Hello Friends,
How are you this fine Friday? Here is this week's story.
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Last week, I almost didn’t send out the Friday Five Hundred email. The only reason was that I was looking for a particular picture to go with the email. The outcome didn’t match the vision in my head. That’s when one of my fellow Creatives emboldened me to send the email without the picture. The email was shipped and made the impact it was meant to make without the image.
Isn’t it amazing how we get fixated on a vision that we end up undermining the gifts that are present? My six-year-old Rania is a reflection of me in this regard. She loves to paint and her painting sessions end up in tears squared: tears rolling down her face and tears in the painting. When asked why, she said, “It doesn’t look like what I imagined.” I may be biased, but it’s usually a beautiful painting. If only she could appreciate what she created, celebrate her improving skill level, and revel in the privilege to birth into being a thing of beauty.
Last week when I couldn't find the image to go with the email, I felt like Rania and I needed to listen to the advice I had for her. Life serving as the best teacher gave me another dose of taking my own advice with a deeper lesson of celebrating my current achievements regardless of them matching the image in my head.
Today was a day of celebration for a hundred and twenty students of Seth Godin’s Creative’s Workshop for which I have the honor to be one of the Coaches. It’s an intense workshop where Creatives sign up to ship their art for a hundred days, answer weekly assignments called prompts, and give meaningful feedback on each others’ work. The workshop commenced and my heartfelt hope for the students is to fully celebrate their achievements no matter how many days they showed up and how many assignments they were able to complete. They committed and came farther than where they were a hundred days ago.
It hurts when hard work is not celebrated especially when you prevent yourself from that celebration. A year ago, I self-published a book called Chai Chats: Personal Essays to Fill Your Cup. I had set out to write a different book. That didn’t happen. Chai Chats was a gift that I happened to be a vessel of and it came through me. Yet I failed to celebrate this accomplishment only because it didn’t match the image in my head. Meanwhile, the book helped strengthen connections with the people I have in my life and it garnered some moving reviews from Creatives I look up to and trust.
Opening up to expand and receive, I choose to move on from this stagnant place of undermining my achievements. I will celebrate and own what I created along with the students of the Creative’s Workshop. From this place, I can allow myself to go where my intuition leads and become a vessel for another creation.
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How about you? Are you preventing yourself from celebrating a certain achievement only because it didn't match up to the made-up criteria in your head?
If you liked this week's story, I'd love it if you could share it with a friend. Thank you for your continued love and support.
With love and gratitude,
Sana Fayyaz
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