For years I only wore three colors to work: black, navy and a special brown that was actually more beige than anything but I loved it so much I allowed it to exist in my wardrobe. And yes, I am one of those people who believed that as long as I was showing up to work every day in solid, dark colors, no one would be able to tell that I was a slightly awkward, slightly overweight, slightly out-of-place woman in her mid thirties who got nervous speaking in public and often felt like she was pretending to be someone she was not. I believed that as long as I was dressing well and showing up on time, no one would be able to tell that I was actually a hot, nervous, slightly-impostor-y mess on the inside. That was the story I told myself for years, anyway. The truth was more boring: I was afraid of being visible.

Buy hot pink cashmere

I want to say that I scoffed at the idea. But I was unsettled by it. For years, I had worked to cultivate a public image, one that served as a strategic mask. In order to command respect, I worked diligently to present a persona that exuded gravitas.

The morning I put it on

This little sweater cost a pretty penny, cashmere is never cheap. The morning of the meeting I slid it over my head and my skin instantly began to prickle and break out in a cold sweat. The sweater felt so wrong that I was mortified before I even walked into the meeting.

As I walked into the room, some of the people looked at me in surprise and then in amazement, some of them in shock. They were doing the math of a very serious navy blue business suit with a hot pink sweater. A few of them looked puzzled, but others looked at me with a hint of admiration. But what really surprised me was that not one person’s eyes scanned me out of recognition and then slid right on by me as they usually did.

Looking at me with that sweater on was a different story. I was more myself in it than I ever was in my usual neutral tones. Some people had obvious reactions. A few snickered or did a double take. Others just looked confused, as if they couldn’t work out why I would wear something that loud to a meeting where I was asking for money. I was fine with all of it. I was bolder than I had ever been, and more direct. The jokes that came afterward, once people had finished complimenting me on my ‘audacity’ and my ‘guts,’ made me slightly uncomfortable. But the attention itself, the being looked at with interest, I was fine with. It was the first time in a very long time that I had felt truly visible.

Now I teach it in reverse

I did it all wrong and that’s why this works. First I got the object and then I wrote the woman who could wear it. I brought my nervous system into the most exposing scenario first and let it figure things out as it went. I got to be terrified in front of a room of people while negotiating for funding, and that was enough to give me a stomachache and a pretty sharp understanding of just how frightening it is to find out who you are while everyone watches.

Before the sweater, there is a page

You don’t have to do it in that order. This is the main thing I want you to take from this letter. Before the sweater, before the room, before the big meeting where you will finally say your thing, there is a page. On that page you see her first, the bolder version of yourself, walking into a room, un-ignorable, saying the thing plainly. You feel the prickle and the lift of your skin as you read about her, so by the time you get to the morning of the meeting, the sweater, the raised hand, the wild idea said out loud can be your last rehearsal instead of your first.

Your nervous system is tricked by your writing into believing whatever you’ve written in detail. So write down the bolder version of yourself again and again, until she stops being a costume you put on to go to work and becomes the person you already are.

So, what is your thing? That is what I am asking, really. It doesn’t have to be a sweater. It can be a lot simpler. It can be you speaking up in a meeting before you are sure you have the right words. It can be an idea you have been carrying around for years that has been wearing a groove in your head. It can be an article of clothing. Whatever it is, it is likely to be much simpler than you imagine and yet somehow more than you are willing to acknowledge. That is how you know it is right for you.

Whatever your idea is, write it out first, get to know the person who can execute it, and then go out and do it. That uncomfortable feeling is the measure of how much room you just made for yourself.

Write it first. Live it second.

Yours, from the in-between, Magdalena

PS: Tell me in the comments: what is your hot pink sweater, the thing you already know you're afraid to put on?

Subscribe now

👉 If you enjoy reading this post, feel free to share it with friends! Or feel free to click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.

Share Courage to Create

To the one who has known for a while.

I have written about writing the future into existence. I have spoken and led workshops about the power of your imagination, how your pen is your permission slip. But I have been leaving out a big piece of this — the part between the script and the life. The stretch of time between one workshop and the next, between deciding to write a book and actually writing the book. This is where I spend most of my time. And starting today I will be writing from here, from the space between the promise and the becoming.

The plan is to write these letters every Saturday morning. The letters will give insight into life behind Courage to Create and the journey that the author is on, holding down a full-time job and, on top of that, running various workshops and developing herself as much as possible. The author does this all as she continues to become the person she has not yet become. This will be an experiment of a 3 month period (Q2). In the end of Q2 it will be decided if this form of expression will continue or if it will be a season that was a season in life for the author.

That is to say, I will promise you the real version of how this is working out for me, regardless of whether it turns out to be a great version or not.

This is a letter for you if you know something in your life needs to change and you already know what that is. Year after year, you wake up knowing. For four seconds, you might even pause to write an email about it. No? I used to think I was being so responsible writing those emails and I was just avoiding. I read lots of stuff about burnout (Brené Brown, etc). And then I read a lot of stuff about boundaries (that one book everybody talks about). I got so much better at knowing about my own burnout. But nothing changed for me.

After I finally acknowledged that I was burned out, I read a lot of books about the subject, including Brown’s work on vulnerability as well as a great book on boundaries that seemed to be recommended to every exhausted creativer I know. But reading about it didn’t change anything for me.

The one sentence is what moves us. One line of truth. If we were to write down what we really want for ourselves (before we hit delete because it feels so uncomfortable) – that one line would become our blueprint for living into our dream already. It would be our rehearsal for the life we have yet to lead. It would be our mental, emotional and physical rehearsal all condensed into one sentence of truth.

Here is this week’s letter, while the ink is still wet.

Friday I led a session of Courage to Create where we mapped out the strengths of every single person in the room on a screen. Not one of them looked surprised. They already knew. What they were struggling with was stopping to acknowledge and celebrate those strengths instead of pretending they didn’t exist.

That same afternoon someone I valued walked out of our group, right before Easter, with no warning and no conversation.

After the group session I went to my car in the parking lot and sat there for a while. What I couldn’t get around was that life was moving. And even though I was a part of facilitating this space to recognize people’s strengths it didn’t mean that real life would pause for me to prepare for it. And it hasn’t. The question now is, will I continue to circle around looking for ‘right’ conditions, or write the next line of my life? I have circled. I know what it costs that, and what it feels like to stop.

So the letters I will be writing are real-time accounts of my journey. I will write about my workshops, about my parking lot encounters after hard days, about the single sentence that I wrote at 5:47 am that suddenly moved me to action in ways that I had not anticipated. Sometimes I will share the stories of other people who are in their own in-between space. We are all in different spaces similar to one another, but we each have our own stories to tell. I will write about these things as they happen, without waiting to see how they ultimately turn out.

If you are already a member, these letters will arrive at your mailbox every Saturday. If you are not a member yet, you can join here and the next letter arrives at your mailbox next week.

Same stolen hour next Saturday.

Magdalena

P.S. I almost did not send this letter out. It is way easier for me to write to you about the magic of writing the future into existence with a pen and paper then it is for me to actually pick up my pen and start writing when I know someone can watch me!

Subscribe now

👉 If you enjoy reading this post, feel free to share it with friends! Or feel free to click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.

Share Courage to Create

Letter 03

60.7KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Loved this? Forward it to someone who wants a diffrent type of courage and has at least three empty notebooks and wants to start scripting who she is becoming

Subscribe now

👉 If you enjoy reading this post, feel free to share it with friends! Or feel free to click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.

Share Courage to Create

Letter 04

79.6KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Loved this? Forward it to someone who loves sticky notes, wants a diffrent type of courage and has at least three empty notebooks while still becoming….

With love, Magdalena

Subscribe now

👉 If you enjoy reading this post, feel free to share it with friends! Or feel free to click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.

Share Courage to Create

With love, Magdalena

Subscribe now

👉 If you enjoy reading this post, feel free to share it with friends! Or feel free to click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.

Share Courage to Create