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(and excuse the sounds of kids yelling outside!)
Since the start of the new year, I’ve spent Monday evenings in circle with women as we worked our way through the Artist’s Way together. We finished last Monday!
We shared food and stories and raw insights… It was one of the best decisions I’ve made all year and very outside of my comfort zone to sign up without a friend or knowing anyone in the group before it started.
It happened because I held myself to one of my Organizing Principles:
Stop waiting for my ego to feel ready to go for whatever I felt pulled to try.
I was nervous. There was the time commitment, the trekking out in the cold on public transit when it was already dark outside, the looming reading deprivation week that I heard so much about (which unexpectedly turned out to be a favorite week), and the usual stirrings that come up with being in groups: the fear of feeling like an outsider or having nothing unique enough to contribute.
I’m comfortable facilitating groups because it means nerding out on transformation and creativity—and I’m not self-conscious in that role because I’m so focused on the teaching. But speaking up in groups definitely stirs up some dormant insecurities.
My Organizing Principle to stop waiting was the angel on my shoulder that nudged me to go for it. When I said yes to it, I kept placing my attention on the deeper pull instead of a vague future sense of readiness that I might never realize. I knew that in this case, I was waiting to feel more ‘enough’ in some way before moving forward—and that’s not how I want to live my life.
Let me backtrack to break down what I mean by Organizing Principle:
Your Organizing Principles guide your priorities.
This is both a simple idea and a nuanced way of engaging with choices. It’s a lifelong practice of inner discernment.
Organizing Principles are practiced in tandem with your Animating Principles:
Animating Principles are the energy you embody. It’s the energy you bring to the moments of your day, when you’re working on a project, when you’re in a tricky conversation…
We all have them, whether they’re chosen or out of awareness, expired or purposefully pushing us toward the edges of our comfort zones.
One way of exploring yours in a given moment is to ask yourself:
What am I centering my thinking or decision-making around?
What energy am I carrying into this conversation, this day, this project, this moment…?
Animating Principles are generally a single or compound word. Organizing Principles can be a word, but they can also be a quote or a phrase that acts as a maxim (like mine here).
Living according to one’s chosen principles is a way of creatively living into radical agency. We go deep on both in Pivoting Toward Wholeness this May.
I’ve been at this long enough to know that any given creative project is ready to see the light of day before the ego is ready to share it.
Yeah, there are exceptions, but for myself I know this: when I wait for doubt to dissipate before sharing, then I’m also committing to waiting over making.
(and in the process I forget that iterations are stunning)
This is different than intentionally preparing or an inner trust of it not being the right season for a given project or choice.
Julia Cameron spoke to this beautifully in her book—a maxim that goes hand-in-hand with my phrase, albeit way more snappy. Some of you might know this one:
FILL THE FORM
She writes:
Filling the form means that we must work with what we have rather than languish in complaints over what we have not... Fill the form. What can you do, right now, in your life as it is currently constituted? Do that thing.
This applies to everything.
In this sentiment, she’s sharing some major pivoting toward wholeness wisdom. Major. That is…
Pivoting toward wholeness—as a paradigm—comes down to making the next small, doable, kind choice.
That kind of choosing is made possible when we’re rooted in our own self-created Organizing and Animating Principles. In JC’s words:
Indulging ourselves in a frantic fantasy of what our life would look like if we were real artists, we fail to see the many small creative changes that we could make at this very moment… a creative life is grounded on many, many small steps and very, very few large leaps.
Filling the form reminds us to focus on what is next and what is small. A small step can still be saturated with fear and stir insecurity (like when I was deciding to commit to the book club), so doability and kindness are also key.
I’m in ongoing practice around this everyday. And I’d love to hear from you:
⋆˚｡ What does filling the form look like for you at this time?
⋆˚｡ What next small, doable, and kind choice might you make?
If you liked this, I think you’ll like this:
Want to be in practice around these ideas together with other people? Pivoting Toward Wholeness is the place. This is a six week course on the creative potential within everyday.
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