September 2015 - Julianne Harvey

How You Do Anything

Julianne HarveySeptember 29, 2015September 28, 2015Leave a comment

In last week’s RobCast, This Episode is Sugar Free, the brilliant Rob Bell quotes Dan Klein who says, “How you do anything is how you do everything.” I can’t seem to get this statement out of my brain. It’s whirring gently in there, like a washer on a spin cycle.

The little things matter in this life. It’s a cliche to say that they add up to be the big things, but it really is true. It’s not healthy to focus on the “everything” because it’s so big, and often out of our direct control. But the “anything”? This amounts to the daily choices we make, the small moments, the one-on-one interactions.

How you do anything is how you do everything. I’m trying to pull the focus of my life’s camera lens back, to tighten it on what’s in front of me at any given time. We can’t build the big structure until we learn to hammer a single nail. It’s wishful thinking to get ahead of ourselves by imagining the finished product before we complete the thousand tiny steps we need to do to get there.

How are you spending your time? Is your dreaming outpacing the work you are doing? For years, I lived this way. I felt resentful when other people succeeded at something I longed to do, but my energy went into fantasizing about the end goal instead of plugging away at the hard work of completing one task after another. What right did I have to begrudge someone who was actually putting in blood, sweat and tears, when I was only dreaming?

Of course, it’s fine to have a vision and to daydream about the big score. But doing only that focuses on the everything without actually doing the anything required to see your dream become a reality. No one succeeds without effort, failure, resilience, courage and time. These ingredients are required. Big projects have a ton of small steps, peppered with setbacks. Most of the time we just don’t get to see them.

We hold a finished book in our hands, listen to a terrific new album, or walk into a stunning building. We don’t know all of the individual days, months and years of effort that went into these things, so it can be easy to fool ourselves about the project. If the person or team got to the “everything” that you read, listen to or look at, they learned how to master each individual piece of “anything” that built up to the final product.

Every step matters. I’m paying closer attention now to my anythings because without each one, I wouldn’t ever reach my longed-for everything. Inch by inch, we grow and change and develop, and all of it counts.

In Identity, Personal Growth, Writing

Disconnect from the Outcome

Julianne HarveySeptember 22, 2015September 21, 2015Leave a comment

Disappointment sucks. Not one of us is immune to it. We want something, so we begin to hope for it, predicting an outcome not guaranteed to occur.

The longer we wait, the further our imaginations nose ahead, daring to believe that this time, our long-held desire will bear fruit. As a writer, this is the seesaw edge I live on. Submitting work, then waiting for one of two outcomes: rejection or acceptance.

The other day, I heard someone utter these wise words, “I’m trying to do my best and then disconnect from the outcome.” I’m wretchedly awful at the second half of that sentence. Trying my best is easy; accepting whatever results from that is difficult.

But I know it’s good for me to keep trying. We all have to. Value plays a sizeable role here. When I tell myself I’m a decent writer because someone else confirms that by praising what I do, advancing me in a contest or offering a contract instead of a form rejection letter, I’m sunk. My confidence recedes, my stomach drops, and I feel worthless.

The key is to hinge my worth on my own unique identity and not to anything I produce. My work is not who I am. This goes for every one of us. No matter what our culture may tell us, success at work does not equal success as a human being. We will fail and we will succeed, but these markers are outside of us. They are not levers on our identity, shifting us ever higher or lower.

It’s funny because one of my slides in my It’s On You seminar is called “Expect Failure”. Another one is “You Own Your Value”. I’m teaching these concepts to students and to adults, and receiving a beautiful opportunity to practice them in my own experience. These philosophies mean nothing if I’m not living them out myself. Example is king. I don’t listen to fancy words any more, when it’s clear that the person uttering them is not modelling the skills they espouse.

Rejection is another chance to practice disconnecting from the outcome. I cannot afford to hitch my belief in my abilities to the opinions of other people. I have to feel the sadness when rejection hits, then dust myself off and move on, creating what only I can do. Even if it’s just for myself.

We do our best, and then allow the consequences to unfold as they will. We can only control our end of the deal. Beyond that, we have to believe that when the time is right, we will see small measures of success. Until that time, we’ll keep on going, affirming to ourselves that we are not the work we do. We are worthy of love and care, whether we win or lose. If we keep walking up to the plate, one day we’ll connect with the ball as we’ve dreamed of doing.

In Identity, Personal Growth, Writing

Claiming Creativity

Julianne HarveySeptember 15, 2015September 7, 2015Leave a comment

Where does an idea come from? I have no clue, but the mystery of the process is one of my favourite parts. About a week ago, I was pleasantly watching a Seinfeld episode with my kids when BAM! an idea dropped into my head for a new writing project like it had parachuted in from behind enemy lines.

One second, nothing but relaxed laughter at George Costanza, and then, an idea that made my heart pound with excitement. This sense of wonder and surprise is what I love most about living a creative life. And I don’t accept it when people say, “I’m not creative.” That’s 100% bullshit, not to put too fine a point on it.

We can all create, whether it’s with words, paint, wood, instruments, food, paper, fabric or a zillion other things. If you are human, you are creative. It’s simply a question of how willing you are to engage with it.

Lately I’ve been ruminating on the word “claim”. I’m attempting to claim my work as a writer. To feel entitled to own that this is what I do. To once and for all slough off this hideous less-than scrambling for a seat at the artist’s table. I must do what I most want to do in this life. This is true for every one of us.

The world is not likely to beg you to write a book, start a business, bake a loaf of bread, make a fancy card or grow a vegetable garden. People are busy with their own lives, so if you want to create something, the responsibility falls on you to dive in and try it.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s new podcast, Magic Lessons, has helped me in my pursuit to claim my own artistic stake in this life. She encourages us to go for it, no matter what the end result is, because the art of creating is its own reward.

I used to get bogged down in, “What if it’s no good, what if no one likes it, what if it doesn’t turn out the way I want it to?” Five years in on my writing career, I finally know that those questions are useless and debilitating. The answer to every one of them is, “Who the hell cares?”

Now, when I get a fresh idea, I give myself permission to pursue it with no expectation on what it will end up as. It might be genius or it might be shit. I’ll never know unless I invest a bit of time in it, and when the magic starts to happen and it sings and dances for me on the page, I’ll remember that the act of creation is the reward. Even if no one sees the finished product and it’s just for me.

Being invited to create is more than enough. The higher the value I place on my own self-worth, the more I feel entitled to claim the word “writer” as my creative identity. It’s freeing, exciting and knows no limits. For a little while, it gets to be all mine, and that is a worthwhile reward.

In Personal Growth, Spiritual Life

Investing in Self-Care

Julianne HarveySeptember 8, 2015September 7, 2015Leave a comment

I’ve had a small health issue crop up this weekend (of a delicate nature, so I’ll kindly spare you the details). At first it was annoying, then worrisome because problems always seem to arise on a long weekend when everything is closed, but eventually I found it soothing when I began to invest in my own care.

As women, we tend to be busy nurturing and caretaking for those we love. Far too often, we ourselves are not on that list. Discomfort or pain tends to bring us back into focus, helping us to figure out how to show love in the form of self-care.

I resented having to search out remedies for the physical problem I was experiencing. It took time away from other things I wanted to be doing. But implementing what I learned to solve a problem I’d never had before forced me to slow down and nurture myself the way I would a sick child.

It was a healing exercise. I needed to be the sick child that my own adult self made time to look after. It reminded me that I am important. When our bodies throw up a white flag, crying out for attention, it’s necessary for us to listen. We are not machines, as much as I long to be, where nothing ever goes wrong. We get tired, or sick, or we age and face certain indignities that must be addressed.

I used to have zero tolerance for physical weakness, in myself or in anyone else. Heaven help my poor kids or husband five years ago when they were sick, as I wrote it off as a character flaw. Coming to terms with my own inherent worth helped to cure me of this abhorrence of any illness or pain. I see now that this disdain for human vulnerability was a survival tactic in my alcoholic childhood home, where competition was a bloodsport that only the strong could endure.

I see vulnerability differently now. I know that it reveals strength, not frailty. I can no longer afford to expect so much from myself or from others. I must employ gentleness in mannerisms, speech, actions. I want to model for my kids that when something hurts, we should slow down and listen. We must make our health a priority, in all areas, and look after ourselves with love and mercy.

I could do without this annoying condition, but it has helped me to recognize that my physical body needs my care as much as my mental, spiritual and emotional needs do. I can slow down and care for what is damaged and in need of rest. I can love myself enough to care for all of me.

In Books, Identity, Parenting, Personal Growth

The Gift of an Ordinary Day

Julianne HarveySeptember 1, 2015September 1, 2015Leave a comment

In my ongoing literary agent research, I came across a recommendation for a motherhood memoir called The Gift of an Ordinary Day, by Katrina Kenison. I just finished it, savouring the last fifty pages like a gourmet meal I didn’t ever want to end, and I feel profoundly stirred by Kenison’s heartrending observations on letting go of our beloved children.

The Gift of an Ordinary Day details her family’s journey to build a house as their two sons are reaching adolescence and growing away from their parents. It’s a familiar story of loss and change; a road I have yet to travel with my own children but can already sense, heavy in my bone marrow, for one day this metamorphosis from dependent to independent happens to all of us.

And what better time to face up to this fact than right now, the beginning of September, with the challenges and demands of a new school year upon us? We cannot freeze-frame the lives of our children, any more than we can halt the steady march of time for ourselves. The entire process of life itself is moving on: changing, dying, transforming. Nothing is static. Accepting this is better than fighting it.

But sometimes it hurts. We feel a deep ache, in the centre of our being, at just how fast our children are growing. We empty out drawers of pants that are too short and socks that no longer fit. We place pencil marks on closet doors until they are taller than we are. We love them at every stage, but we cannot hold them there. We must learn to let them go. It’s the hardest work there is as the mothers who fed them, rocked them, guided and nurtured them, until they have learned to do all of these things for themselves.

Tomorrow Ava begins grade 7 and William starts grade 4. We celebrate these milestones together, but privately I also mourn the ages that are now behind us, stored only in our memories. Parenting is one long lesson in letting go. It’s about transition, adaptation, surrender. Being a mother means loving with our whole heart, a process that opens us up to feel terrible pain and loss.

When we do our job well, raising kids who contribute positively to society and know how to look after themselves, by definition this means they will one day leave us to make their own way in the world. Each step they take in these school years is a step further from our warm, encompassing care. This is what we signed up for by having kids, but it’s important to acknowledge our own feelings around this process.

I’m so grateful to Katrina Kenison for holding up a light for me as I navigate the path of my daughter’s newfound adolescence. I do not want to overlook the beauty, healing and transformation available in each and every ordinary day to come.