Maybe you've never felt supported, never felt like you're a "bloom where you are planted" kind of person. Maybe you believe you're not all that remarkable but are filled to the brim with so, so ordinary. Perhaps you're certain there's a finite pie of success, and there's clearly no slice for you.
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What’s your role in the fire?
[Steven Pressfield] notes, “Artists have invoked the Muse since time immemorial. There is great wisdom to this. There is magic to effacing our human arrogance and humbly entreating help from a source we cannot see, hear, touch, or smell” (119).
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What’s your origin story?
Origin stories are all over our media landscape today. Everything from (practically) every Marvel and DC character to the Bridgerton, Star Trek and Star Wars series to the musical Wicked are taking us backwards in time to where the characters we first met at one stage of their lives began. It’s an interesting concept to consider for yourself, too. How in the world did you end up…here? Just consider one aspect of your life. For instance, how did you end up with your current/last partner? Example A (for love) Here’s the quick origin story of how I got to Dr Marry: To avoid teaching after completing an English secondary education…
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Taking off…but to where?
The end of one thing is always the beginning of something else. And there's almost always good and less-than-good with each transition. Many of our "taking off" experiences are "both and" moments. I'm happy AND sad. I'm terrified AND excited.
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It’s not the size of your Spark that matters
These conversations also got me thinking about my day-to-day Sparks. The little, seemingly insignificant ones that actually play an important role in my life. Am I talking enough about those to help others see how this work fits into their life? Do you see how Spark work fits into your life? Or have you read posts, watched livestreams and said, "Wow, that's amazing, but it's not for me." or "I don't have that kind of Spark." or "I'm afraid of what I'll discover (and maybe have to change) if I go 'there,' so I'll just stay in my ok life and miss the opportunity for more."?
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Asking for and receiving answers
I was in another one of those weird funks I get in when I don’t have a book I find engaging. We went to the library, and I was scanning the new nonfiction books, looking for the covers that would grab me. This is the way I find nearly all the books I read, unless someone else recommends something specific. I am a great believer in judging literal books by their covers. I wasn’t having much luck, so I asked the Universe to guide me to whatever book I needed most to read this week, and I kept wandering, searching for something to draw me in. Then one word, “Illogical”…
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Rainbows and ladders
The set up I had breakfast with a friend recently; she asked me how my new life was going, a question I’m getting a lot these days and one that’s forcing (allowing?) me to have hard conversations with myself because the answer isn’t what I want it to be…yet I paused to determine how honest I would be. I went for real and said, “Oh, it’s a complete bust.” She looked a bit askance, so I went on, “I naively thought that when I finally announced I was leaving my stable job to venture out, the Universe would send a rainbow through my office window and a unicorn would gracefully…
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Resistance, messy journeys and mountaintops
After that conversation, I listened to a podcast with Oprah Winfrey and Steven Pressfield about his book, The War of Art. I've read the book multiple times and always find it valuable, but this conversation hit me differently. My internal force, aka Resistance, is rearing its ugly head because I've had the audacity to dare greatly. I've told the world I've left my comfort zone and have entered into the great unknown Resistance is working its hardest to stop me from taking the next step, from looking at the proverbial pie and saying, "I want a bigger piece of that." In the book, Pressfield says, "The more important a call…
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What if you don’t have a Spark?
Looking at it from this different lens, it's easy to see how anyone could read that and assume I'm only interested in working with people who have grand, audacious dreams: professional athlete, rock star, astronaut, tech scion… In the course of thinking about and working through this with a number of trusted people in my life this week, I came to realize I've only been thinking about this work from a shallow, surface-level place because it never dawned on me that anyone would believe they didn't have a spark.
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Something to puzzle over
Dr Marry and I did what so many of us do: we make a big declaration about something...anything in our lives. And we make a great big splash about it.
