I’m a big fan of Martha Beck (www.MarthaBeck.com). She’s an insightful and often hilarious writer of books and articles, and a wonderful teacher. She’ll be making an appearance in my Circuitous Route story soon.
I took one of her classes (Finding Your Own North Star) as I was entering what I now like to think of as my Jungian fugue state. In my years of studying the brain and how it works, I’ve become better acquainted with Dr. Jung. I found out that after he and Freud parted ways, Jung spent the next five years creating the drawings for his fabulous Red Book (the drawing above is one of his mandelas), thinking and developing his own theories.
This was reassuring for me because I’ve spent about the same amount of time creating art pieces, learning and teaching about alternate handwriting and watching and writing about reactions to it.
I’m in a new micro job, this one even more stultifying than the last. I’m grateful for the income. One of my co-workers, a young man who’s enlisted in the military, said it was kind of a Zen situation: something good (income) coming from something so mindless.
I’m also slowly realizing that the only things I can control are my thoughts and actions. The simple idea that I can’t control anyone or anything else has my left brain (Judge Betty, a.k.a. JB, a.k.a. my Inner Lucy) in a tizzy because it’s such a control freak.
So what does this have to do with Martha Beck? I’m on her e-letter list and finally got around to reading her most recent edition. She wrote this in reference to her latest favorite book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath:
Our rational minds need extremely detailed instructions whenever we do something new. If a step is missing or unclear, our rationality has trouble making progress. Making progress — in a new direction — is literally exhausting. So, in the Heaths’ words, what looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity.
Think of an area in your life where you feel you’re being resistant or lazy. See if you have detailed step-by-step instructions to carry you through the entire process. If not, stop beating up on yourself for not moving forward, and make it your goal to fill in the blanks of your own instruction manual.
I read that and I swear I almost felt my compassionate right brain do a fist pump. No, I’m not a slacker for not being a social media expert (my left brain’s most consistent criticism lately). I just don’t know enough yet to feel comfortable doing a bunch of it.
My alternate hand has written this a number of times in a more roundabout way but it’s nice to see it put so succinctly by the talented and intuitive Ms. Beck. Cut yourself some slack and move on. Always the bottom line.