How to Show Up When Your Words Stop Flowing
The past several months I have been going out of my comfort zone, showing up and speaking.
My voice blossoms when I’m by myself, writing and chopping vegetables. Sometimes it arrives at night. Other times when I’m in nature.
But speaking is not when my best thoughts arrive.
And yet, I realized that if I’m going to someday speak about my books, I need to get comfortable speaking sooner than later.
OUR DREAMS ARE LIKE OLYMPICS FOR THE SOUL
I wrote in my book, Dare to Dream on Purpose, ‘our dreams are like Olympics for the soul.’
Our dreams give us the courage to push beyond our comfort zones, to be brave when we would prefer to be small.
As I moved from behind my writing desk to show up and speak my nervous system felt stress differently than the stress of sitting at the blank page.
CONNECTION CAN FEEL A WORLD APART
I was reflecting on this when I had coffee with a Syrian economist who is staying in Berlin for the summer.
He talked about Syria as a fragmented country, in part because the government controlled regional travel. So a Syrian in Aleppo wouldn’t have much contact with a Syrian from Homs or Damascus.
Therefore Syrians from different regions have different life experiences, understandings, values, and world views.
It sounds a bit like what we’ve been seeing emerge across the United States of America. People with different life experiences have a different view of what is important and how to move forward.
This is why moving from a single narrative is so important.
This made me think about the number of challenges we have in establishing true, intimate, heart connected conversation between our own thoughts let along across humans who come from different lived experiences.
IT MIGHT BE TIME TO SLOW DOWN AND LISTEN
I think it is helpful to view ourselves as being a participant in a human experiment, where each one of us is trying to show up and make a difference.
We may find ourselves experiencing our individual and cultural nervous systems in different levels of unease or imbalance.
Sometimes the best thing we can do is to slow down and listen.
Listen to ourselves. Listen to what our internal ‘I’ wants to express. Listen for the little ‘I's’ in others.
A CALL TO TAKE TIME TO PAY ATTENTION
In July I will be at an artist residence in Germany, about 2 ½ hours north west of Berlin.
I have many projects I want to explore but I think my biggest task will be to drop back down and listen for my ‘I’ while grounding into the nervous system of the earth.
This week, pay attention to your little “I”.
What does it need?
PAUSE WHEN THE WORDS STOP FLOWING
Sometimes the best thing we can do when the words stop flowing is to pause, get curious about what we are feeling, and take some time to chop some veggies.