Even the tree growing only a tiny bit each year is in the soil, is in the air. It matters.
It’s amazing, the things we create. Step by step, day by day.
We start something, plant a seed, and we have truly no idea where it will go.
We speak to a coach about something that is troubling us, and then five years later we have a book.
We set ourselves a challenge to speak about our ideas, and, 18 months later, we are running a workshop at a writing festival, with 17 strangers each creating something – something from nothing, true creativity – partly because of us.
Well, because of me.
These things are incredible.
I have a slight branding problem. I have (at least) three things that I am interested in.
Last year I was focused almost solely on the 12-Minute Method. This year, my focus has been much more on my coaching clients, on what might come next, and on the content I create for coaches.
And so I found myself, today, listening back to some old podcast appearances, trying to bring back into my conscious awareness the me of a year ago, who was steeped in the 12-Minute Method, in procrastination and Resistance, and how to beat them.
Wow, it was an energising pleasure to step back into that. It is a proof for me that if you spend enough time with something, you become an expert on it.
It is proof that if we follow our Resistance, it takes us somewhere where we can be well-used, growing us into something more in the process.
It’s proof that the things humans have in common as we try to create things and avoid it are as funny to talk about with others as they are agonising to experience, or realise we have experienced.
I had a vision, earlier this year working with my coach, of what the future of my work will look like.
A large field in front of me, young trees growing, still with their guards around them to protect them from deer and other animals.
That is all we can do, really, plant some seeds that will grow into something, maybe, one day.
That at least, is what we can do if we beat Resistance. If we realise that the fear we are feeling, the voices in our head, the procrastination – they aren’t a reason not to do the thing.
In fact, if we remember Steven Pressfield’s Rule of Thumb – the more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel towards doing it… if we remember that, then the fear, voices and procrastination are reasons TO DO the thing.
That’s what we can do – we can sit and listen to the fear. Listen to the voices that are telling us not to do it.
Then we can choose courage.
We can choose that most admirable of human qualities and be brave, take action in the face of the fear.
On the other side of action come competence and confidence. On this side, we just need commitment and courage. A kind of bloody-mindedness and a decision to be more this week than last, more today than yesterday.
And slowly we’ll grow.
And then maybe the thing we’re working on will take a back seat for a while. It’ll then just calmly grow in some way in its little tree guard.
Until we go back one day to check on it. And we see how it’s grown – maybe we haven’t given it as much attention as we could have, but it’s still grown.
And as we remember it and tend to it, then its roots and shoots will reach out again, touching more of the world, changing the ecosystem of the planet. Maybe in a small way, maybe in a big way. We can never know at the start.
All the work I have done on myself has prepared me for the questions I had at today’s workshop. Publishing edgy pieces, making podcasts about getting engaged to my wife, joying in the ways we procrastinate and resist.
Each a piece of work I had to do, each a seed planted, each paying back in a moment I didn’t expect.
What we work on one year isn’t everything, but it is something. If we make something and share it, it’s something that we’ll always have, that will never leave us. That will always be a part of us and of the world.
Doing little work all the time.
Even the tree growing only a tiny bit each year is in the soil, is in the air.
It matters.
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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.
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