🪞what you resist persists
weekly reflections
If I could sum up in one sentence my philosophy about the energetics of creative work, it would be this: “meet yourself with love and curiosity rather than fear and forcing.” It’s about creating the inner ecosystem that supports your best work, by allowing all that’s within you to reach its fullest, most beautiful expression.
But that’s easier said than done, so this week I explored specific strategies for doing so.
courage is not a switch you flip
If you could just decide to be more courageous, why haven’t you done so already? If you could just decide to have more agency, why didn’t you do so five years ago?
I don’t ask these questions from a place of shame, but rather as a prompt to look deeper. If courage & agency are not “decisions”, then where do they come from?
My answer, which I explored in the below essay, is that they’re a product of a loving relationship with uncertainty:
how to actually do the things you want to do
My definition of agency is being able to do the things you want to do. That’s it. There are some steps along the way—like figuring out what you actually want—but the core of agency is going from vision to action.
fear is an opportunity for curiosity
On a similar note, there’s lots of talk out there about “pushing past fear” and just forcing yourself to do the hard thing. Sometimes that works, but often it leads to stop-and-start movement; it’s like we’re pressing the gas and the brake at the same time.
A more effective & sustainable approach, in my experience, is to get curious about where the fear is coming from, and seeing if you can identify the root belief. If you can bring that into conscious awareness and hold it with compassion, things tend to shift.
More on that here:
you can just make a podcast?
I love audio content and have been wanting to make more of it, but it always felt like there were all these steps involved. Surely I had to get a nice microphone, and prepare a bunch of notes, and do a few rehearsals…
Nope. This week I sat down and recorded my first podcast on the Voice Memos app on my phone, and uploaded it straight to Patreon. All those extra “steps” were just my fear & doubt masquerading as necessity.
The podcast itself is about how we can identify those limiting beliefs (e.g. “I’m not ready”) and bring them into the creative process:
emotions are signals
This was my most popular tweet of the week. What you resist persists; where you allow expression, you get relaxation.
That’s all for this week. If you have a question for me, feel free to reply directly to this email; always love to hear from you.
With love & appreciation,
Scott
P.S. if you’re an ambitious creative who’s looking for a more energizing relationship with your work, check out my 1:1 coaching. 🍊