blog post a day every day from 2008, the results could have been quite impressive. But I let myself be distracted by other things in life. I gave myself a whole bunch of excuses why I couldn’t write.
I had some pretty good excuses. I started a business, I had babies…I had a whole slew of important reasons why I could not commit to writing. I would write a few blog posts and quit for a few years. There are many areas in my life in which I had been a quitter. I would get so close to the end goal and I would relax and stop pushing myself through the finish line. I allow myself to be distracted. I even had an amazing conversation with my Inner Wisdom (some people also call this their Higher Self or True Self) where I was able to ask what I could do to fulfill my life’s purpose. And you know what kind of answer I got? All I had to do was write an hour a day and meditate an hour a day and BE myself. How hard can it be? I have known this since 2012 and it is very difficult for me to go through even one day in which I could accomplish those three things.
Why would it be so hard to be myself? To write one hour a day and meditate for an hour a day?
After reading Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art and Turning Pro, I realize that I am human and I have an ego. I have resistances to success and I have resistances to failure. I am concerned about what other people think of me and I am paralyzed by the possibility that I may succeed. I have everything it takes to get whatever I want, and yet I don’t. I am scared of making commitments. Why? Because I am so good at breaking them. Have you ever told yourself to do something and you neglected to follow through on that? After years of breaking promises to myself, I am paying the price for this — I’ve lost the trust in myself.
Human beings are driven by our soul. My past experience working as a Nurse have shown me what happens when the soul leaves the body. The body literally changes colour and it becomes life-less. When I go out and walk around, I can see many nearly life-less people walking around. It shows on their faces. They have abandoned their soul’s calling. When I stop trusting myself, I stop trusting my soul’s calling and I try to become anyone but true self. I turn my back on my true-self’s desire to contribute to the well being of others. This is what happens when I am not meditating or writing. This is what happens when I allow myself to be stopped by fear, when I allow myself to be distracted by others things. If I could write 1000 words an hour and I surf on Facebook and Youtube for 1 hour, that would be 1000 words that could have written to contribute an aspect of my true self to the Universe.
Pressfield also suggested that we turn to addictive behaviors to try to turn our back to our true calling because we fear our true power. For me I fear the responsibility of my true power. I fear that my ego can get carried away with access to my true power. All of which is possible and it keeps me stuck from truly contributing to the world. I was avoiding my responsibility. I didn’t come here for no reason and I am sure this is the case for billions of people and other life forms on this planet and beyond. I need to make a commitment to doing what I am here to do. To access my true self and sharing the insights I have gained with others.
I want to trust myself again, and not to turn my back to my calling with broken promises. The biggest battles and fights we have are the fights we have with ourselves. This week I commit to sharing my thoughts on my blog 3 times a week. It would be a bonus if I could do this at least 5 days a week, but I am taking some small steps towards my goal. One day, I hope to write every day of the week.
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