Wednesday, August 31, 2011

My Number One Accessory....

Today I have assigned myself the daunting task of setting aside the one accessory I have had chained to my neck for as long as I can remember.....it has been a seasonless staple for me, a timeless classic, and one that hasn't rusted or tarnished a bit with age... It is fear.
My fear has kept me in a well-protected bubble. It has been a sort of shelter that keeps me safe from the judgment of others and shields me from all of the things that COULD happen. But the thing about fear is that in order to really know what might be waiting on the other side of it, I would have to be a psychic. Up until now I haven't been very successful when it comes to predicting the winning lottery numbers, so I'm guessing my intuitive powers might just be a figment of my imagination...which leads me back to the pending and essential release of fear.....
I have always felt a sort of calling.....a little voice that over the years has gotten louder and louder.....it tells me to write.....it tells me to paint....it tells me to use my voice in order to lighten up the world just a little bit. For brief windows of time I heed the call.....I write down pithy little thoughts that I think will help somebody to gain some clarity, I start books, Idraw pictures and I try to always do the right thing. But then.....right before I get to the finish line I always stop short because a bigger voice takes over and I am essentially paralyzed. It is the voice of fear. She is scratchy, irrational, nails-on-a-chalkboard annoying, and yet, I let her win every single time.....until today.

I want to be a writer and an artist, and actually make a living doing it. I want to color the world with big fat candy-colored polka dots, and inspire people to embrace and celebrate their lives. I want to take every drawing, every page, and every idea I have jotted down in my journals and put them out into the world! But mostly I just want to stop making excuses and not worry so much about what YOU are going to think of my work when I finally decide to share it with you. I want to be free of this accessory that really has plagued me for most of my adult life. I want to be so excited about getting out of bed and drawing and then not be so afraid of judgement that I hide everything I have done.
What is it about fear that keeps us so bound up in such heavy chains? We have no way of knowing what the end result will be and yet we allow ourselves to assume the very worst. Fear is personal.....and my fears don't look anything like yours but they are just as toxic, they are just as much a part of who I am as the air I breathe and quite frankly I am really quite tired of always letting them win!
Today, I share a piece of advice with you that is essentially the advice I am giving to myself.....make the decision that enough is enough when it comes to this fear thing. Decide once and for all that no matter what happens, the most important thing will be that you and I put our fear aside and took a massive leap forward.
I created a little Etsy shop for the little crafty things that I love to do. But my real goal was to have a place to sell my little Inpsiration Pie people and my books....drawings and sayings that have come from some chaotic part of my imagination that I just felt compelled to put on paper. I think I might have kept them hidden because they are profoundly personal for me.....they are my imagination manifested onto paper and in bright, bold color. So naturally I have stopped myself from sharing them on a larger scale because if nobody likes them then I will have to crawl back into bed and stay there forever, right? Up until now it has been easy to bury them in a blog, or as a little flag on Facebook, but today I have decided that if I ever really want to be happy, if I ever want to truly take a step forward then I am just going to have to put them out there and be proud of myself for just doing it!
Today is the day I load up that Etsy shop with those drawings. I go into this phase of my life absolutely terrified and yet, I know with every fiber of my being that it is time.
Perhaps you might be just like me.....you have been marinating an idea that you would like to implement, a change you would like to make, or something you would like to try and yet, you sit still because you are afraid. Today I extend a chipped nail polish, marker stained hand to you in an effort to help lift you out of your comfort zone and join me in the jump forward. One tiny action, one little movememt forward will be a monumental gesture towards setting our fear aside. It will be scary, it will be un-nerving, and yet somehow I know that in the end it will be intoxicatingly liberating.
We deserve to be free of the chain around our necks called fear. We deserve to put our big IT out there and have a little faith in ourselves! Today is the day we will CHOOSE to quiet the voice of fear just long enough to be drowned out by the voice of stand-tall-in-your-favorite-shoes confidence!
Today is a magnificent day because no matter what happens we will have tried!!!
So, today I wish you more faith in yourself than you ever thought possible and the wisdom to know that you are worthy of it!
Heather

3 comments:

  1. Great post! I love Tuesday's page too!

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  2. Great post Heather! You have taken the words right out of my mouth!!

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  3. Thank you so much ladies! It's so nice to hear from you and good to know that I am not along in this 'fear' thing!! Wishing you a fabulous afternoon!

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