The Dao of Doing

“dao” = way or path

we're tracy and kel

We were exhausted from suffering through monotonous, stagnant lives. In order to regain self-respect and consciously navigate our way to the lives we longed for, we chose to follow the path of doing something we loved every day.

"dao" = way or path
doing what you love is the way...
the way is doing what you love.

Discover what really matters and start doing that. Let the rest go.
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transformation takes time

Written on February 22, 2012 by Tracy in Drop Expectations

Transformation takes longer than you think it will,

but not as long as you’re afraid it will.

I can’t tell you how much that frustrates me.

A friend once said to me, “I bet you crunch your lollipops.” Heck yes I do! I can admit it: I’m impatient. Sometimes, when I really want something, it’s accompanied by a loud rendition of “I want it now!” as sung by Veruca Salt (from the old Willy Wonka movie).

Well, not always.

But I don’t like to wait. If I’ve seen the outcome I want, I don’t want to have to wait what feels like forever for it.

This applies doubly to a transformation.

I know I’m not alone in this. If I was, the shelves wouldn’t be full of diet pills and books promising enormous weight loss in just days. Magazines wouldn’t crank out articles about getting organized in a weekend. No one would fall for get rich quick schemes.

Things are supposed to happen fast, right? Kel and I were just talking about that this week. Who is sick for weeks on end anymore? Isn’t that what used to happen in novels? Aren’t you supposed to go to the doctor, and get some pills that fix you right up in a couple of days?

There’s an outcome we want, and if it doesn’t happen RIGHT NOW we’re afraid it never will.

I think the only thing that’s somewhat exempt from this requirement of speed is pregnancy. We know it takes 9 months and so we accept it. It’s not like anyone sits there looking at a woman whose baby was born early and think, well she made a baby in just 7 or 8 months, so why did it take me 9? We worry if a baby is born earlier. We know that means something that needed to happen didn’t get a chance to occur.

Children are another case we allow for growth to take time. No one pushes their two year old to drive and date, right? (YIKES!) You might have heard the saying: the days are long but the years are short. I just had this reminder on Tuesday. My son gets weighed and measured each time he gets his allergy shots. Three weeks ago he was 58 inches tall. He’s now 59 inches tall. I hadn’t been able to tell the difference. No suddenly too short pants, no sudden burst of crazy eating. Just one inch taller.

And that’s how transformation is. We don’t see the little signs each day, until something happens that makes us stop and take notice.

The signs of change are small. That doesn’t make them unimportant.

Recently I was having a drink with a friend and she asked me how my book was going. I told her I was starting all over again. She gave me that semi-frustrated look a good friend gives you when they think you’re doing something silly that they know you don’t have to do. The thing is, I was able to look at my draft, and know it was a draft. I knew that I had clarified the plot, but that wasn’t all I needed to do. When I sent my first draft to a few people to look over (and oh, how anxious that made me!), many of the comments were about wanting more–more emotion, more of the character’s motivation. This time, I didn’t need anyone to look at it and tell me that I hadn’t gotten there yet.

The real kicker is that a little more than a year ago, it felt like I had somehow failed by not getting down to that level in my story the first time. Now…I just thought: well, I’m ready to go another layer deeper.

I won’t lie–I really hope it doesn’t take too long before I think it’s ready to launch into the world. But I can see now that I had to do a lot of work on myself before I could be emotionally ready to go dig deep into the emotions of my characters. Maybe other writers don’t have to do that…or maybe they do, and I just have no way of seeing the inner and outer work they needed to do to write their books.

It doesn’t really matter. This is my path, and my book, and this transformation from Tracy into Tracy the Writer is taking longer than I thought it would, but not as long as I’ve been afraid it will.

Tracy

PS: Did you notice the little change in our posts this week? We’re freeing up a little time so we can have more time to work on the things we love. Look for our alternating Tracy is Playing with Beauty and Kel’s Adventures in Art posts on Fridays from now on.

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blind spots–seeing what really needs to be done

Written on February 20, 2012 by Kelly in See Clearly

These past few weeks I’ve had a pretty awful bacterial infection. At the beginning I thought I had a quick little stomach flu so I drank lots of water, rested, sipped ginger tea, and took supplements. These are all great things to do to get well but instead of getting better I got worse and worse and worse. You see, until the doctor identified what was really going on, until I started taking the proper medication, I was never going to get better.

In fact, left unchecked, it would have killed me.

Just because I couldn’t “see” the bacterial infection didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

Tracy and I have written many posts about the benefit of doing little things and how they add up exponentially to great benefits. I firmly believe this is true. Like keeping a gratitude journal–it’s a small action that has a big effect on your outlook in life, so much so that I have now started sharing 5 daily gratitudes on Facebook each day.

Doing small acts of self care and adding something you love to your daily life is like a magnifying glass on your life. These small acts make you profoundly more aware of just where your life has derailed down a path you really didn’t want to go down. Magnifying glasses help you see details that you normally can’t see with the naked eye and doing what you love can help you see your blind spots.

We are very good at ignoring the big issues in our lives. Making you aware of these issues is what doing what you love everyday can do for you. Once you are aware, however, that is when the real work needs to be done.

Because taking bubble baths, decluttering a shelf, and spending 15 minutes doing what you love is not going to get rid of any elephants in the room.

If creditors are calling and asking for money all day, if you’re so sick you can’t make dinner for yourself, or if an important relationship has become toxic, doing little self care acts just aren’t going to make an impact. These “elephants” are big and like black holes they drain your thoughts, energy, happiness, resources, and time. Ignoring them doesn’t make them go away or keep them from wrecking havoc in our lives.

You can declutter, organize, journal, paint, read, and sew until you’re blue in the face, but until that elephant is dealt with it will continue to eat away at your happiness.

Adding something you love to do to your days is a great beginning, but eventually self destructive behavior will need to be addressed.

A few years ago I had a different digestive issue. This one wasn’t bacterial and had been going on for a long time. After lots of doctors and tests it was finally discovered that I can’t digest gluten. Again, I could take supplements, drink more water, and chew my food an extra long time, but until I eliminated gluten from my diet, I was going to suffer. Even though I didn’t realize that eating gluten was causing me a problem it was still making me feel awful.

Small acts of self care are important, and adding beauty and creativity to your life is a perfect way to start the cogs of change, but if you can’t pay your mortgage or you are in an abusive relationship you will continue to suffer until those issues are addressed. Eventually, small step by small step our old self destructive habits can be replaced by more loving habits, like doing something you love everyday.

Doing what I love to do not only brought my blind spots into view, it has given me the strenth to get back on track. Doing what I love to do acts like an antibiotic ointment on the wounds in my life. Doing what I love is a growing part of my life, making less and less room for the things I don’t want.

Love yourself enough to add something you love to your days. It is the very thing that will give you both the insight and strength to deal with your blind spots.

Kel

image by Rune Mariboe via Flikr

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