Header

Helping soulful creatives live and work as their best, brightest selves.

READ

Blog
Newsletter
About

SHOP

Color Your Soul
Abstract Affirmations

MORE

Contact
About
Insta Challenge
Free Resources
Home

Join The Instagram Party - I'm @ckelso!

Finished this happy lil guy on the plane yesterday. Jason and I are spending the week with family on a lake in South Carolina. I’ll be pressing pause on #100daysoftinytruths and we’ll still be posting daily on the @wanderingaimfully blog but not over on Instagram.
.
It’s been a month of intense creativity and excitement, but breaks are essential to preventing burnout! 👍 Hope everyone has a beautiful, truth-filled week!

15/100 | You might enjoy it more if you didn't try to control it. ⠀
. ⠀
When I'm scared or overwhelmed or anxious due to uncertainty, my go-to move is to try to control things. To plan or mentally prepare for every scenario. To try and hold everything together so tightly that I won't have to feel vulnerable to disappointment or discomfort or pain. ⠀
. ⠀
Sometimes this approach works for me. It feels good to have control. To be in the driver's seat. But, I'm getting the sense lately that in trying to hold everything together and protect from uncertainty, we can actually miss out on a lot of joy. When we wrap our grip around reality in an effort to control it, we run the risk of choking out beautiful things like flow and serendipity and delight and surprise. We can miss out on being present in the moment because we're too focused on trying to control the moment.⠀
.⠀
So, my new goal for myself is to practice more surrender. To loosen my grip just a bit. To react to what is in front of me and not the scenarios I ran through in my head. And we'll see what unfolds from there. ⠀
. ⠀
#100daysoftinytruths #the100dayproject

14/100 | Remind yourself you're MORE than your (perceived) flaws.⠀
. ⠀
I never fully resonated with the phrase "I'm not enough." It's not necessarily that I thought it didn't apply to me, it's just that I never spoke to myself using those exact words so I thought it wasn't something I struggled with. ⠀
. ⠀
That's before I learned that "I'm not enough" is a SNEAKY little critter. It doesn't always show up in us berating ourselves for not being enough or in not feeling like we have worth. Instead, it can show up in all sorts of insidious ways that are harder to detect: perfectionism, the endless pursuit of an insatiable goal, people-pleasing to a fault, anxiety, and so on and so on.⠀
. ⠀
Once this became illuminated for me, I could see all the ways that this story has taken hold in my psyche, masquerading as a benign desire to "improve myself" rather than a problematic belief that comes from a deeper wound. ⠀
. ⠀
There are plenty of qualities within myself that I see as positive and that I acknowledge regularly BUT if I'm honest, they get so much less airtime in my head than my perceived flaws. (I say perceived because I know what we think of as flaws can often be strengths if seen from a different perspective.) ⠀
.⠀
I'll fixate on how I'm not being the best friend, or daughter, or partner that I know I could be. All the ways I'm falling short of my own standards. But part of the way I'm healing this is to widen my lens a bit and remind myself to shift focus to the WHOLENESS of myself. To not allow myself to define my being based on ways that I feel I'm not enough. ⠀
. ⠀
This is a TOUGH story to re-write, and there are so many aspects to how I'm trying to tackle it, but this is one way that I wanted to share. ⠀
. ⠀
#100daysoftinytruths #the100dayproject

13/100 | What a relief to not have to be perfect. ⠀
. ⠀
So... yesterday I forgot to paint one of my 100 days pieces. Like, remembered for a second, and then promptly forgot. And... I was really bummed for a second. "I ruined my perfect record"

12/100 | So many people are doing SO many cool things. Let it be a miracle, not a competition. ⠀
. ⠀
The dreaded comparison trap is something that all creatives deal with at one point or another. That feeling of looking at someone else's awesome work and instead of appreciating it for how wonderful it is, deciding that its awesomeness must say something about our decidedly UN-awesomeness.⠀
. ⠀
Well, lately I've just been looking around at so many amazing creators that are putting their stories, their ideas, their passions out into the world. They're starting businesses, they're making music, they're writing books and igniting movements. And for some reason, rather than my past years of comparison or envy, all I can feel from all that beauty and creativity is just gratitude. Gratitude at the miracle of humanity. That we get to be a species of consciousness and ingenuity and art. That we have things we want to say to each other, gifts we want to offer up that might allow us all to grow a little or feel a little or laugh a little. ⠀
. ⠀
It's not a competition. When one of us gets to live vibrantly, I truly believe we as a whole get a little bit brighter too. And in that way, we all win. ⠀
.⠀
#100daysoftinytruths #the100dayproject

11/100 | For the most part, it really is all good.⠀
.⠀
Having one of those good days, the ones where you can take a step back, BREATHE and be reminded just how many tiny things there are to be grateful for that are going right. We get stuck on the negative sometimes because the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but for the *most* part, *most* of the time, things are pretty darn great. 👍👌😊⠀
.⠀
#100daysoftinytruths #the100dayproject

10/100 | Stay open to the experience. ⠀
. ⠀
If I DECIDE that an experience is going to be hard or annoying or exhausting or scary before I ever get there, chances are it's going to end up being exactly that. I am my own self-fulfilling prophecy. ⠀
.⠀
But if I stay open, if I let the experience unfold rather than trying to control it before it begins, more times than not it ends up surprising me. ⠀
. ⠀
Today Jason and I were lucky enough to have our SUPER talented friend @jenwojcik photograph us for the new @wanderingaimfully website, and I'll be honest... I wasn't looking forward to basically a whole day of getting my photo taken. I just get super self-conscious and don't love being on camera. But I told myself to stay open to the experience and just have fun with it. ⠀
. ⠀
Turns out it was SO fun. (Exhausting, but fun.) Jen made it super comfortable, Jason obviously was cracking jokes the whole time, and it was fun to play dress up and basically laugh around town at some of our favorite spots. ⠀
. ⠀
The truth is that I try to dress-rehearse experiences and decide how they’re going to make me feel because I think it's helpful to brace for emotional impact. But if I can learn to loosen the reins just a bit and give up that control, things I didn't expect can actually turn out to be pretty kickass. And now... SLEEP. Being a MAWDEL all day is pretty hard work. 😆😉😴⠀
.⠀
#100daysoftinytruths #the100dayproject

9/100 | You can try again tomorrow.
.
Today was just one of those days where everything got away from me. The time (hence the late post), my patience with myself, every mindfulness practice I’ve learned...out the window they went.
.
I could beat myself up for that OR I could just say, hey, not my best work, let’s give it another go tomorrow. I think I’ll choose the latter.
.
#100daysoftinytruths #the100dayproject

Copyright Made Vibrant LLC / Terms & Conditions

Cart (0)