by Tara Joyce | Mar 10, 2017 | Cultural Creativity
We need to resolve our past, so we can expose our truth and move forward with our lives. We are drowning in our unresolved emotions. Unrecognized, they weigh us down. Depressed by them, we unknowingly hide and mask them.
So often we think our uncomfortable emotions away, doing everything we can not to feel the truth of them. Our rationalizations become what is real to us, and what we feel. What is not comfortable we do not acknowledge.
Disconnected from the truth of our emotions, we become unaware of what we truly value and love, and we find ourselves investing in things that are not right for us. Not acknowledging what we feel, we look to others to validate how we ‘should’ feel, using them to rationalize what we want to feel into ‘reality’.
We need to resolve our past and what is uncomfortable to us, so we can fully live our lives. To do this, we need to be vulnerable with ourselves and with others. This begins with accepting our fear of vulnerability, of intimacy, of our defenses being breached. It’s okay it feels more safe to feel in control and to remain hidden, it’s okay to believe then scary things won’t happen that we can’t handle.
While it is nice to feel we can make predictable our feelings and their magnitude, we simply cannot. At some point, we must surrender to our lack of control. We must hand over the tightly held and relinquish the guarded. Despite what we fear, our hearts will not break, we will not be in mortal danger. We can peer deeply in. We can feel our hurt and survive. We don’t need to protect ourselves from the truth of our feelings. What we need is to drop the mask and to reclaim our vulnerability.
When we don’t explore the emotions we find so uncomfortable, we create conditions that support others in avoiding theirs. Yet when we face our past and our truth, we make it easier for others to the same. There are always reasons why not to feel something, why not to be something, why not to do something. In helping our self take the risk of vulnerability, we release our self from our past and allow our self to move forward with our life. Being what we truly are, we support others in being the same.
by Tara Joyce | Aug 25, 2016 | Cultural Creativity
How do I balance my innate human desire to estimate how long something will take, with the reality that I often have little control over this truth?
Is the point to do my best in estimating, to get a general sense, and then to leave it? Is the point to do some planning, but to never decide that my expectations are true and correct? Is the point to create motivation to work towards the goal, rather than attaching to its timeline?
Perhaps our time estimates are funny games we play with our Self and with each other, in support of our motivation. If we think it’ll only take 2 years to realize, this feels more motivating than the 7 years it actually takes. Perhaps, we’d never undertake the action if we truly knew how much we’d need to put into it to achieve it. Perhaps, our collective need for estimates and time projections is simply a trick we play on our mind and ourselves, to encourage us to take the action in the first place.
We want to feel it won’t take that long to realize. We want to believe that other things in our life won’t arise and take us away from that goal, at least temporarily.
We, in our culture of instant gratification, want so badly for our dreams to be as easy to manifest as the things available to endlessly consume. We’d love to realize our dreams NOW. We’d love to bypass all the other work we haven’t factored into our plan. We’d love if we didn’t need to work on our Self in order to realize our dreams.
We’re only human. We can’t know until we know. But perhaps in coming to accept how arbitrary our timelines are, we can provide that understanding to others. Perhaps, because of this, one day, we’ll find ourselves relinquishing the power Time has over us.
When used kindly, timelines and estimates inspire us into action. When used unconsciously, they leave us feeling not good enough. We’ll likely never meet the exact timelines we set, so why not see and set them more truthfully? Let’s own that we create them to feel more in control of something (Life) than we truly are.
Your timelines and your planning undeniably support you in starting and in making movement, and yet it’s likely your goal will take longer than expected to realize. It seems this is the way it is. Be weary of yourself or anyone else who leaves you feeling less than because you haven’t yet reached your goals. Remember, as long as you’re working towards them, you’re a work in progress and you’re on your way.
photo credit: Scott Akerman
by Tara Joyce | Aug 22, 2013 | Self/Business Growth
There was nothing in the world I feared more then when humans attack.
So much so, that for a long time, I did my best to avoid humans altogether. To avoid them meant I wouldn’t be attacked.
I’d be safe.
But, the attacks still happened, despite my attempt to control and prevent them. No matter what I did, I couldn’t control how you behaved.
So I drove myself deeper into hiding. Thinking deep down there I would be safe.
I couldn’t help but feel that I was somehow responsible. I couldn’t help but attach to what kept happening. I couldn’t help but be hurt by them.
A loud motorcycle going by.
An attacking human, whether directing their stuff at me or not, is like a loud motorcycle going by.
They jar me, and perhaps even scare me with their presence and noise, but beyond the distraction they create, they do not need to affect me any further.
Their noise is not mine. I am not responsible to it.
I do not need to attach to the noise you create, and hold on to it. I do not need to attach to the content of your attack.
Like a motorcycle going by, I can’t control what you do. I may feel the shock of your actions, but I get to control how easily I recover from them.
I have a choice in whether I attach to your noise, and let it hurt me further. Or just let it go.
It’s just noise.
Unless I want it to be more.
A motorcycle, and an attack, may always surprise and shock me, and I may never like the sound, but what happens next, once you do what you wanted to do, is always my choice.
I can throw a dirty look at the driver, or cover my ears in protest, but the noise has already been created. I can’t change that.
But once the noise and the distraction has passed — that is when my work begins.
Do I attach to what happened and let it distract me further, or do I do what I can to let it go?
How much do I want it to affect me? Can I let it be the loud motorcycle going by, that bothers me for a moment and nothing more?
motorcycle analogy credit: Teya Sparks, photo credit: 69Vagamundos
by Tara Joyce | Apr 20, 2013 | Personal Branding
There is no demand for my message.
Personal branding isn’t about packaging myself up into a pretty box and showing only the good and glowing. The whole me, not my tidy little message, is what people want and will see, whether I attempt to control it or not.
Establishing a message for myself, deciding on a pretense, trying to make you think what I want you to think about me, is not of benefit to me. And it’s not of interest to you. You don’t care about what I want to pretend to be.
My personal brand, it is my Marketing, and it’s not something I do to you. Marketing is something I do with you. It’s about creating great conversations.
That’s what’s really in demand. Connection.
My message, my pretense, can only prevent me from reaching that place with you.
