Hello beautiful people!
Let’s get messy. Let’s sit in the stew. Let’s hustle. But first let’s get aligned.
It’s an aligned hustle.
Have you ever moved forward on something in this business (or, heck, in life) that you’ve been told you “have to do”? Or that you see “everyone else doing”? That you feel in your gut isn’t really clicking, yet you do it anyway… and then it all goes sideways?
You rush the email newsletter and then get your account shut down for breaking the law because you edited out the required unsub footer. You push forward with the massive postcarding effort and then they all come back in the mail because your return address is what got scanned by the postal machines. You make yourself go to the workshop because everyone else is going and then you walk in late, piss off the CD, fumble through your sides, and leave certain you’ve burned a bridge.
Babe, you weren’t aligned for that hustle.
And as creatives, our work is not just about taking action; it’s about taking inspired action. It’s not about leaping; it’s about making calculated leaps. It’s not about making bold moves; it’s about getting centered, breathing, checking in with how it all feels, and then being fearless. (Tweet it.)
If your immediate pushback on this is about fear — and especially if you find yourself often questioning, doubting, wondering whether or not each move is the right move — I want you to really ask yourself where this lives in the scope of enoughness. Use “I am enough” before checking in about those questions (Day 3). Do a little EFT (Day 25). Layer on a bit of “How do I behave if I am the best in the world at what I do” (Day 15).
Because the best in the world needn’t take any action before getting truly lined up with it. There is no pressure from external forces for someone who has nothing to prove. There is no second-guessing because no one is better at what you do than you are, so there is no hustle for hustle’s sake.
This is how we see rule-breakers out there in the world doing spectacular things. They don’t need to ask if it’s okay because their internal compass tells them that it is. So does yours, if you’re tuning in to check with yourself.
But sometimes when we cannot feel ourselves getting aligned, it’s because it’s time to sit in the stew for a while. We’re in the messy middle.
How do we know the difference? Several ways.
We’re in the messy middle when we have logical reasons to move forward with something and zero fear preventing us from moving forward, yet we still cannot move forward.
We’re in the messy middle when we’re sure there was a lesson to learn through all of this but we don’t yet know what that lesson is. We’re not all the way through the material. The stew is still simmering. And we’re sitting in it.
We’re in the messy middle when no amount of tapping, list-reframing, journaling, decluttering, forgiveness, or practical application of the SMFA tools seems to budge the dang thing. It’s a block that won’t shift. Yet.
Here’s what’s important to note about the messy middle — it’s an important part of the growth process. We can’t rush through it.
In fact, if you were to see a butterfly struggling to emerge from her cocoon and think you could help her by cutting the chrysalis open, you would assist in the goal of emergence, but the butterfly would die right away. The struggle is a *necessary* part of the strengthening of her wings. That push against the chrysalis as she emerges is how she readies herself for first flight.
And before that moment — which she (and we) cannot hasten — she’s sitting in the stew. She’s in the messy middle. We cannot rush this stage of growth.
But we can spend time while here getting aligned for what’s about to happen on the other side.
That anxious energy that cannot be harnessed to help us hurry through the messy middle is best used for organizing our feelings of gratitude for no longer being at the start of our journey and awareness that there is still so much more to come. Deep appreciation for the journey itself is the best course of (in-)action when you have the a-ha moment that allows you to realize you are sitting in the stew.
Today’s work: Consider that sometimes things work in this business and in life itself not because of the hustle but in spite of it. Take a good, hard look at things on your to-do list and identify what items on that list might need to be re-labeled “because I think I’m supposed to” and what could be listed off as “because I’m so damn lined up with this, it’s calling to me.”
Things that are still left on the list after that — because they’re not easy to dismiss as someone else’s expectations and they’re not giving you that glorious glow of aligned action — those get the appreciation treatment. Because they’re not going anywhere while you’re in the messy middle.
Turning your attention to what is definitely aligned, let’s start hustling on THAT stuff (and stop fretting about — and stop wasting energy on — the other stuff).
This very course is the direct result of my aligned hustle. I sat with all the offerings we’ve always had available, the master list of all the things I’ve ever wanted to put into course form, and everything I’ve ever talked myself out of. My logical brain said, “No creative is ever going to sign up for 100 straight days of anything. That’s too much. They aren’t looking to blend mindset and tools and woo-woo and working through money blocks and building enoughness through a lens of leadership. They want a target list and they want a cover letter template and they want an agent and they want to be told they’re not wasting their time doing whatever actor busy work they worry they should be doing at the moment. Period. YOU want them to experience all the rest of this growth. YOU want them to get their framework running strong. THEY don’t care.”
Then I got aligned. I stopped asking my logical brain (which can be pretty damn persuasive, y’all) what its opinion might be and instead, I sat with my deep knowing about the information I’ve amassed over my decades in this business. I sat with my deep knowing about the community I was put on this planet to serve. I sat with my alignment rather than with my tasky brain. And as my tasky brain listed off all the things that wouldn’t work (we didn’t have a website that could do this, we didn’t have a team to support such an ambitious endeavor, we had never rolled out such longform curriculum delivered so unflinchingly for so many months at a time, we didn’t have a model for this sort of membership, we didn’t have data to support this could ever work… OMG, are you as bored as I am looking at the list my tasky brain can fling up at times?), I kept re-centering.
I kept stripping away the expectations (they’re garbage). I kept taking aligned action. And when I had nothing to hustle about, I sat in the stew — in deep appreciation — and waited it out ’til it was time to give it a go. Because the fear had lifted enough that I knew it was at least worth a shot!
I did what I do when I’ve been away from pole class for a bit and decide to try a challenging trick that scares me. I ask myself if I can do it and then I say (out loud), “Let’s find out!” because I don’t always know what I’m capable of. And if I ask my tasky brain, I can easily decide I can’t do something. My gut? She knows I’m unstoppable.
But it’s only in the re-centering that I’ll ever give the most exciting, rewarding, thrilling things I’ll ever experience in my life a shot.
Re-center, then examine your list.
You know the difference between fear you feel because you’re actually in grave physical danger and fear that’s bullshit resistance. You know the difference between trying to talk yourself out of something that you’ll actually be glad you did and the tug of not being into it but slogging through anyway.
Take a look at your list of creative to-do’s after getting aligned and see which of those items now feel like “Oh YES! This! Let’s get to this right away!” Everything else? Re-label it “possible actor busy work” for now. Revisit it again later. If those things keep staying in the actor busy work category and they keep not being tackled when you reorder your list in three ways (Day 17), consider letting ’em go. Clear that clutter (Day 9).
Stay on the (aligned) hustle.
And when you’re still in the messy middle? Allow that to be the status. It doesn’t last forever. NOTHING DOES. Pushing through it — especially before you’re in an aligned place — is a dream killer.
’til tomorrow… stay ninja!
