When I started thinking about W, writing was the obvious choice but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. So, I did what I always do when I have a topic but I can’t think of an approach – I started with the question ‘What do I want people to know about writing?’ Hence the extra-conversational tone here.

This is the ‘permission’ slip I give all of my writing students.

Well, first off , you get to write what you want to write. I can’t guarantee that you will sell what you write – there are a lot of forces at work there and a lot of them are beyond your control so you shouldn’t worry about them at first. Instead you need to only worry about what you want to say. In some ways this is the best stage of writing because it is all about you, you, you.

You can outline if you want. Some people like to make things up as they go and others like to have everything carefully planned out. I kind of like to go between the two. Sometimes the work of planning everything out is a bit too much for me. When that happens, I just need to get down to the actual work of putting the words on the screen and it doesn’t matter too much about what they actually are. When I’m in that mode then I just go with the words that come and I don’t worry what purpose they will serve.*

That being said, it is a lot easier for me to write (and write fast) when I have an outline written. I am still working on becoming a regular outliner.

When you get to the actual writing you have to remember to separate your writer self from the editor self. Your writer self needs all the freedom you can muster so you need to learn to shut down the editing voice while you start to write.

The ideas need room to spill out and room to grow, locking them into being perfect at the beginning is a good way to stop them from flowing at all.

If you were learning a new dance, you wouldn’t expect yourself to master it right away, you wouldn’t be hard on yourself for not getting it right the first time and you definitely wouldn’t tell yourself that you shouldn’t bother at all, would you? I didn’t think so.

When you tell yourself harsh things about a first draft of a new project you are essentially doing just that. You are saying that your very first try is not good enough. Maybe you talk to yourself like that but I try as hard as hell not to talk to myself that way. I want to still like me (and I am mostly successful).

So you need to remember that even though you have done other dances, and learned other steps, this is your first time with this particular choreography. So you need to have some patience and you need to get the mean old dance teacher to let you off the hook so you can do the steps in the way you need to without worrying about critique.

So turn off that editor, tell her that you value her opinion** but that it needs to come at the right time so you can make the best use of it and then park her ideas until you get to the seoncd draft. There is no point in being a jerk to yourself as you go along and ending up not writing anything at all because you couldn’t make it perfect.

The world would rather have your imperfect work than not have it at all. At least I would, and I am part of the world. I know you are probably discounting that statement right now but bear with me.

If I were telling you that your writing was terrible and that you should stop writing (which I definitely am NOT), you would more than likely believe it. Why would that be easier to accept than the idea that your work has value? Why not believe that you have something important to contribute? [SPOILER: You do.]

It’s silly how we do that though, isn’t it? We’ll believe the one negative voice. I think we need to consciously choose the positive and see where that takes us. And I am definitely a positive voice for you. I want you to try, I want you to get the most out of your writing as you can, I want you to be able to share your work with the world. There is someone out there that needs your words. I can’t promise you that writing and sharing it will happen without fear, but I can promise you that it will give you a lot of satisfaction.

So, please, choose the tools that you like and the words that you like and write the ideas that you like and share them in a way that makes you happy. Someone else may need the exact thing you are saying.
*When I am coaching, I take much more of a ‘feel okay with writing/get some ideas out there’ kind of approach rather than a ‘let’s get this project finished’ kind of approach. I worry a lot about people who feel too intimidated to write at all. I hate to think of people out there who won’t even get started because they are too scared or they think they can’t write or they don’t want to be criticized for their writing. That’s a major part of the audience that I try to reach with my coaching and my classes.
**Sometimes I keep a piece of paper near my computer and when an editorial comment pops into my brain I write it down and say ‘Thanks! Noted!’ so my inner editor feels appreciated. Yes, I am odd. 🙂

(This is long, you may want to grab a cup of tea or a beer first. Maybe a snack too.)

I hardly know where to start to talk about Taekwon-Do. Yesterday, I wrote about how illuminating it was to discover that stories were the common thread in my entire career, today I’m thinking about how learning Taekwon-Do has been instrumental in understanding so much about how I learn, about how I think and in figuring out how the stories I (used to) tell myself limited the things I thought I was capable of doing.

One of the many, many photos we took the night I received my black belt. Yes, I do have just my thumbnail painted black – it was a focus reminder for when I was doing my test. 🙂

I have wanted to know a martial art for as long as I can remember.* Every time I saw someone in a movie execute a perfect kick or punch, I wanted to be able to do the same. I didn’t even try though, I never researched it, never took a class, nothing of the sort. I was afraid I would try and fail and then never be able to learn it. This is of course, hindsight, if you had asked me years ago, I would have told you that I just hadn’t done it YET, I wouldn’t have realized what was holding me back.

I’m actually lucky that I didn’t get to it earlier. Unlike some of the other adults in my class who wish they had started earlier, I think I started at exactly the right time. If I had started even 3 years earlier, I would have quit in frustration because I was so uncoordinated, so thick when it came to my patterns. I would have crumbled under the pressure of learning so many new things.

I started TKD with my oldest son**and I was so concerned about setting a good example for him that I was able to persevere. And by then, I had read Carol Dweck’s book Mindset and learned how much my fixed mindset was limiting me – making me think that what I could do at that point was the sum total of what I would ever be able to do. So, TKD came along at the perfect time for me – not only did I have a new way of thinking about how I learn, but I had an excellent excuse for pretending to be patient with myself (I had to be that good example).

I’m not pretending it was easy. If, like me, you are a global learner (things come to me more in a flash than step by step) and if you haven’t got a strong body-spatial sense (telling me to put my feet a shoulder-width apart means virtually nothing to me)and if you struggle with perfectionism and over-thinking, then no physical skill is going to come easily to you.

It was important to me though, I wanted this badly. And, for the first time in my life, I swore that I was going to trust in the process and take things step by step. I decided that I was going to try to say thank-you when I was critiqued***, and that I wasn’t going to worry about what the black belts could do, I was only going to focus on the next step in the process, the next belt level.

I wanted the black belt though, even though I wasn’t sure I would be able to get there, I wanted it so very badly. I wanted to have that knowledge and that skill. I wanted to make my instructors proud and I wanted to make myself proud. I wanted to work hard and know that my belt was well-earned.

I was surprised to learn, though, as I got closer to the black belt level, that the black belts still had so much to learn. When you start in TKD, it seems like the black belts have everything under control, they know everything there is to know. In reality, though, getting your black belt is when things really start happening for you.

I passed my black belt test in on March 16, 2014 after a lot of hard work, and by then I had learned that my real work in TKD was just starting. As I said in blog post last year, it’s like I spent 5 years learning the alphabet and now I am finally starting to write words and sentences. I don’t always get those words and sentences right, but I am on my way.

Learning TKD has given me more physical power than I have ever had in my life, but the mental power it has given me goes far beyond anything that I have every experienced. They say when you start a new goal, you should review the things you have done successfully in the past and use those experiences to shape your plan for the new goal. I always use TKD as a structure now, encouraging myself with my past success: ‘Christine, remember when you had so much trouble doing the other half of Chon-ji? You worked through it slowly and you gradually learned it. You can do the same thing here.’

My successes with Taekwon-Do have spread through every other aspect of my life. I can apply the lessons from TKD to my writing, to my life-coaching, to the teaching that I do. I feel like it has changed something fundamental about who I am and how I approach my life and I feel incredibly grateful for that.

I truly love learning Taekwon-Do and I picked exactly the right school and the right instructors for me. Master Downey and Mrs. Downey are endlessly patient with me and they inspire me to work hard and learn more and keep on track. I like how they have complementary teaching styles and they both focus on different things while building on the same basic skills.

They are both terrific, but I am especially grateful to Mrs. Downey because while martial arts are often seen as a male domain, she is having NONE of that nonsense. Having a powerful woman as an example is incredibly inspiring and keeps me working harder to hone my skills. Seeing what she has done (and can do) makes it seem possible for me.****

Finally, the fact that both of my sons and my husband also do TKD with me makes it even more enjoyable. By the middle of 2016, we’ll have four black belts living in our house. Isn’t that cool?

Apparently, once I get started talking about my love for Taekwon-Do, it’s hard for me to stop. 🙂 Taekwon-Do has pushed me mentally and physically to become a better person, both in how I approach my own life and in how I interact with the world, and I can’t imagine where I would be without it.

Thank you for reading and congratulations if you’ve made it this far in my post. 😉

*bows*

PS – I want to take an extra second and give a shout-out to my friend Kevin here. Even though my learning process makes NO sense to him and he ‘gets’ TKD on a different level than I do, he has a remarkable store of patience for me and helps me figure things out, encouraging me as I go. Thanks, Kev. You rock!

PPS – Bonus shout-outs to Mr. Williams, Mr. Power, Mr. Burke, Mr. Snow, Ms. Collins and Ms. Vere-Holloway, all of whom have helped me figure things out as I went along. Outlining their specific help would make this post even longer, so I’ll leave it at that.

*Note, I didn’t say that I wanted to LEARN one. I wanted to already know it. I was massively jealous when Neo downloaded all those martial arts skills in the Matrix.

**He had done a kids’ TKD program. Our plan was that either my husband or myself would start with one kid and the other would start with our youngest. I was apprehensive and tried to convince my husband to start first but when he couldn’t do it, I stepped up. I’m glad it worked out that way, because he has a natural talent for it and I think it would have been an hard act to follow.

*** My success with this is varied, but I do put the effort in!

****This is a great example of why we need representation of all genders and races and abilities in all kinds of activities. The female black belts in my class are clear examples that things like this can be done by someone like me. Sure, they are way ahead but that’s inspiring, not discouraging.

(Warning: run-on sentence ahead)I have been writing in bits and pieces for most of my life (for a long time it was only when I had an outside reason to write – a deadline or an event), and I have been the person who remembered the details of life, the universe and everything for my family and friends, and I have always loved a good analogy (especially in the sense of connecting things that aren’t obviously connected*, and I have always loved books but I have only been doing literal storytelling for about 7 years.

I got started because a friend of mine asked me to host a storytelling circle when he couldn’t make it and I so thoroughly enjoyed the experience that I went back for more. Now, I see stories and storytelling is the common thread that runs through all of my career interests.

• When I did archaeology, I wasn’t so much interested in the details of the artifacts as in the meaning that they had – I wanted to know the story of the people who used them. I especially wanted to know the story of the women of the past but that was a whole other challenge to face.
• My writing has never been particularly technical, instead I have always been able to find the human part of it, the part that connects and brings you closer to the person I’m talking about. And I can write a story about just about anything, bringing ideas from a variety of situations into a common narrative.
• I’ve been doing monologues for years, telling people about a situation from one person’s (very skewed) perspective.
• My coaching has always been about helping people recognize how the things (’the story’) that they are telling themselves about situations may not be accurate and maybe it’s time to ease up on themselves a little. And I often call on stories from mythology or everyday fiction to make my point or to give people an image to work with.

  The funny thing is that, for years, I saw all of my work as separate pieces. I coached, I wrote, I acted, and so on, but they were all separate things. It was only when I changed my focus, scoped back a bit, and looked for the connections, that I realized that it was story that connected everything.

  It’s painfully obvious really, and story is the thread that connects a lot of things – we are all trying to create meaning, figure out context and see what the hell is going on – but it was a great relief to say it aloud to myself about my career.

Of course, saying that I’m a storyteller doesn’t even begin to explain all of the stuff I do with stories, but it gives me a place to start.
What kinds of ideas connect the pieces of your career? Are you all about stories, too?

*Seriously, give me any two things and I will find a way that they have a connection or that they can be compared. It’s a very strange skill set of mine.