Belief

I am writing with one more week of navel gazing before revealing the surprise next week and the blog series leading up to it.

Over the past month I’ve rolled up my sleeves to do the required psychological work to get out of my own way on the path to bringing my creative vision to life. After listening to Matt Cutts talk about trying out different habits in “Can you change for the better in just 30 days?” on the Ted Radio Hour, I did 30 days where I had to do something creative–design something, draw, embroider, sew–every day to overcome my resistance to creating (the voices that tell me I have too much laundry to do, tidying, or am just too tired to create).
 
This month Drew and I are waking up at 6am every morning, significantly including the weekends, eliminating the temptation to drag our feet on starting the day and waking up with too much to do and too little hours to do it. Funny thing I’ve learned, if you eat well, exercise and reduce your stress by starting the day early – getting a bit less sleep but better sleep overall, you actually have more energy not less. Stress is probably the largest energy sap there is.
 
But by far the biggest tool I’m using is watching the thoughts I think that feed my beliefs. I am embracing­–whole heartedly–the battle for right thinking. Meditation has helped illuminate what used to be a jumbled mass of (mostly) negative thoughts. And so what do you do when your thoughts reveal that your beliefs are negative & false? i.e. you don’t deserve happiness, wealth, recognition, a stable relationship, a job you love…. We tend to continue to fuel these negative beliefs with negative thoughts.

So I reversed Gandhi’s equation to get my beliefs in order.

The negative thought starts, “this is just too hard, I just don’t have enough [money, time, energy] to do this…” and pause. Stop. Exhale. Inhale. New thought. Positive thought. Or the expansive silence of no thought. It is so simple and so hard, but mightily effective.
 
I think of a house with a giant faucet running. Negative thoughts. You can turn it off quickly, maintain the integrity of your house or let it sink you, spend the rest of the day bailing it out (while the faucet continues to run).
 
Alternatively you hold fast to your thoughts and beliefs about where you are going, where you want to be: “I am going to launch a revolutionary line of made to measure women’s apparel and it is going to change our relationship with our clothing from one of antagonism to ease, utility and feminine power.”
 
And right there, in that moment, all your beliefs, thoughts, values and actions are working in concert to make it happen. Go fight win.
 
See you next week! Thank you for your continued support on this wild journey.