How do you love yourself?

'Love yourself first' says the old adage. The meaning of that statement was outside my reach for many years. 

How do you love yourself when the world tells you that you are unworthy?

There is a certain mindset, a certain attitude, a negativity, that I felt from others. I was taught I would never be good enough. If one person tells you that, perhaps it haunts you or even limits you. What happens when it feels like everyone is saying you don't have value?

Perhaps, like me, your light is dimmed. Your voice grows silent. Your playfulness and creativity are muffled. You learn to walk the dictated path. You learn to listen to hints of what is expected and strive to please others so they will be pleased with you.

You spend years denying your unhappy state, your creative aspirations on the back burner or hidden away. Sometimes those who do care for you will nudge you to do more, believe in yourself. But their voices (and your own) are muted by the cacophony of statements and feelings integrated from the less enthusiastic.

Why is it that we will leap to discourage others? Why is it that the 'good news' is an afterthought? Why are human beings so negative? Why do we 'enjoy' watching others be thrown to the lions?

The weight of all that darkness can take me down to the abyss. 

As sad as that sounds, I believe that weight can be lifted, that the light can shine, that your own voice can grow and be heard above the crowd.

It starts from the inside out. Examining your own thoughts and habits. Asking what works. Asking why you think that way or believe this. Asking what you want to change, then doing the work to change it.

It's understanding that you are not, today, all you can ever be. It's believing that you can grow. 

It's realizing that creativity is a process. A journey. We start where we are (as much as we might like to be somewhere else). We make mistakes, we write badly or sing badly or paint badly, we persist in 'doing' the art. Each thing we do is grist for the mill, an experience. As those things happen, come into existence, slowly and deliberately we start to see the potential and celebrate the small successes.

Perhaps you start to realize that you are who you are for a reason, and that your life experience is now there to draw on for inspiration. Perhaps your own voice is the one you listen to first.

Perhaps you have the compassion to forgive yourself for anything and everything you did and didn't do to get to this point.

You can't change the past. Tomorrow is yet to come. What will you do today?

~hugs

Quietly aware

In my life I have often felt an outsider. I wanted to keep apart, yet strangely I also wished I didn't feel so unconnected to others. I didn't know how to reach out. 

Small talk was something I didn't understand. I saw others having casual chats at coffee break or at social events, and had no idea how they did it. Anytime I tried, I just felt tongue-tied and super-awkward.

People would often remark on how quiet I was. I listened more than I spoke. Noise pressed on me and silenced me.

Being quiet doesn't mean I wasn't aware of my surroundings. I would see how the light softly traced the outline of the leaves on a tree. I would hear the tiny birds chirping in the hedge as they flitted from branch to branch. I might be the only one who noticed a snowdrop living in the shadow of a fence post.

#4 Creative Hack

It's 11:30pm on a Saturday night and I'm writing my blog. 

I've noticed this is my routine now. I fit writing in and around other things. And for once, insomnia is a blessing.

I tend to wake up somewhere between 3:30 am and 4:30 am. Usually, I can't get back to sleep. After feeling frustrated with this, I finally decided, if my brain wants to be awake, let's get it doing something. 

So, I started going to Youtube to watch videos on film scoring, composing, Blender, Photoshop, psychology. Or I'd go into one of the online courses I've taken and review a module.

More recently, I've gotten up, gone to the desktop, and worked. 

I'm amazed at how productive I am so early in the morning. By the time my normal wake-up time of 7:30 am rolls around, I've written or composed or designed something I'm pretty satisfied with. 

Of course, I have the freedom to have a little siesta a bit later in the day.

As a creative person I've always rebelled against rules and routines.

But getting up before the sun is definitely a creative hack I can wholeheartedly embrace.

~~

#3 Creative Hack
#2 Creative Hack
#1 Creative Hack

'The Depths of Loch Ness'

 

'Ocean'

 

Shame = Shy

Something momentous just occurred to me... I realized that I have lead a shame-based life. 

I am natural introvert. I am highly sensitive and empathic. I am also a girl. These things together developed into what I call 'a shy person'. Yet, in this revelation I just had, I realized I had been taught to have shame and that shame became shy.

I was thinking how I was taken to the doctor and put on diets because I was chubby. How I was to fast all day and then just eat dinner. A young teen, fasting... teaching her metabolism to go even slower. A young teen, fasting... not having the nutrients a growing brain needed.  

How I was sabotaged. A visit to the doctor, another diet to follow. "No gravy for me," I'd tell the Mom who'd taken me to the Doctor yet again to 'fix' my problem. "Just this once," she'd say to me. "I'd better not have any lemon meringue pie Mom," I'd say. "Just this once," she'd reply.

Thirteen years old, going to a new high school, already feeling ashamed of my body for its size and its treachery in growing breasts, the bullying that started in elementary school continued, but more intensely. I lived in terror everyday but never said a word to anyone. I must be this hateful thing. I was taking up too much space. Getting in everyone's way. 

I craved to be invisible. And so I ate more, loathing myself for doing so but finding solace in the pleasure of burying my head in a romance novel while stuffing my face with cheezies.

Everything around me sent the message that I was lazy and, most of all, very stupid.

At thirteen years of age my reading comprehension was tested and it was determined that I had the comprehension level of a first year university student. Despite this, I almost failed Grade 8 with D's across the board.

At fourteen years of age I was invited to sing my original songs on tour with my high school choir.

At fifteen years of age the producer who was recording my high school choir heard me sing and invited me to make a demo.

At sixteen years of age I entered a poetry competition and won first prize.

By the age of sixteen I had taught myself to play the guitar and piano, I had played flute, piccolo and trumpet in high school band.

I drew and painted all the time. I wrote realms of poetry. Some of it was about how much I hated myself and one day, looking at it, I threw that away but there was still plenty left. I have a box of it. Poems and lyrics and songs.

I was taught I was wasted space. I had no value. I would never be good enough.

This is the tsunami that bowls me over each time I try to take a step in a positive direction. It washes over me, takes me down, pushes me into the darkness. I fight, but I can't breathe. I fight, but it feels futile. 

Yet I have seen the sun. I have survived and floated to the surface and been amazed at the beauty around me. The beauty within me. I know I am a caring, compassionate, thoughtful person. Being highly sensitive is a gift that allows me to help others. And this gives meaning to my life. 

I have value. And not because I've earned it or had it bestowed upon me. Because it is intrinsic to being a human being and artistic soul. It simply is.

How do you talk to yourself?

I call myself the shysinger-songwriter and theshysinger and the shyvoice - there's probably many things I could put a 'shy' in front of because I lived it and I was it and I am it still in many ways. If there is one thing I could tell you about that which would help you if you are also shy, it's that it is possible to change. I found a way, and that's why I share my journey.

If you're here and reading this then perhaps the word 'shy' resonates with you. In some fashion, you identify yourself as being uncomfortable in social situations. Making 'small talk' feels like a damn 'big deal'. Seeing someone you know on the street makes you dash into a store hoping they didn't see you.  Yep.

I felt so awkward and stupid I avoided people as much as possible. Yet, at the same time, I yearned to connect. I'd sit in a corner at a party beside the potted plant trying to be invisible, and leave feeling miserable. Why didn't people like me? What is wrong with me? At the same time, I never gave them a chance.

I credit the study of singing for my emancipation from past programming and my transformation into a shy person who enjoys social interaction. But it's not the actual act of singing that made the difference. It was the journey to becoming a singer that did.

What do I mean by that?

In order to change anything, you first have to be aware of it. I'm sure you've heard people say that. It's a few words strung together in a sentence, but to live those words takes time and perseverance. There came a point in my singing journey where I decided it did not matter if I ever sang anywhere. I just felt deep inside that if I kept going, kept trying, kept working, one day, something would shift and I would move forward.

Because how you think when you are actively engaged in a creative endeavor makes a huge difference in your ability to perform, becoming aware of how you think is key to developing your artistic skill.

Over time I began to understand that because I thought so negatively, because I expected to fail or feared failing in the moment, I actually did what I didn't want to do because that's the thing on which I was focused. Big time.

When your brain is shouting "You're boring! You're boring!" at you when you are in the coffee room and someone has initiated a conversation with you, you choke up, you can't think of anything to say, you feel lame and awkward. Maybe you even - like I used to - stammer out your replies, hating yourself for how you feel and perhaps even hating them for making you feel like this (not their fault at all).

So, how do you change your thought process?

I really have to recommend something I started when I was reading Julia Cameron's 'The Artist's Way', and that's morning pages. Get yourself a big notebook, get up 20 minutes earlier, and write three pages of stream of consciousness... everything on your mind, just write and write without editing or stopping... if you can't think of anything to write, write about that. Do this every day for at least three months (and maybe forever). 

At first perhaps it will feel like nothing is happening. But after a while, you will see the things that you write about again and again. And you will see how you talk to yourself. What words you use. For me this is the first step in raising your consciousness, and the first step to becoming less shy.