When I started writing my newsletter, I gave a promise to myself that I would write based on inspiration. I had previously read so much information about content marketing, strategies and pre-planning of content calendars – and my promise to myself was to ignore all of it.
I had tried stints of that in the past, to come up in advance on what topic I would write about on which day. Where I aimed for keeping a queue of articles in the background, just waiting to be written and scheduled according to a well researched and thought out content schedule.
Now this approach turned out to be an epic fail in my case. I am not Pat Flynn, nor a staffed online magazine or publication. Planning topics in advance just channelled my inner rebel who did not want to co-operate with that. Pre-defined content schedule turned to zero content produced.
So in order to try something different, I decided to make a newsletter based on my inspiration in the moment.
It was a great decision for me. Choosing inspiration somehow gave my inner creative the get go to open up and let things flow. It worked really well.
Except that sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes things don’t flow at all – no matter how much permission we give it or how much rituals we setup in order to get to the right mental state.
What happens when your main source of energy/drive/motivation is inspiration – and on this exact time and day, when you need it the most, inspiration is gone?
I say: give yourself grace. Give yourself grace for not being on top always and forever. Acknowledge that you are not where you want to be and give yourself grace for being where you are.
What do I mean by this? Well it’s about being kind to yourself, no matter what. Grace is about not thinking about “deserving” one or the other thing. There’s no judgement, and no conditions. A way of showing unconditional love towards yourself. Even though today is not your awesomest day – you’re still ok.
Life is an eternal roller-coaster and it is never standing still. We can always do our best to create the most optimal circumstances, but we are ultimately not in total control. All we can do is to show up with the best of our abilities, just as we are, in each moment.
Am I talking to myself here? Why yes, yes I am. I’ve had a bit of a rough patch, with colds and sick kids and just a bit of down mood in general.
So today is not one of my awesomest days. But I’m showing up anyway. Today, that is my victory: I’m showing up at all.
And I’m not sharing this with you to in order to get some kind of sympathy response (even though I certainly could need a bit on encouragement on days like this). I’m sharing it because I don’t want to hold up some kind of image of being so super perfect and on top of it all the time.
I’m certainly not. Not on a week like this.
But I’m also hoping that by sharing about giving myself some grace, you will be able to give yourself some grace too. Give yourself permission to be kind to yourself. And if you need someone else’s permission: I hereby give you permission to be kind to yourself.
Perhaps this week happened to be your awesomest week. That’s great! Then keep this article around and re-read it another time when you’ll actually need it.
If you on the other hand have experienced a day or week recently where things haven’t been the way you want it to be, where you haven’t performed the way you’d like or felt the way you want to feel – then give yourself a big hug. It’s ok. You are ok.
We will both show up tomorrow again, and start over.