Side thought: KEEP GOING

 

A few years ago, I started the process of writing of a book and the entire situation came to a SCREECHING halt because of this unspoken need of wanting to impress people with my knowledge or verbiage of what I was to publish from my previous experiences and I learned that it was the very thing that was diminishing my creativity--caring about the responses and thoughts of other people (and how I would think they could benefit from it). I procrastinated on the project for months and months, thinking that things needed to be "perfect" in order to consider publishing. Fast forward to now, and I have plenty of side thoughts for you. 

Sometimes, you have to just go out and just DO IT and come back afterwards and say "oh, I did that" and appreciate your published work for what it is when you publish it. 

I was looking at some of my tweets from the previous month and I openly acknowledge the fact that I can admit I was in an hyper-emotional state when I published many of them-- many things came to my mind without thinking about who would see them and I realize some of those tweets are good thoughts BECAUSE I was not thinking about who would see them.

We think too much about "well, who is going to see my stuff?" and "I gotta make sure people are impressed by what they see when I release content, and how they think about me"...it can be subconscious in our minds.

On paper, we can have this attitude of "well I'm not going to do anything to impress people, I am just going to come the way I am," but you are subconsciously sabotaging yourself when you try to sit at your computer screen typing or recording something, THINKING about how people are going to think about you and the content you publish. We try to persuade ourselves that we are not moved by what others think of us and, lets be honest--there is a certain degree to which you should care about how you are perceived to other people--you want to present the best version of yourself to the world. It becomes an issue when we think about that TOO MUCH. 

This concept should also apply to our creative processes--sometimes, we should just allow our ideas to flow without thinking that there is an audience in the room. Clean things up as needed, but allow yourself to be fully immersed in the creative process and just flow without thinking about "who is going to see my post?"

Sometimes, when God wants you to speak, He is not showing you who you are going to speak to. He is simply telling you "I need you to say this", and many times, time is of the essence. I have seen things on my feed or have been sent things without the author or sender realizing that I am deeply affected by it, and it was all a matter of timing. If they had thought about things like "Oh Whitney is going to see it? Lemme make sure this sounds right for her...", they would have spent too much time worrying about something that would not have mattered. 

Admittingly, I have been in that funk because I think too much about "well, If I post this, who will I offend?" and of course, I am in a space where I dont put too much care into what people think, but I would like to ensure that I am publishing content in a responsible manner. There should be a healthy balance. 

Just like how we groom ourselves to make ourselves feel better and present a nice image to the world (without thinking), we should use the same energy into our creative processes--do not indulge in overthinking, with the intention to avoid wasting time. It would a bad day when you have realize that precious time was wasted due to overthinking. 

Granted, if you post something with the intent of believing that it will be a good message--most times, you will come back to the post feeling great that you acted on that impulse. You are making effort without trying, and its a great feeling to have. This is the principle called Stoicism, or "the art of not caring". The less you care about distractions and underwhelming circumstances, the better you will feel about your work and the more productive you will be, thus feeling more purposeful.

So TLDR: "the less you care, you more you flow." 

Hope you enjoyed this. As always, thanks for reading.

All the best,

Whitney