Thank you hel­lolapomme via Flickr

Last night, like I try to do many nights, I got out my jour­nal and started writ­ing. The topic? Why of course it was about pro­cras­ti­na­tion and what’s stop­ping me from express­ing my whole com­plete unique cre­ative self!

Some of the quick snip­pets that hit me right away (and I’m sure most of you will or can relate):

• What if they don’t like me
• What if I do this full time and I can’t make money
• Fear of being open, hon­est and raw — peo­ple will laugh
• I’m not good enough
• I’m not that creative

and the big one that sits in the back of mind and always creeps to the front when I feel I’m on a cre­ative roll:

You’ll NEVER make money as a dancer.

So said my father when I was 18, get­ting ready to grad­u­ate from high school and try­ing to fig­ure out what I would do with my life. Now I don’t dance any­more, due to injuries, but I was good. No prima bal­le­rina, but corps good. I could have made a living.

And you know what? I didn’t remem­ber this com­ment from my Dad, until about 5 years ago when I was encour­ag­ing my hus­band to pur­sue his dreams. At the time it angered me. I wanted to go and yell at my Dad,

How could you? How could you tram­ple all over my dream like that?

But I quickly real­ized, I let him do it.

I let him affect me that way. It’s not what some­one says to you, but how you react to it. At that point in my life I didn’t have that insight and I let his com­ment affect me for 20+ years. Now you might think I’m angry at my Dad, I’m not. God Bless him, he passed away in Feb­ru­ary 2012 and I wish he was still here so I could say, it’s okay I’m okay and I’m going to be the cre­ative per­son I deserve to be!

I’m here now, being open, hon­est and raw and I’m open­ing the door step­ping over the thresh­old and becom­ing the Cre­ative per­son that’s inside.

A cou­ple of side notes:

1. Thank you Dan Good­win of A Big Cre­ative Yes! for offer­ing the Pro­cras­ti­na­tion pro­gram.  This post wouldn’t have hap­pened with out the ques­tions being asked.
2. My Grat­i­tude Habit pro­gram starts in March, it’s pay what you can and if you are look­ing to build a habit of grat­i­tude in your life you can join me on the journey.
3. While I wrote this post, I lis­tened to Aad Guray Nameh by Snatam Kaur on Last.fm.  If you can I encour­age you to lis­ten, it’s a beau­ti­ful med­i­ta­tive mantra