Start with Something You Like!

Determined to be Queen shares...

For any of you who are keeping track, it’s been 36 days since I last posted a blog—posted being the operative word. I’ve been thinking about blog ideas, writing snippets in my head, coming up with new titles, but I just haven’t been able to tear away from the living part of my life long enough to get to the writing part.

You see, after “Something Miraculous,” the miracles just kept coming. Cascades of them, overlapping and flowing like molten lava into the dark crevices of my life. It was like a pounding surf…caught in an everlasting moment of tide on the rise.

And actually, it started with another one of those “meditations for women who do too much,” or at least a rising consciousness of one I read early on that quoted Judith K. Knowlton as saying:

“When I keep putting something off, it may not be procrastination, but a decision I’ve already made and not yet admitted to myself.”

For me, this was the equivalent of the angels descending from on high, singing “Glory, halleluiah!”

So what do you do when it seems as though you have secretly decided not to do any of the drudgery items on your to-do list?

Well, first you celebrate that you have better things to do than occupy yourself with drudgery! Hooray and huzzah! Then, you recognize that the only reason you appear to be depressed is that you aren’t choosing to do those things you most WANT to do with your life, and then, you give yourself permission to do only those things that you really want to do. And, why not? Aren’t we always hearing about how life is too short? And don’t we always get a gleam of pride in our eyes when we hear of someone who died suddenly, but doing what s/he loved most in the world? (Steve Irwin comes to mind.)

Life is too short for drudgery, especially when you know better! For heaven’s sake—do what you LOVE! It is the mantra of our times, after all, why not go with the flow for a while? Let’s face it. The people who have lives that we watch wistfully from afar are those people who fill their time with activity that brings them joy! It’s not money, or power, or even fame that most of us long for. It’s JOY! And it’s only one choice away.

Once you give yourself permission to choose joy, your life becomes infinitely simple—a pleasant paradox, to be sure! When you start with something you like, you create a momentum, or a flow of positive energy, that either sweeps through the parts you don’t like and makes them palatable as mere details in the plan for joy, or completely eliminates the necessity of addressing them at all.

An example? Let me think. Ok, here’s one. I need to hang curtains in several rooms in my house because of various curtain rod/sheet rock malfunctions. Part of the problem was that I didn’t like either the curtains or the rods. So when I gave myself permission to buy new curtains for the bedroom—a room that had no curtain rod issues—it led me to find new curtains that look lovely in the kitchen. Now I can’t wait to hang that kitchen curtain rod to complete the look and make the whole room much more pleasing to my sense of color and style.

Actually, the story is a little more complicated than that. There was a larger domino effect that started with a completely unrelated choice. I had decided to do something just for me that would also get me out of the “house of a thousand waiting projects.” I went and had my legs waxed, of all things. And that was at a salon in a part of town I don’t normally frequent—but only because I thought it was closer. So after the wax, which was only so-so I might add, I went driving around to see what I could see. What I saw was a store that I thought might have some inexpensive curtains. Instead, I found fabulous decorative rods for half price. Leaving that store’s parking lot, I saw another store I’d never heard of and went to check it out. I found curtains galore…for my room, my daughter’s room, and, unexpectedly, the kitchen!

In this process that included trying several different varieties of curtains and multiple trips back to the linen store, I discovered that I love curtains! And, of course, now I want to hang them up! (Now, if I can just translate this idea into the creative arts…all that writing and painting I want to do!)

The point of this story though, has nothing to do with window treatments, although it does have everything to do with creativity, inspiration, and beauty. The miracle happened when I let go of the long laundry list of “chores” and let myself dabble in the desires of my heart. Rather than sitting home, beating myself up with a litany of “shoulds” and “have-to’s,” I gave myself permission to follow the lead of my dreams. I don’t want to hang up curtains because I should. I want to surround myself with beauty—with everything from curtains to people who inspire my joy.

Life is too short for ugly curtains and drudgery. And staying home to make myself do something like paint the woodwork just doesn’t work. I balk at the randomness of that particular drudgery. Let there be a reason that makes me say, “The thing I want most to do at this moment is to paint the baseboards.” When I feel that, I’ll probably get it done in a couple of days. Until then, I have better things to do with my life.

So. If you are feeling overwhelmed with a big project, I recommend that you start with what you like and use that momentum to vault you into the arena of things that seem like too much work on their own. Once the dreaded part, painting the trim for example, feels like a finishing touch, it’s easy and satisfying—but as long as it feels like a project unto itself, you, like me, may end up doing nothing at all and beating yourself up for “procrastinating.”

Let your procrastination be a warning sign to you. First, start with something you like, but, if at all possible, do what you LOVE—because joy makes all things possible!

© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.