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 | Jul 9, 2014 | Innerpreneurship, My Journey | What's On My Mind, Pay What It's Worth Pricing
A Calling
I’ve always wanted to — and knew I needed to — WRITE a BOOK.
If I knew anything about myself, I KNEW this. And this KNOWING was so powerful that it became incredibly painful.
Resistance
But I didn’t know how, so I tried to escape from IT. The pressure of IT. For a while.
With time and practice, it became not so much the WRITING that weighed, but THE (unwritten) BOOK itself. As did my resistance to ALL THE MEANING I had now placed on IT.
Nothing meant more than creating THE BOOK I always dreamed of, and so under this heavy weight IT sat stagnant.
IT meant too much to move, the fear of not getting IT right or not getting THERE at all hovered. The seriousness of the endeavour weighed. I NEEDED to do this.
Acceptance
Five year ago I started writing THE BOOK I dreamed of creating, and today I am ready to share it with you.
It’s taken lots of work on myself, and spending the last year writing the start of a fiction series, to reach THIS place where I am ready, willing, and able to write and share my BOOK that meant so much.
I can now see and trust that this BOOK that means so much, is one of many inside me. I now know I am able to do IT.
And IT doesn’t mean as much as I made it out to. And yet IT means so much more.
I feel ready now to step fully into who I am. To feel FREE to collect and share my words and thoughts with you. And to KNOW it means something when I do, but this meaning isn’t there to scare me, only motivate.
A Heroic Journey
And so, with no further ado, I am proud to share with you my first book, Pay What It’s Worth: Building Your Sustainable System for Not Setting Prices.
May it take you on an adventure the way it has taken me.
by Tara Joyce | Mar 30, 2012 | Self/Business Growth
Perhaps you’re like me and you find yourself yearning for the completion of your dreams.
I dream of the day when my current “struggles” are behind me. I dream of the day when my first book is written and published, and my second is hot in pursuit. I dream of visiting space.
The word ‘dream’ can have a pie-in-the-sky quality to it that makes me uncomfortable though. It’s not that I think dreams are unrealistic to have. I truly believe that our dreams can come true. But we have to be realistic about achieving them.
My dreams can only come true when I am true to them.
Only thinking about my dreams and not doing, I am simply dreaming. There is no coupling of the dream with a firm intention to manifest it.
I get lost in dreaming when I start thinking I need to know how to get to the end result. I scare myself into inaction by the hulking picture of the goal realized. I start to think I need to know how to GET THERE NOW, and of course I have no fucking idea how.
My success can’t be guaranteed… especially if I haven’t committed to it.
The thing is, I do not need to know how to get there. I do not need to know each step to my dream realized. I only need to be willing to act in the direction of it.
To manifest my dreams, and to move from dreaming to goal achievement, I only need to couple the largeness of my dream with small, concrete and strategic steps.
My dreams can not come true over night. But each small step I take does bring the bigger dream a notch closer, and knocks it down a size.
It’s the aching yearning for completion, as painful as it can be, that drives me to act, and commits me to achieving the dream. That is what it is there for. To drive me in the right direction. It is not to be the final destination.
My true destination, I bet, will be beyond my wildest dreams.
“Whatever you think you can do, or believe you can do, begin it, because action has magic, grace and power in it.” – Goethe
by Tara Joyce | Mar 15, 2012 | Cultural Creativity
I don’t believe in plans. I believe in planning.
I believe in understanding the general shape of something. I believe in knowing where you are and where you want to go.
I believe that measurable goals drive accomplishment. I believe the better you can express your vision and mission with great specificity, the easier it is for you to outline the steps needed to realize it.
I believe that once you’ve determined where you want to go, what comes next can not be determined, and likely won’t be in any plans you’ve made. I believe this truth can free you from the fear of starting and create a trust in your ability to fill in the gaps later.
I believe that starting with a blueprint, a sketch, of your dream is enough. I believe in having faith that time and experience will help shape the details, as you need them.
I believe that you know how to get you where you want to go. I believe you can get there if You believe you can get there.
I believe in you starting and I believe in you growing from there.
