Look at You! You're Doing Great.
October 28, 2018

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I'd genuinely like to know: How do YOU know when you're doing pretty good at life?Â
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I ask because, by all outward measures, you could be KILLING it -- doing good work, making decent money, secure in your relationships, enjoying your physical health and a roof over your head and a home-cooked meal on the table...
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And STILL find ways to torture yourself about whether you're "doing enough" or "growing enough" or even just "good enough" as you are.Â
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I'll be honest: The past week has been an emotional rollercoaster for me.Â
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Partly because, although I love working for myself and the crazy adventure I've managed to make of it, sometimes the reality hits:
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That pretty much ALL the urgency I feel around creating and delivering value into the world?Â
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... Is completely MADE UP by me.Â
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No one asked me to build a business around storytelling, and as far as I can tell, there's no one looking over my shoulder with a stick in one hand and a carrot in the other, making sure I'm "doing it right."
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Mostly I find this rewarding and fun (ESPECIALLY when I look back several years ago, when I was working full time at a job that wasn't right for me under a boss I didn't respect in exchange for a steady but mediocre salary, and mourning what felt like the slow suffocating death of all the great and unique things I had to contribute).Â
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Mostly I enjoy the freedom and empowerment that comes with firing on all creative cylinders, recognizing needs I can uniquely meet and then creating things to meet them.Â
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But sometimes, like today, I'll catch myself thinking:Â
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"I don't have time to call my friends and family today, because I have to write my Sunday Story and edit the script for the next film shoot tomorrow AND draft that proposal I promised."
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And then I'm like:
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"Really, Jess?"Â
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"It's SUNDAY, and every one of those deadlines was invented... by YOU."
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And THEN as I head to the kitchen to make second coffee it will occur to me for the eighth time in two days that I really haven't used my PHYSICAL BODY since we got off the bikes two weeks ago, because I've been so caught up in the creative sprint that is pouring your heart-and-soul-and-intellectual-expertise into making a digital product that you KNOW will really help people and offering it up to the world's cold, clinical judgment like a mother holding her newborn baby aloft at a beauty pageant.
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And THEN I'll sit back down and notice that a SINGLE person has unsubscribed from my list, which normally I can accept as the side effect of putting yourself out there but which at THIS particular moment feels like a COMPLETE and cosmic dismissal of everything I've ever written or done...
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... And THAT'S when I start to feel the immense vulnerability that comes hand-in-hand with creating ANYTHING at all.
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And although I know the feeling will pass...
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Sometimes all we really need is for someone to hold up a mirror and say: "Look at you! You're doing GREAT."
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Which is often enough to help you snap right out of it.Â
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And which is, ironically, a big reason why I love working with people on their stories.Â
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... Because so much of my role? Is just to BE that mirror.
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To show people how great they're already doing.
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To show you how meaningful your story ALREADY is. (And give you a few structure and language tweaks, so that you can show OTHERS as much.)
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Often I'll summarize something back to the client, and they'll say:
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"Wow! It sounds pretty great when you say it like that."
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Which is when I must remind them:
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"These are your ideas. I'm just showing them to you in a different order, in slightly different language, and without all the fear and self-doubt attached."
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And this is always quite a powerful moment.
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The moment when you really, truly recognize the inherent value that exists in your story.Â
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So today, I want YOU to know, dear reader -- that whatever you're doing?Â
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You're doing GREAT.
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And just because you may struggle at times to articulate that greatness to yourself, or to others?Â
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Know first:Â That you're not alone.
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And second: That it doesn't mean it's not there already... waiting to be reflected back at you.Â
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