Tag: writing

Why Is It So Difficult to Share My Thoughts?

I woke up this morning thinking about all the ideas I want to share. And then I came to this page, ready to go and… NOTHING. I suddenly found myself tongue-tied, or maybe it is writer’s block, but either way, I found myself staring at a blank screen. Eventually, I decided to just start writing to see what would happen, so this is my journey at the moment.

Yesterday, I came across a quote,

“Life Gets Better When You Decide You Can Reinvent Yourself as Often as You Need.”

LinkedIn

Life is funny. One moment we think we have it all figured out. We know what we want to say or do, and the next, when we try to actualize what it is we have figured out, we hit a wall. And the wall is the block we have for treating Today as a new opportunity. We know we want to. We know we perhaps even need a refresh. And yet, when we try to hit the refresh button, we just can’t seem to do it.

When we are working towards today being a New Beginning, we are in essence trying to enter the road of life from a new entrance. We have the opportunity to do so. From the moment we wake up, we have choices to make. These choices are not easy.

  1. Should I stay in bed for five more minutes or get up?
  2. Should I start my day doomscrolling or wait to look at my phone?
  3. Learn or write?
  4. Exercise or not?
  5. Etc – choose your own morning struggles

We all know what we wish the answers to these kinds of questions are. And yet, we find ourselves tired, worn down, beaten up, just plain exhausted. So we inevitably fall back on the habits we wish we could change because they are comfortable and easy, even though they aren’t the best choices we could be making.

And this is Why It Is So Difficult. Even now, as I am sitting and sharing, thinking about how it is a daily grind to break the habits we have when we want to improve ourselves, I find my mind drifting to all the things I need to do or should be doing instead of writing. Of course, this in itself is part of the writer’s block struggle I am having. Nevertheless, the other voice in my mind is reminding me about how this action, this choice, is important because I want it to be important.

What can we do when we feel that the daily reinvention we wish we could facilitate just doesn’t seem to be in the cards?

  1. Choose one thing to change and work on that and that alone.
  2. Start with just a small chunk of time to focus on the change. It could be as short as a minute of focused gratitude, or a minute of doing something instead of more social media scrolling.
  3. Make this small thing the habit to work on for a week (a week seems like an interval many use for small habitual changes).
  4. Build week over week. If we keep at one new thing a week to help reinvent ourselves, we will eventually see bigger growth, bigger changes.
  5. When you despair that the change is not working well, don’t fret. As I have shared many times on this site, each step forward is one to celebrate. We need to focus on the wins, not the things we inevitably will continue to struggle with.

Let me conclude. This writing exercise this morning is my attempt to show myself this process as well. I really wasn’t sure where my thoughts would take me this morning but here we are. We have journeyed together today to see how just trying to do can produce something.

May each of us in these challenging times remember that all we need to do is take that first step forward along the path we wish to forge. May today, and everyday, bring opportunity for reinvention and for renewed possibilities.

If you or someone you know is struggling, spiritually and/or emotionally, trying to find a sense of meaning in these times of struggle, know that you are not alone. Contact New Beginnings Spiritual Coaching and Consulting LLC at 732-314-6758 ext. 100 or via email at newbeginningsspiritualcoach@gmail.com

99 – imperfection and greatness

Today is my 99th post on this website. Usually, people celebrate the whole numbers, so I am one off from a celebratory moment of writing post 100. Yet, I find the number 99 to be highly significant for a story I will share a little later on. But first…

Last night, I was playing around on Twitter and came across this tweet from a friend:

Aaron Judge, probably the most recognizable #99 in today’s sports fandom, is having a season for the ages. And while I am a Mets fan, with his own #99 –

it is clear that Judge is the better #99. Granted, for me, #99 takes me back to the great one Wayne Gretzky (NHL) and to the eccentrics like Wild Thing Mitch Williams and the infamous Turk Wendell (MLB – if you know, you know), but right now, for Baseball fans, 99 is Aaron Judge, and all the others tend to be glossed over (for a full list of all those in MLB who wore 99, see here).

This got me thinking about the significance of 99, only to recall another 99, but not in terms of sports. I was reminded of a teachable moment from when I was in High School, which I go back to every so often. It was 11th grade Chumash. We had just gotten a test back from our teacher and I noticed that while I got every question correct, I only received a 99 (yes, I admit, I was one of those students, always looking for the extra point). This bothered me as clearly I had earned the 100, the arbitrary perfect score we generally place on tests. I went to the rabbi and asked him why I didn’t get 100 when I clearly got all of the questions correct. To this day, I recall his response:

“Even Moses didn’t know everything, so in my opinion it would be impossible for anyone to achieve a 100.”

I’ll admit, the answer didn’t fully satisfy me. Yet, the lessons are quite apparent and in truth ones I have come to appreciate.

  1. As I wrote about months ago, there is a notion of When 80 Percent is Perfect. We should always strive for the best we can do and recognize that the best will never be 100 percent because the 100 is a long term impossibility. There will always be something that is missed, even when it appears as if you got everything right.
  2. We need to appreciate the beauty and greatness of the 99 within the scale of 100. Truth is, we need to appreciate even more than just the number closest to 100. We need to learn to appreciate all we have gained and not focus on the missing point(s).

Which brings me back to sports. Aaron Judge is having an outstanding season, a season for the ages, since we learn that in sports we focus on the accomplishments when it comes to most statistics as opposed to the failures that are the opposite side of the coin. For example, he has been on base over 40% of the time this year, which means he not been on base a little less than 60% of the time. In other words, his great year includes more failures than successes. Yet, we see the success and ignore the failures. He is having a 99 season (which for sports video game people, is the highest rank a player can get for a season).

If you have made it this far, thank you for reading this 99th post. Writing is a series of failures, deletions and edits until something comes together that is hopefully coherent and interesting. Life is the same. We fail, change course, shift, all in the drive to forge a path for ourselves. We experience many endings and New Beginnings. May each of you find the success within the imperfection and remember the greatness that is a 99.

Reflecting on how to appreciate the steps along the way: Contact New Beginnings Spiritual Coaching and Consulting LLC at 732-314-6758 ext. 100 or via email at newbeginningsspiritualcoach@gmail.com.

How many drafts does it take

I have been finding a lot of self-reflective material when considering aspects of writing. In writing, like life, it is almost impossible to create the perfect piece in a single sitting. Just like it is important to remember that all goals are made up of a series of single steps, one foot after the other, so too writing is a process of putting one word on paper at a time, in which eventually the string of words becomes a cohesive unit. Along the way, there will be updates to the unit of writing, whether because of a misspelled word, a missing punctuation mark, or information that is lacking because we forget to convey to the reader precisely what we are thinking. Or, perhaps you think it is good, post it on a website, and then get a copy-editor’s eye to read it and circle in yellow the errors in the piece (which luckily is easily fixable in wordpress).

Serious writing is a series of rough drafts, when in a way even the final draft remains an incomplete, imperfect product. Yet, for those of us who persist in writing, the rough draft, the initial go, is often as valuable if not more valuable than the “final product.” The rough draft is the opportunity to try and fail in the craft of formulating an idea. The rough draft is the proof you need to know you have taken the hard first step of engaging in the writing process.

The rough draft is a great metaphor when we consider self-introspection and change. Most of us are searching for do-overs, the opportunity to change what was, whether by scrapping something and moving away from the past or from veering slightly to the right of left to a different turn that we believe will lead us in the direction we really want to go. Like with writing, when we cross out and change words, life gives us countless opportunities to adjust to the moment, to the times by changing, rearranging or erasing elements of our before so as to make the step forward towards a new start.

I came to this thought this afternoon as I was scrolling through a list of some of the blog posts which I have either not completed or have pretty much decided to leave in the draft folder because they don’t resonate for me at this point. Many of the drafts were like the dipping of a toe into a topic and realizing the water was not ready yet or perhaps might never be. The draft folder contains the tried and failed so as to then try again and succeed with any number of other posts.

Every Elul as well as every other demarcation point in one’s year, when we reflect and desire to explore unknown elements of the path going forward, we are reminding ourselves that we remain a “rough” draft in need to further polishing. The polishing can take multiple reads, multiples steps and missteps along the way. We can and do go through many drafts of our lives. The goal is fostering and maintaining the hope that each time we reread and edit, we are succeeding by seeing the incremental and/or monumental improvement over the previous version.

May this be a time of year when we can all look inside and make the necessary edits to improve on the rough drafts we have crafted up until now.

Need help scouring and editing the Rough Drafts of your life: Contact New Beginnings Spiritual Coaching and Consulting LLC at 732-314-6758 ext. 100 or via email at newbeginningsspiritualcoach@gmail.com.

I am a writer

As I work with others to help support them as they explore the road ahead, I cannot help but work on my own growth and development. In doing this exploration and work, I continue to recognize the value and importance of embracing my hopes and dreams, claiming them even if I haven’t arrived at the ideal vision I have. Among these dreams that I have revived in myself is the internal belief that I am a writer. Perhaps this is why I have spent many years dabbling and engaging in blogging, writing and sharing different ideas in a public forum. I believe I have something to say and that I have an ability to get across clear messages on “paper.” Simply put:

I am a writer.

Now, in reality, I struggle with writing. It is not a simple task to express oneself in written form. I don’t see myself as a master wordsmith, figuring out how best to manipulate and use words in a way that makes me seem smart and sophisticated. I don’t find that I am great at embellishing and creating poetic magic. Yet, in writing I am finding ways to expand my word usage and to embrace writing for writing sake without being worried about how I measure up in relation to others. The more I practice the skill, the more the skill becomes natural and easier to foster. Writing more frequently has helped me nourish my long dormant desire to write.

I am a writer

I am a writer because I choose to claim that I am a writer. By this I mean that as a function of writing regularly, I am able to comfortably and confidently say that I am this thing. While it is true that just because a person says “I am X” is not always indicative of their reality, especially if it comes to professional credentialing, but when it comes to the creative, to the arts, we can all own our work and our desire to be defined by one type of creativity or another. Why should we sell ourselves short? Why should we hamper ourselves just because we can’t produce perfect prose or masterful poetry?

I am a writer

While I cannot say it was professional goal to write for a living, I did and still do dream of writing. If we hinder our desired dreams, if we don’t claim our aspirations, then we definitely won’t achieve. Of course, even if we do dream, we don’t always make it to the top level. But if we dream, and we work and we work some more, we will have achieved much by the working that we do along the path we have set before ourselves.

I am a writer.

I am writer because I work on writing. Over the past week, pushing myself to write more, to brainstorm and express myself on this blog, I have already found more that I want to say and more ways in which to express the thoughts and feelings I want to convey as lessons to help foster growth.

I believe that within each of us is a creative person struggling to be set free. Part of my spiritual coaching work is to help a person uncover the hopes and dreams we wish stirring in the depths of our soul to better and brighten one’s life and through that to better others lives as well. Part of the search for meaning is the search for finding out the many ways we can define who we are and who we wish to be.

May each of us continue to aspire towards fulfilling and sharing our creative sides to the world.

Looking for skills to uncover and foster your creativity: Contact New Beginnings Spiritual Coaching and Consulting LLC at 732-314-6758 ext. 100 or via email at newbeginningsspiritualcoach@gmail.com.

Trying to Write a blogpost: Reflections on blogging and imperfection

Earlier this morning, I found myself stuck. I was having trouble coming up with a message for today that would clearly articulate something on my mind about spiritual growth as it relates to daily prayer. While I still intend to post some thoughts on this in the coming days, I realize that my being stuck is itself a lesson to be shared as we journey along a path of growth and change.

Too often, we expect perfection. I know that wanting to put out the best message possible can be challenging at times. We expect to hit on the perfect words, phrases, something catchy that will resonate. We expect that this will be the post that gets more and more hits. And when it doesn’t, this leaves a sense of discouragement, which over time might build into a fear of failure, causing inaction. I know because these feelings started to arise in me today.

I have struggled over the years maintaining the momentum of blogging because of these reasons, among others. And I’ve tried to write about different topics on those blogs, from spirituality, to politics, from sports to Judaism. At times it was fun and at times it became too much for me. Eventually, I would succumb to the frustration of imperfection and just give up.

When I started this blog August of last year, I was beginning to decide on the next steps in my life, trying to figure out the next steps of my journey. I felt the need to blog again, this time not just trying to revive what was but, following much of the advice I was giving myself, starting fresh and new. I promised myself at the time I would blog as little or as often as I desired, and would write for the sake of sharing my thoughts and ideas without allowing the number of hits I could gather be the goal. One year (and a week) later, I have written 87 posts, about one post every 4-5 days and have been enjoying the writing process. I have enjoyed the attempts at getting my message out for the sake of sharing some of my work in progress thinking.

If you stayed with me so far, here is my message for today. Sometimes the best thing to do is to jump in, put forth the effort and watch the magic start to happen. Don’t be discouraged if the path is bumpy, because even a bumpy path leads to a destination.

Looking for help on your journey on the waves of life? Contact New Beginnings Spiritual Coaching and Consulting LLC at 732-314-6758 ext. 100 or via email at newbeginningsspiritualcoach@gmail.com.

Keep writing the story

“I never expected this to be the outcome.”

“Things just didn’t work out the way i imagined.”

Often we have moments in our lives when we feel that the story is “over,” feeling as though we have reached the ending of the book that is our story. In the moment of feeling stagnant, we believe that now life is destined to be a certain way because we have made our choices and are no longer in the driver’s seat of where we would like to head. In these moments of despair, when we feel that the outcome is inevitable, that we go from being in “control” to being the passive passenger along for the ride, resigning ourselves to “fate.” We feel a sense of sadness, loss, anger and frustration at our lot. Perhaps we begin to spiral into despair and depression. These feelings become further roadblocks and barriers on our life’s highway. Perhaps we feel we are on the wrong path.

How do we overcome this sensation, this feeling, this set of traps along the path?

First, I am a strong believer in the importance of naming and sitting with the emotions that rise up. One of the challenges to overcoming sadness, anger and other “negative” emotions is we try to squash them, try to avoid them or compartmentalize them. We thus end up in two fights, the fight against the emotion and the fight with ourselves to avoid feeling bad. Yes, we all want to feel good, happy and positive. Yet, many times, we don’t. It is in those moments when engaging the emotion in a constructive manner is crucial. In those moments of pain, the variety of feelings are there to help foster growth, even if it is painful.

Second, in those moments of despair and feeling like there is no further one can go, we need to reframe the narrative. As the above quote says, “Keep writing, your story is worth it.” If we think of our lives as a big canvas that is telling a story, then the end is not the end until the inevitable end of life. Yes, situations end, changes occur. One chapter ends, not the book. In those moments of feeling “this is not how I expected it to be,” we can take a different tack and sit with the sense of ending as if it is a stop along the path so as to get the next set of directions. It is hard to imagine, but in reality each day, no matter our station in life, is an opportunity to shift our journey, taking different roads along the highway of life. I recall countless interviews with centenarians who have suggested a secret to their longevity was the learning of something new everyday. Underlying that message is the drive to seize an opportunity to write our own story instead of allowing the story to write us.

Keep writing your story. The ending hasn’t been written yet.

Want help crafting the next chapters of your story! Contact New Beginnings Spiritual Coaching and Consulting LLC at 732-314-6758 ext. 100 or via email at newbeginningsspiritualcoach@gmail.com.

Chaos is the First Blueprint of Creativity

Genesis begins with God creating the world, heaven and earth, with everything being in a state of chaos.

בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃

When God began to create heaven and earth—

וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם׃

the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water—

Genesis 1:1-2

Many different ideas have been learned and extrapolated from these first two verses alone. I would like to offer another thought, one which has been sitting in my heart for some days. It was inspired by a quote fromfrom Torah Studies, an adaptation of lessons delivered by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson o.b.m. presented by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks o.b.m. (from his days before being Chief Rabbi of Great Britain). (I originally received this book as a Bar Mitzvah gift many years ago and have recently begun reading parts of it again).

The essay on Genesis reflects upon:

In the chronicling of creation, one detail strikes us with the force of mystery: Why was light created before everything else, when there was nothing to benefit from it? The Rabbinical explanation only adds to the mystery, for we are told that the light was immediately “hidden for the righteous in the world to come.” The Rebbe explains the difficulty and elucidates the implications of the creation narrative for the individual and the conduct of his life.

https://www.chabad.org/therebbe/article_cdo/aid/110297/jewish/Torah-Studies-Bereishit.htm

As part of this analysis, R. Schneerson presents a piece regarding a rabbinic idea that when Gd created the world, Gd “looked” into the Torah as if the Torah was the blueprint of the world. In R. Schneerson’s words (as presented by R. Sacks):

To resolve these difficulties we must consider a remark made by the Midrash: “Just as a king wishing to build a palace does not do so spontaneously but consults architect’s plans, so G‑d looked into the Torah and created the world.”

In other words, by examining the order in which a man sets about making something which requires planning and forethought, we can learn something of G‑d’s order in bringing the world into being.

https://www.chabad.org/therebbe/article_cdo/aid/110297/jewish/Torah-Studies-Bereishit.htm

Or, more precisely, the Midrash states:

דָּבָר אַחֵר אָמוֹן, אֻמָּן. הַתּוֹרָה אוֹמֶרֶת אֲנִי הָיִיתִי כְּלִי אֻמְנוּתוֹ שֶׁל הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא, בְּנֹהַג שֶׁבָּעוֹלָם מֶלֶךְ בָּשָׂר וָדָם בּוֹנֶה פָּלָטִין, אֵינוֹ בּוֹנֶה אוֹתָהּ מִדַּעַת עַצְמוֹ אֶלָּא מִדַּעַת אֻמָּן, וְהָאֻמָּן אֵינוֹ בּוֹנֶה אוֹתָהּ מִדַּעַת עַצְמוֹ אֶלָּא דִּפְתְּרָאוֹת וּפִנְקְסָאוֹת יֵשׁ לוֹ, לָדַעַת הֵיאךְ הוּא עוֹשֶׂה חֲדָרִים, הֵיאךְ הוּא עוֹשֶׂה פִּשְׁפְּשִׁין. כָּךְ הָיָה הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא מַבִּיט בַּתּוֹרָה וּבוֹרֵא אֶת הָעוֹלָם, וְהַתּוֹרָה אָמְרָה בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים. וְאֵין רֵאשִׁית אֶלָּא תּוֹרָה, הֵיאַךְ מָה דְּאַתְּ אָמַר (משלי ח, כב): ה’ קָנָנִי רֵאשִׁית דַּרְכּוֹ.

Alternatively, amon means “artisan.” The Torah is saying, “I was the artisan’s tool of Hashem.” In the way of the world, a king of flesh and blood who builds a castle does not do so from his own knowledge, but rather from the knowledge of an architect, and the architect does not build it from his own knowledge, but rather he has scrolls and books in order to know how to make rooms and doorways. So too Hashem gazed into the Torah and created the world. Similarly the Torah says, “Through the reishis Hashem created [the heavens and the earth],” and reishis means Torah, as in “Hashem made me [the Torah] the beginning (reishis) of His way” (Mishlei 8:22).

Genesis Rabbah 1:1

In reading this piece, I was struck with an alternative question to the one that drives the essay. I was wondering, if Gd had used the Torah as a blueprint, how does that jive with the notion of chaos, unformed and void, that we read about in the second verse of the Torah? When a person has a blueprint, while the outcomes might not be known, the picture presented should be clear enough to have some form and substance.

In reflecting on this, I realized that the answer was sitting in from of me. Any creative act we have has multiple blueprints throughout the process. As someone who enjoys writing and tries to present ideas in the word form, this resonated for me in the following manner.

The initial idea for something is a jumble of thoughts in my head with some fundamental connector between the ideas. Often this chaos is so distorted that the words don’t even begin to flow. As I continue to write and reflect, the idea becomes clearer in my conscious. It then begins to take shape into a new blueprint, but even that blueprint is not the complete product. Rather it is a more orderly picture of what message to convey and how to convey it. This continues on and on until the product is “complete.”

The story of Genesis reflects this same creative process to us. Gd has a blueprint. Gd “creates” heaven and earth. The picture becomes clearer but is still chaos. Then Gd begins to place things in a certain order, starting with “light” and concluding with rest (the Sabbath. Rest, the cessation from creation, is the real last created thing described, not the human being, a topic unto itself).

All new beginnings start from an idea, a blueprint, but often a blueprint that is chaos by its nature. In order to achieve, we have to work and work to improve and hone the blueprint to something that is orderly and clear.