The Most Surprising Thing

Everyone I know is looking for freedom. Freedom to be themselves. Freedom to work toward goals formed by hopes and dreams. And freedom from things, like self-doubt and the mashing thumb of the disapproval of others. I've been talking about how this affects our willingness to "put our selves out there" with my friend Sherry Dill. And this morning I thought about the most surprising thing.

You would think that emptying myself of ego, freeing myself from expectations to be good enough, might leave me without defenses and self protection. And that is actually true. But the surprising part is that the very willingness to be defenseless, to be vulnerable, gives me the power to learn to paint. To learn to write. To learn to sing. To learn to design. To get better at Math!!! Because, by letting go of the need to be talented, I make way for inspiration, I make way for improvement. Letting go of needing others to like my (fill in the blank- stories, blogs, paintings, songs etc) sets me free to fail spectacularly. And what a gift it is to be okay with that. If I don't need to be good enough for others to approve of me, I can be free to try new things. I can start at the beginning and see each stage as a wondrous adventure.

If every opera student quit when they didn't sound like someone from the Met, how many opera singers would there be in this world? You get what I'm driving at without lots of other examples. But I am in love with the notion that being free to be bad at something until I'm good at it is empowering.

The key to all of this is an elementary self love. An elementary willingness to let the world in, to be vulnerable. For years, I felt humility at war with self confidence. I believed I could do things, could learn things, could accomplish goals I set for myself, but I thought I needed to keep up a guard of humbleness to make sure I didn't get a big head. But the most surprising thing is that setting myself free to fail is the most empowering thing I can do. A huge piece of that is shrugging off criticism, beginning with self-criticism.

There's a great book that talks about this, called The War Of Art. Josh Beglau gave me that book when I started writing. A theme in the book is that what we tell ourselves about ourselves becomes our reality. This morning a post on facebook said, "The words you speak become the house you live in." Same idea. What we tell ourselves about ourselves becomes our jail, or our freedom.

Freedom comes from letting go of my defenses. Who would have guessed, all those years while I was honing my excuses, my limitations? Now I don't have any. I will paint bad pictures. I will write bad poems. And I'm good with it. I will have learned something from the effort. I can say that without hating myself for failing. I can see it, nod at it, put it in the pile of paintings with a grin on my face. How can I not smile, when I get this amazing chance to learn something as wonderful as the self expression of painting? I guess maybe it's that particular smile that is the most surprising thing.