I coach writers a lot and am always looking for articles and books that explore, teach, inspire them to understand what might be slowing them down or stopping them from completing their work. Most of the information I come across is as applicable to my other coaching clients who are, say, making career changes or life transitions as to writers.
Recently, for example, I read two books that are filled with specific ideas that will help anyone who is having trouble trying to fulfill a meaningful goal. I’ll focus in this post on what Mary Pipher, in her book Writing to Change the World, calls the “inner demons” that afflict many people when they merely think about doing something new and risky.
Doing means you will be seen and thus be open to criticism–sometimes just for asserting yourself. And we’ve all certainly read book and movie and music reviews that take great glee in attacking what is being reviewed. Who wants to deal with that? Or with family and friends who express doubt about your desire to make a change or who openly disapprove of it?
According to Pipher, these demons are not so much blocks as internal pressures that interfere with moving forward. Her own personal demon, she says, is anxiety.
Here are some of the ways she has found to conquer her demon, which I have modified to fit anyone who wants to make difficult changes more easily:
1. keep a log of the minutes or hours you put into your project every day, and conscientiously put in time and effort, even if only you know you’re doing it
2. stop when you feel you’ve reached a particularly satisfying point–come up with a new idea, however sketchy, for example–so you can start the next day on a high note
3. start the day by writing in a journal or leafing through books on your subject, then doing a few business-related things before turning to your project itself–make a gentle transition into work
4. work on a variety of projects so that you can move from one to another according to your mental energy; that way you don’t feel stuck on any one thing, which tends to increase anxiety
5. face your internal critic, tell it to calm down, write out all its criticisms until they get absurd enough so that you have to laugh at them; paradoxically, Pipher says, letting the critic speak actually quiets it for her and gives her more space to work.
Her best advice? “Stewing in our own stress is not a good way to handle difficulty. Action ameliorates anxiety.”
Over and over again, that’s what we need to recognize, isn’t it?
