Practice is How I Know I Can Trust Myself, and it’s How I Know I Am Moving Towards Something, Towards Something Bigger, Someone New.

First published on June 9, 2021

It is no easy task to sit and open yourself to inspiration. It sounds easy, just like meditation sounds easy. Just sit. Focus on your breathing.

And yet.

A few minutes later, you suddenly realise that you haven’t been focusing on your breathing, you’ve been thinking about what that woman said to you yesterday and what will happen this afternoon and why that boy said that thing to you when you were 13.

The practice, of course, is what counts. And in the practice, remember, recommitting is the rep. Recommitting to the practice, whatever that is, is what creates change. Committing is easy, just like sitting down to meditate is easy. But what counts is what happens after you realise you’ve been thinking about why that boy said that thing to you when you were 13 for the last four minutes. Do you give up, or do you recommit and take your attention back to your breath?

Committing to exercising or practising your Spanish every day is easy. What counts is what happens when you realise you haven’t exercised or practised Spanish for the last three days. Do you give up, or do you recommit?

And so the practice of sitting and opening yourself to inspiration is the same. It’s easy to sit down. It’s another thing to wait and sit with the blank page and see what emerges.

That, though, has been my practice for almost five years now. It wasn’t always deliberately about opening to inspiration; it started as being about something different. But over time, as I considered the difference between ‘Life Created By Me’ and ‘Life Happening Through Me’, it became more and more important.

I had fought for years to get to Life Created By Me. It had changed everything: to shift away from Life Happening To Me and see just how much I could choose. And yet. And yet. I could see that the next level of my success needed something different. As soon as I became aware of the To Me/ By Me/Though Me(/As Me) framework that I first heard of from Jim Dethmer, I could feel that something might be possible. What if it didn’t have to be such hard work? What if life could be easy, could be effortless? What if I could have the same success – more success even – without feeling tired at the end of it? What if my best work came not by trying to create it, but by allowing it to emerge, through me?

That is undoubtedly where some of my best writing has come from. It is where almost all my best coaching has come from.

And so that’s the practice. Sit, surrender, and allow life to emerge through me. Allow something else to write the words.

And every time I realise that the words aren’t emerging through me. Sit, and open myself to inspiration.

Then, sometimes, the question becomes: what is inspiration? What counts? Last week, I had a good idea for a piece of writing. I wrote it. It got A LOT more likes and comments and shares than the piece before, which I simply sat down to write, opening to inspiration and seeing what emerges. Was the idea inspiration? Does the number of likes and comments and shares matter?

This is the power of practice. We learn as we go. We experiment. We recommit. What I know is, if I stop practising, then everything will be different. Then I'll be someone who doesn’t keep my promises to myself. Practice is how I know I can trust myself, and it’s how I know I am moving towards something, towards something bigger, someone new. That’s what I know.

What I don’t know, well that’s a lot.