Today I made the conscious decision to abandon the 21 day challenge. Just for today. Let me explain.

I have had this big project hanging over my head like a cartoon anvil. It will take many hours to complete, and mental and creative resources I would much rather devote to my true love – anything other than this. There is so much I want to do creatively; write, make, draw, paste, but I feel powerless to be all in with this thing hovering.

Hence the day off. I’ll be right back on it tomorrow, fresh and new. Or so I thought.

I learned two very important things today:

1. There is no such thing as a finite amount of creative energy. I am under the impression that I have about 5 hours in the morning in which to write, design jewelry, draw, create greeting cards, do yoga and yoga nidra, take a photo walk, and go to the gym. Turns out it’s not true.

While I wake up fresh and an open channel for creativity I can achieve that same level of openness by doing yoga nidra or stepping outside to watch a squirrel play for a few minutes any time of the day. I learned today that I could do the creative project I was resisting as well as manage to be creative in other ways. After 10 AM.

2. There is room and time if it is important enough. I did the challenge anyway. And rather than take me out of the zone, it was a welcome reset. I fit it in. It has become important enough to me to make time for it. And it proved itself valuable.

I have been watching my mind where this project is concerned. There is so much resistance. Every time I think about all I have to do, the inner mental brat has a little tantrum, whining, kicking things and becoming gravity itself. I expend precious energy resisting this project which is really just delaying my bigness – my real work. It’s a fear of what’s on the other side of the completion of the project. Another one? More resistance?

It will not be the same thing, of course, resistance is a changeling. I will think it is something completely different, and on the surface it will be, but its end game is the same. It’s a stall tactic.

So it’s not the project that has to go away. It’s the resistance. And that’s another story all together.

Resistance is the hurdle, it is “X.” When I get done with X, then I’ll….  When I lose X, then I’ll…. When I have X I’ll… What if I suck at algebra and I never solve for X? I should have paid more attention in high school.

Do I even need to solve for X? I don’t think so. X is not real. X is the illusion, it looks real, feels real, but it can’t be. It always goes away. The real magic trick?  I am the magician. I create the illusion, I know how it’s done, and I still fall for it.

Time to pull back the curtain of doubt, remove the mirrors reflecting my own fear back to me  and blow away the smoke hiding the true self.

Time let go of the shenanigans and get on with it.

[Photo: With the French doors and windows wide open I can hear all the critters scurrying around the back yard. I was actually called out by the coo of dove, but as I opened the screen door the dove flew away and I caught this little feller.]