Dear Designers + Creatives, You do important work. You make the world a better place with your creative mind. You take something and make it better. You know what the world needs before the world even knows it. Often you create things that never existed before. You give them life, you give them meaning.
“I don’t know what I think until I write it down.” • Joan Didion I love this quote. It’s true. Until you write it down, you don’t know what you think. I’ve been writing and journaling off-and-on all of my life.
When I hit a roadblock in my career and didn’t know what to do, I felt completely confused and overwhelmed. I couldn’t see my future clearly and I was unhappy doing many of the day-to-day tasks to get through my work.
This is where it starts. In your mind. Moving towards the life you want involves mind management. The first step is observing yourself by writing down your thoughts and feelings. Knowing what’s going on inside of your head provides information about your experiences in the external world. I know this firsthand.
I do this, do you? Right now, I find myself justifying my right to be unhappy. Whaaat? In one of his podcasts, the late, great Dr. Wayne Dyer said something like, (and I’m paraphrasing): “Don’t fight for your suffering.”
Do you know what you want? This is a big question I know, and requires serious consideration. But I ask this question because it is at the heart of making changes in your life. This was the question I had to answer for myself.
When do you feel most confident? Think about it. I bet you feel most confident when you’ve familiar with something. When you’ve done it many times. The things you feel confident doing, you’ve been doing for years.
Are you feeling defensive? Do you feel defensive and angry all the time? Do you wish people behaved differently? Do you complain and blame others for ruining your day?