S3 E25: You're Not Behind
This episode is for anyone who’s ever felt like they were behind, in creative projects or other work. I share some ways to reframe your relationship with time, and shift your mindset away from negative self-talk, so you can stop letting it hold you back. Let’s embrace whatever pace your art takes, and affirm that now is the perfect time to start.
If you need some encouragement, you can always send me a note. I'm always here for little pep talks, and I'm rooting for you!
RESOURCES DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
Sign up for the Feel Good Creativity Unchallenge
More about the pianist Leon Fleisher
A Glorious Freedom: Older Women Leading Extraordinary Lives by Lisa Congdon
MORE FROM REBECCA
Rise Above the Overwhelm - laser-focused 1-time coaching sessions
Fuel Your Creative Work With Compassionate Productivity workbook
TRANSCRIPT
Hello, everyone, welcome to Episode 25 of Being A Whole Person. Today we are going to talk about one of my least favorite feelings: the feeling that you are behind, which is often synonymous with the feeling of just generally not being good enough. Are you cringing? I'm cringing a little bit.
But today I'm going to unpack this feeling of being behind, and all the junk that comes along with that, which I know is a huge factor for a lot of people that holds them back from pursuing creative projects, or habits, or all kinds of stuff that they know is important. But there's something standing between you and doing that thing, something getting you stuck. So let's talk about it.
I'm going to give you some different ways to think about feeling behind that can help you shift your mindset and how you think about it, that will help you not hold yourself back anymore.
So, I know lots of us have felt behind, and let that make us feel bad about ourselves. You might be behind someone else, chronologically - lots of other people were born before you. Lots of other people started painting before you or making music, or writing, or whatever it is. That's just a fact, right? Chronologically, some things come before other things.
Literally being behind or coming after someone else is not a problem, of course, it's the judgment that we attach to it.
Have you ever told yourself that you're so far behind a peer or a colleague or just some person on Instagram, and then let that really color how deserving you think you are of success? And then that affects what you do next, which is often nothing because you feel paralyzed by this horrible feeling. If I asked you to raise your hand, I bet tons of you would be raising your hand, I would be raising my hand right now.
There's all these negative voices in our heads that tell us why we can't do something, they might tell you to give up on your idea and not even start it because you were so far behind everyone else that you'll just never be able to do it.
But guess what, you don't have to listen to them. You might not be able to make them go away, because that's the nature of the brain. You can't just shut off your thoughts, necessarily, but you don't have to really listen to them and internalize them. I like to think about these voices, any kind of negative voices, whether it's attached to creative work, or if it's just general anxiety, I like to think of them as some kind of person or being and they're trying their best to keep you safe, right? They're trying to keep you in a familiar zone, and that's useful sometimes. It's just not useful when it's holding you back from something that won't harm you, and it's something that's really important to you to try doing, that would be fulfilling.
So, when this comes up, I think about this negative voice, whoever it might be, giving them a pat on the head and saying, “Okay, thanks a lot. Thanks for trying to protect me, but I don't really need you. It's okay.” That might not make them go away, but it gives you a little more power. You can ask them where they're coming from, what are they trying to protect you from? That might give you some insight into what might be holding you back from starting to create.
Sometimes a little stubbornness can be helpful here too, like “I'm behind compared to what compared to who? How dare you tell me I'm behind someone else.” If you can get that like indignant, stubborn part of you involved, then you'll start questioning it more, and maybe that can work to your advantage too.
This idea of being behind, it's a construct, right? That means you get to choose it or not choose it. Just like anything else that you choose. Anytime you say yes to one thing, inevitably, that's a no to something else because that amount of time can only be spent on whatever you choose to actually spend it on. So, that just means that you're controlling the rate of moving forward in each of these areas of your life.
If you're someone who has various parts of your work life, like, I know I have a lot of listeners and clients who are teachers of music or art, and then they're also balancing the making of that art, so there's a ratio there. You might spend a half an hour a day working on drawing, for instance, during a certain period of time, and that might not make you yield as much work or gain as much skill as spending two hours on it every day. But if you can't spend two hours on it in a day, then you're spending that hour and a half doing something else that is making you grow in another way. So, it's all choices that you're making.
We have to consider our capacity here. If you're listening to this, during the time when it comes out, January 2021, it's a pandemic. It's your first pandemic. Unless anyone listening is over 100 years old, I'm guessing it's your first pandemic.
It takes a lot of bandwidth to navigate new experiences, it takes a lot more downtime, it takes a lot more rest. Last week, I gave a lot of tangible ideas for helping you move forward at whatever rate you can, when you feel like you're just in low power mode, so if you missed that one, that'd be a great one to go back to.
If your capacity is lower than you would like it to be, you might not like that, but you might consider adjusting your expectations, because you get to decide what your expectations are. You might want to dial them in toward fewer more important things. This is a main pillar of what I call compassionate productivity, helping us be the most productive we can, doing things that are meaningful, not just being productive for the sake of productivity.
We need to normalize things taking longer. I think we needed to normalize that before a pandemic, but especially now. This really needs its own episode, but productivity isn't about time management, as much as it's about energy management and how that affects your time. I have some episodes about that, too, that I will link to in the show notes.
But, the bottom line is, you have the power to manage your time, how you want to manage it. I know that there are limitations to that. I'm not assuming that you have the entire day to do with as you wish I know many of you are parents, many of you were helping facilitate distance learning in addition to jobs, I know there's a lot of things going on. But in whatever parameter you have, whatever amount of time that you have, you get to decide where to put that energy.
For some more guidance in this area, you might want to check out my e-book, it's called Fuel Your Creative Work With Compassionate Productivity, and it walks you through making your own to-do list and schedule for the day, which are things that most of us do every day, but it walks you through doing it in a way that won't make you feel bad about yourself from expecting too much. It lets you really adapt and be realistic, and be adjustable when your needs are constantly changing, your energy levels are constantly changing. You can really zero in on the things that are most important to you. The tools in that book have been invaluable for me as I moved through times of lower energy, and in times of higher energy, too. I'll link to that in the show notes for you.
So, if you're feeling like you're behind right now, it just might mean that things are going more slowly than you want them to. It's really easy to feel like we're behind when things are going slowly. When there are a lot of messages we get that expect things to be fast, overnight success, working all the time - all of these things don't really give grace and credence to the idea that maybe things happen more slowly, and maybe that's okay.
There's a Chinese proverb that I put in my very first blog post that I wrote almost five years ago, back when I just had first started writing about creativity and was daring myself to share my compositions because I had just performed one at a composer's night that summer. The next step for me was starting to share this stuff on the internet, and then that first post, this proverb I shared, was: The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but the second best time is now. I really take that to heart.
Did I wish that I'd started composing and sharing my music and really owning being a composer before I was 33 years old? Sure. But if I hadn't started, then I never would have continued doing it, I never would have made an album, I wouldn't have done anything related to composing. So we have to accept that where we are, is where we are, and that's perfect. You start from where you are right now. It's literally the only thing you can do. Unless you know something about time machines that I don't.
You can ease your way into it. If you haven't written in a long time, you're not going to skip right to forming a writers group, or publishing your work on a blog, probably. You're probably just going to start by writing a little bit in a journal, privately, just for you, and you can think about those sharing steps, expanding steps, and feedback later.
If you're alive, which I would guess you are, if you're listening to this, it is never too late to start something that you want to be doing. It might be too late to make it onto a 30 under 30 list if you're 35, which is a silly example, because that's a very arbitrary thing that doesn't necessarily even speak to the quality of your work and whether you are really satisfied with it. It might be too late to have a performing career as a pianist if you have a hand injury. So, yes, if those are the literal conditions that you're looking at, it might be too late.
But what if you modify how you go about it? Going with the piano example, because I'm a pianist, Leon Fleisher, who's a really famous classical pianist who just passed away last year, in his 90s, he suffered with dystonia. That really affected his ability to play the piano for a long time, he was unable to use his right hand very well for a long time, so he did a lot of stuff with his left hand for a while. People started writing left hand works for him to perform, because he was like, “Well, left hand, this is what I got.” I know he recovered somewhat, because I did see him perform, and he was using both hands when I was in school in the early 2000s.
That's just an example of how maybe you can pivot your expectations of how you thought you're going to do something, even if it seems like there are external circumstances making it too late. I bet you can do it in some format.
If you need some inspiration in this area. The book A Glorious Freedom: Older Women Leading Extraordinary Lives by Lisa Congdon is awesome. All of her books are awesome, and her blogs about the creative process and about being kind to yourself - she wrote some great stuff about her own burnout as an artist. I'm a big fan of hers. But this book is less about her art, although it is in the book. It's more about these stories of all these different women, some of whom started doing things after age 60, 70, 80, really proving that it is never too late.
Even if you think you're behind, it doesn't even really matter. It just matters that you do it if you want to do it. And step one is starting, or restarting. If, for instance, painting is something you haven't done in a long time, and you want to restart it, go grab your paintbrush! Go make a date with yourself, for a half hour of painting, or 15 minutes, whatever amount of time that you have, you can make it small.
Next week, I'm going to talk about how to create your own fresh start at any time, and feel good in that fresh start energy so that you can get that momentum, get that project going that you've been wanting to do. I'll get into some logistical tactics and tips-type stuff. So, look forward to that.
Whatever your thing is, even if you feel like you're behind, you can still do it and I'm rooting for you! So have a great week, and I will see you here next time.
Pianist and composer