Sunday was a tough day.
My thoughts decided to gang up on me.
I could have predicted it would be tough. I understand why. I’d plenty of ammunition in my thinking to stop it from being tough.
Nonetheless, it was tough.
I was distracted, unsettled, beset by demons.
I’m about to launch ‘Hummingbird Wisdom; ‘How to Focus: A 30-day Challenge’.
I’ve been working on it for about 18 months. It’s been through several versions, none of which felt to me like they were ready to bring to the world.
I’d make a version — full of enthusiasm and self-belief — then, somehow it wouldn’t taste quite right. I’d not press ‘launch’. I’d wait and, in time, my deeper mind would reveal to me what was bothering me or felt incomplete.
That’s how I develop anything.
With patience and self-observation.
It’s like sitting in front of a painting — neither deciding it’s finished, nor impetuously adding more and more. Sometimes I need to wait awhile — sometimes a long while — until the painting tells me what it needs.
So it is when I make a course or write a book.
It tells me when it’s ready.
Hummingbird Wisdom is ready.
But….
Sunday I drowned in self-doubt. Self-doubt, already poisonous enough, can easily ferment into self-loathing and despair.
Why?
I’ve always struggled with the act of selling. That was true as a director, performer, teacher and it’s true now I coach, mentor, train and write. It’s not because I doubt what I do. I care passionately for, and believe absolutely in what I do.
It’s myself I doubt.
I can trace self-doubt back to some origins — losing my sense of home when sent to a boarding school aged 8, bullying, a lifelong tension between love of community and profound introversion, imposter syndrome, my parent’s class origins. All these — and no doubt more — play their part in who now I am.
None are complete explanations.
Knowing the origins of our struggles helps us step back from them, but does not stop us struggling.
The past does not resolve. It sediments and merges to create the bedrock of each successive now.
The irony of yesterday isn’t lost on me. Hummingbird Wisdom is about dealing with distraction, insecurity, self-doubt and so many of the other destructive forces in this overwhelming world.
When we reclaim the power of focus, we reclaim our ability to live in the centre of our own experience. We allow the past to stay as memory, not re-emerge as a raging wild beast to tear us limb from limb.
To reclaim our focus takes discipline. It can be a gentle discipline, but it involves making a choice and doing the work.
Marketing experts tell me never to ask ‘customers’ to take responsibility. I should offer to ‘do it for you’.
I understand that. I understand the desire to have someone else do it for you. There are times I yearn for something simply to euthanise my dark thoughts — a pill, a mantra, a seven-step porgramme, a god, a strong leader, someone to blame, an ‘other’ to hate, a great big, warm bath of self-pity. Something, or someone, to take away from me the responsibility for being me.
It doesn’t work like that.
So on Sunday I watched self-doubt surging up like a furious sea and felt it drench me.
Are all these years of work on myself wasted? Does nothing change, however hard I try to better how I live in the world?
Thankfully, no.
We can learn to experience our fears, yet know not to believe them. We can be afraid and know there’s nothing to be scared of — both at the same time.
On Sunday, knowing there were wild deep-ocean currents surging, I chose to dig into Hummingbird Wisdom — not the mechanics of bringing it to the world, but the wisdom it contains. I worked through the steps and applied them to myself.
Hummingbird Wisdom is powerful. It soothed, though did not entirely eradicate my fears. Some fears come from a place deeper than evidence or rationality can reach.
I took another lesson from Hummingbird Wisdom. At its heart is the reminder that, like a hummingbird in front of a flower, we contruct our focus. Calm: it’s not an accident, it’s an action.
I stepped away from the thousand small details of bringing to life a new project, and instead painted a picture.
Was it a good picture?
I liked it while I painted it. Afterwards I was not so sure.
It doesn’t matter though. The choice to focus on a single thing, helped me relax away from the frigntened mental chatter of being a small person in a big world, I refound who I am right now. Not the boy being sent away from home. Not the object of hatred and scorn from a gang of equally lonely boys. Not the child of frightened displaced parents.
Me. Here. Now.
Focused and alive.
This is the core of Hummingbird Wisdom. Create your focus. Be who you are, right now. Focus on your purpose and, doing so, give your beauty to the world.
Things got better. The fears still hover, like waves crashing on the beach reminding me there’s been a storm, but now it’s passed.
I realise this: it’s because I know that darkness — of distraction, self-doubt, uncertainty, unconfidence — that I can bring to the world what I bring.
Though probably I would sell more products with promises of fairy-dust and quick-fixes, they’d be lies. I can only offer the thing I have.
Myself.
Stay focused.
John
PS ‘Hummingbird Wisdom’ How to Focus: 30-Day Challenge’ officially launches on Wednesday. I’ve opened the cart early to you though. The first 50 purchasers will get a 50% discount using the code FIRST50 at checkout.