Showing Up Always Shines - Are you "busy-lazy"??;-)

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. Thoreau

Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresea, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.


I'm reading a wonderful book called "This Time I Dance" by Tama Kieves. Tama was a Harvard educated lawyer who left a big firm to write. She had no safety net, no family support, and yet she did it. Reading her book has been like drinking some sort of vitamin cocktail that nourishes my very hopes and dreams. Here is an excerpt from the chapter titled, "Showing Up Always Shines". She talks about writing her book, but her thoughts encompass any endeavor, building a business, going back to school, or becoming an artist.

If there's one conversation that I've had with myself a hundred times, it runs as follows: "I'm afraid to sit down and write because I'm afraid of flat and limp words, crappy sentences, writing in need of an emergency room team. I hate to see failure before me." Suddenly I want to brush again my already bald cat or catch that sale on men's socks at Target except I don't know a singe barefooted man. Evidently I want to flee. It's not exactly fun to face your own sense of powerlessness.

Here's the thing, though. Facing powerlessness gives you power. "Sit," says my inner guidance. "Showing up always shines."

....Only the work heals. The work will make you feel like working. Do the one thing. Face your work. Small deeds build strength. Take the tiniest step you can imagine toward your dream and you're back on track. Even five minutes can wheel destiny around.

When I read this, I thought of Trent Hamm's blog, The Simple Dollar, in which he wrote busyness is laziness and I saw the connection. The "busyness" is brushing the already bald cat or shopping at Target when you have nothing to buy. It is killing time to avoid studying for a test, starting your book, or beginning a business. And we keep busy to avoid doing the thing we fear, but that thing just keeps lurking there, or hovering, waiting for us to simply pay some attention. And when we finally do, we always feel better.

So may we all keep showing up this year, and keep taking the tiniest steps, and find ourselves too busy pursuing exactly what we want to be caught in busyness....