I want you to do a little spying.  Just start eavesdropping on your own mind.  Susan Hyatt calls this being a scientist of your own life; Martha Beck calls it being ‘the watcher.’  Imagine that you can see all your thinky verbal thoughts running across your brain like the ticker tape at the bottom of a news program.  Do you hear calm, considered, optimistic strategy?  Probably not.  It probably goes more like, “Ack! Crap. Oh no oh no….”  Many of us find that fear has hijacked all our major media channels and is broadcasting terror all day long.  That’s because our minds don’t like change, so when they find a rut that feels safe, they stick to it.  Only problem: worry won’t keep you safe.  Just anxious.  Your best weapon here is humor.  Start asking yourself this simple question: Is that even true?  Then, prepare for a benevolent overthrow. 


This was first published in Being A Broad magazine, where I write a monthly column called Advice For Renegades.  Reproduced with permission. 

I have a lot of ideas.  My brain is jumping with them, and they’re all so delicious and exciting.  They come to me effortlessly.  I can even do pretty well at sketching out a big-picture strategy.  It’s the details of actually making them happen (what Martha Beck calls Square Three) where I have trouble.  In addition to all these (oh my god, seriously, they are so good they will make you drool) new schemes, I have a business to run, clients to coach, a family that requires regular watering and care, and a household to keep ticking.  And, oh yeah, there’s that book I’m writing.

I was getting coached by this amazing woman.  I was telling her about how much I long to be writing, but there’s just too much to do, and so I’m only getting in little dibs and dabs.  And then I started listing off all the new projects I want to put in motion, and she stopped me. 

She said, speaking quite slowly and gently, “Anna, you are like a woman in labor.  You are full term with this baby, and instead of giving in to the birth, you’re running around still trying to pretend that life is going along at its normal pace.”  She stopped me right in my tracks.  She was telling me a truth so potent, so undeniable, that it resonated to my very core.  Then I may have wept a little.  (Okay, a lot.) 

I have been wanting to write this book for years.  It has felt at times like a weight, a noose, an irritation.  But it’s always there, nudging me to write it.  And now is the time.  So I’m going to head off to the birthing pool now, to give myself over to contractions and intensity and probably even pain. 

Which is why I don’t have a zippy, useful essay this month.  Instead, I’m going to ask you a question.  What is ready to be born in you? 

Okay, I’m off to labor now.