I am trying to work on this project and I just feel overwhelmed and like I have no clue what to do.
SO I am trying to connect with the soul of this project (using the Dream Lab practice)... but that is also really hard today. I want to do this, but I can't seem to stay with it.
(That's fine! Remember that when we are creative dreaming we are healing, growing and stretching ourselves. Sometimes this will all feel too hard! That's a part of the process. If you stick to only doing things already know how to do, and already feel capable and confident about - there is no way to GROW.)
So I am going to coach myself through this. My "coach/mentor" self's words are in bold text. My responses are in italics.
When my coach/mentor self asks me something, I take time to sit with the question and be with what comes up, I don't answer right away. This "conversation" took a looooong time.
What’s in the way?
Mental overwhelm about the amount of work involved, and how unknown much of it is.
Anything else?
I have HUGE high hopes for this project and with that comes HUGE worry that it won’t “measure up”
I want to do it better than my best, I want to do this perfectly.
OK that sounds like a lot of pressure!
Is that what it is? Am I overwhelmed by the pressure I am putting on this project?
It sounds like that could be it. Can you imagine what the process of working on this project would look like WITHOUT pressure?
Wow! It feels like pressure would be the only thing moving the process along. Without it, everything feels floaty.
Can you stay with that floaty feeling? What’s going on?
There’s no structure.
Can we create structure without pressure?
Pressure wants to come in and supervise the building of the structure. And - pressure looks a lot like my inner critic.
Stay with it. Can we create structure without pressure? Can you keep your inner critic out of it?
Wow, just considering the question feels so spacious. The whole thing feels less fraught. But I still don’t know what to DO.
That’s great! More spacious and less fraught is fantastic. Stay with it. How can we create some structure for this project without adding any pressure?
I am remembering the leaf forts all the kids in my neighbourhood used to make in the fall. We would just like lay out floor plans on the grass with leaves and imagine these fantastic forts we were building. Yeah that’s what structure without pressure feels like. Play and imagination. Also it’s so easy to move a line of leaves around if you want to change the structure.
I can kind of look over at my inner critic and she’s building structure out of concrete, it looks like a highway interchange with lots of levels and rules about having to be in the right lane to get to the street you want to be on, and I am really noticing the part where you can miss your turn off and end up going in the direction you didn’t want to go in.
Oh wow. Yeah. That’s what happens when you use PRESSURE to build the STRUCTURE… then it’s like there is pressure to make “the right choice” right from the get go because you have to stick with it, whatever it is, and whatever happens along the way.
The leaf fort, by comparison, you can just move the walls around to accommodate your changing needs. It’s like why I wanted to live in a loft, I do shift things around and use the space differently as my needs change.
Of course, a strong wind won’t come along and blown down the concrete highway but it wouldn’t take much wind to absolutely decimate the leaf fort.
That’s true but these are metaphors, so: how likely do you think it is that a strong wind will come along? And what is the strong wind? Is that something we should explore?
I sit down in this leaf fort structure in my mind. I can smell the wet leaves and remember how fun this was as a kid. No, we never cared about a strong wind or how long the “fort” would last (I mean - this was suburbia in the very early 80s, wouldn’t our parents have raked them up and put them into trash bags at some point?) It was the joy of planning and building as much as the joy of playing inside it.
So does it feel like you want the VIBE of the leaf fort as opposed to the VIBE of the concrete highway, as the way you create structure for this project?
Yeah, that feels true AND that feels so unknown, I’ve never done it this way. So much is changing for me in mid-life as I embrace “the change” more and more, and that dovetails with the work I’ve done decolonizing my worldview and my business and creative practices.
It feels like maybe you are looking too far ahead. What’s the step that you can take TODAY with this?
Oh. Yes. Thank you. I was getting ahead of myself and that is so overwhelming. What’s the step I can take TODAY? How do I engage with the process of building a structure to do this work?
Oh! I kind of already have this, I have these stacks of paper full of ideas. I can spread them out into categories. I can go through them and make a list of what each category needs. Yeah! YEAH! This is it, if I do that, then I’ll have a list of things to DO that I can choose from to work with/on this project. There are so many ideas in this haphazard stack of papers, I just need to make a list, I don’t need to PERFECTLY STRUCTURE THE WHOLE THING RIGHT NOW just create one list to work from.
So now can you connect with the soul of this project? What happens when you try?
I am sitting on the grass with the leaf fort around me. It feels playful and imaginative and fun. It’s a gorgeous fall day. The soul of the project is floating above me, it comes to me the way it has in the past. It feels like it’s beaming love down to me, as I work on it.
I cannot see all the steps ahead of me to get to where I want to be with this. But I do see the steps I can work on this week.
Win!
Your weirdest dreams have so much to teach you.
The places where you are weird are just the places where you don't conform to who the world thinks you should be. When we can make more space for that weirdness, we can learn more about our selves, find more of our inner gifts and medicine, and be more powerful in our lives.
Dreaming WEIRDER is a 1 hour alchemy meditation + journaling healing circle for exploring all of this. It's happening Oct 1 in the Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership.
Members: Get the call details here.
Or find out more about the membership here.
