If you’re reading this in your email, you may have missed the last couple of posts from me. I sorta paused the email-sending and forgot to un-pause it. Here are my words for 2010 and 2011, and also a glimpse into my secret obsession.

Day 6: Make
What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?
(Author: Gretchen Rubin)
#Reverb10 is an exercise in meditating on 2010 and voicing intentions for 2011. It’s not too late to jump in.

The last thing I made was sweet potato casserole. And I burnt it. Actually, in the process of re-creating Thanksgiving so that we could have leftovers (I was insanely envious of your turkey sandwiches), I managed to destroy every dish that had a potato in it. Lessons learned: marshmallows cannot be trusted. Potatoes just might be evil. And multi-tasking is not one of Sarah J. Bray’s superpowers.

I’m normally quite good at cooking, but baking is more my thing. No six things cooking at once. Measure, pour, measure, pour, mix, mix, pour, bake. I like how precise the measurements have to be. And in the end, you get a treat. Like these seven-layer cookies. Or this dulce de leche apple pie. (As you can see, I have been spending way too much time bookmarking baked goods.)

Usually, I cope with the multi-task aspect of cooking by doing it with someone else. John is my go-to man for this. Not only is he an intuitively exceptional cook, but he doesn’t get stressed or easily distracted.

John, next time you’re doing the potatoes.

Making things! Is fun!

Something I want to make…that’s a tough one. A contraption that would scare my dog into NOT jumping up on the couch to lick his toes…and huge sections of the couch that happens to be in the vicinity of his toes. (I don’t even want to count the times I’ve sat down in a puddle of drool.)

I’d like to write my own fantastical adventure story. With hand-drawn illustrations. And maps! When I was a girl, I used to believe that one of my grandmother’s fence posts was a secret entrance into the bees’ treasure trove of candy (I thought that honey was just a front for their more important work of candy-making.) Any time I saw a bee hovering over that fence post, I would go over there and try to utter the secret password so they would sprinkle their magical shrinking dust on me and fly me to their lair. Unfortunately, I never figured out what the secret password was. Apparently, bees are smarter than we think.

On the business side of things, there are so many things I’d like to make. And am making. I’m working with Sparky Firepants on some illustrations for a new project that will be launching before the baby comes. Julianne and I are trying to coerce John into finishing up the video series. (He’s been working so hard at his real job that my poor little series has taken a back seat. Maybe if we all clap our hands three times and say “I believe in you, John Bray!”, something magical will happen.) I’ve also been creating the hottest book club ever in existence (because I love, love, LOVE books).

Making time for the making

Making time for stuff when the idea is fresh and brilliant and exciting isn’t hard. It’s those ideas that have had cooling-off time that are difficult. Because then I’ve had time to think about them and develop often-erroneous beliefs about them.

My client-turned-friend Elissa Ashwood (who has a legacy of expertise on motivation theory – her brilliant dad passed down all of his research and knowledge to her, and she’s taken it and done amazing things in the field) tells me that when we’re not motivated to do something, we actually believe that it won’t work, that we can’t do it, or that it’s not going to help us get what we want. And our brains are too smart to motivate us to do something that we don’t believe will help us achieve our goals.

The problem is, sometimes our beliefs are wrong. Way wrong. And sometimes they’re really, really irrational. So when I’m simply not self-motivated to do something, examining what I believe about that particular thing helps me to get past it (if I need to) or let it go (if I don’t).

For example, take social media. I’m always going through these phases of being everywhere and then hiding under a rock for months. I do the same thing with friends. And with church. And…well…anything that has a social aspect. The only people who I’m consistently always there with are my immediate family members and clients.

Those hiding-under-a-rock phases are usually spurred by my belief that I’ve let someone down. Maybe I wasn’t on Twitter for two weeks because I was super-busy. Maybe I didn’t blog because I wanted it to be perfect. Or I didn’t go to church because when I’m sleeping, I’m an entirely different person (read: sleep addict). Or I didn’t call my parents because I simply forgot. So in order to avoid letting people down again, I just disappear. I feel like if I can’t be perfect, then I just won’t be.

My brain says this is rational. Somewhere inside me, I believe that being social is not getting me what I want – to feel like a normal, functional part of society. It feels like I can’t accomplish perfection in my relationships, so I shouldn’t expend the energy to try it. And if I believe that, of course I won’t be self-motivated to do it.

But the truth? The truth is, people are mostly focused on their own lives and probably don’t even notice that I’ve “let them down”. And even if they did and were waving pitchforks in my general direction, I am still valuable as a human being outside of what I do or don’t do. My self-worth is not dependent on my performance.

The truth is powerful. And once we believe the truth, we no longer have to force ourselves to do the stuff that we need to do. We just do it…naturally and joyfully.