"Rewrite it"
Last month, I had written the newsletter, selected the photo and added the gratitude piece. I’d laid it all out in the system and had scheduled it for Tuesday morning – it was done and ready to go. I had even crossed it out on my to-do list.
And Monday evening, I felt the nudge: “Rewrite it.” It wasn’t about changing the topic or that anything was wrong with it. Simply, “rewrite it.”
Argh! Why would I start over something that was done and good as it was? It felt like a waste of time. I wanted to keep it where it was, behind me. I was supposed to be preparing dinner. I’d already put a lot of time in the newsletter. And my heart had poured into it.
And yet… “rewrite it.”
Knowing that this little voice deep inside was speaking my greater truth, I took a deep breath, pressed “mute” on all the parts of me wanting to move on, opened a blank Word document and started writing…again.
Yes, listening to and acting upon that little voice deep inside is simpler to write than to do. It takes courage. To start over something that is done, to go left when we believe we’re heading right. It takes trust that it’s always guiding us towards our brighter light. Even before these, it takes discernment to hear that little nudge amidst the commotion of our daily lives.
In the whole scheme of things, rewriting a newsletter doesn’t feel like a big deal. But how about when that little voice is throwing a wild curve ball to your life? Like – and all of these are real people’s journeys – quit your 20+-year-long job out of the blue with nothing lined up. Like, take the job at the antithesis of the criteria defined with your spouse. Like, leave your spouse of three decades and the mother of your three kids. Like, go to prison when you’re in a comfortable corporate job (yup, this one is mine). Like, stay with someone who many people see as incompatible.
Are you willing to listen and take action then? When everything in you is screaming to go the other way?
If you are – and you choose to walk through the door of the unknown – you will discover a version of yourself brighter than you ever knew possible.
In the space created by the job-quitter, she developed new relationships with her kids. The journey of the antithesis job-taker led to the gifts he had hoped to enable for his wife, in the most unexpected way. The divorcee uncovered a new drive and reconfigured his work, leading to a multiplication of revenue. The “go-to-prison”-er created TEDx events that led to such transformational change on the yard that several new doors have opened to bring this work to new environments. The incompatible couple found where they stand together and is wildly content and thriving.
You have a choice: Listen to those nudges. Act upon them. Especially when they terrify you. You’ll be mesmerized by what gets created in your life. Even when it’s “only” deeply moving responses to a newly rewritten monthly newsletter.
PLUS: An update on Mitch
Last month, I wrote about Mitch freezing after saying only his name in communication class and the subsequent celebration of him having "reached a newfound public speaking ability."
As our team trickled in the following Tuesday (the one on which you received the newsletter), Jordi came into our room wildly excited. “Mitch absolutely killed it yesterday in communication class. He won the debate! He worked hard on structuring his argument, looked confident and prepared, was able to anticipate a rebuttal and extinguished it before it happened, and blasted right through a conflict and tough spot.” (I took notes to get this as verbatim as possible for you.)
Mitch had tapped into that “inner resourcefulness” part of him. He said “I felt confident. It felt good to accomplish this. I enjoy growing in this positive way.” I thought he had been beaming the previous week. That second week, he achieved yet another level of beaming-ness.