Things in Erin’s Head
GOOD MORNING Faithful Readers!
Have y’all seen this message floating around on the webs?? “F*ck around and find out?”
The concept came up in a mastermind meeting I was in last week. I was oddly unfamiliar with the viral saying, and the underlying tone is intended to be along the lines of, “Oh yeah? Try me,” and it’s usually accompanied by a line graph that shows the linear increase between messing around and what you’ll find out. More messing = more finding.
As we like to do in the mastermind, we gave it a little shakey-shake and a little twisty-twist. It was presented to the group as “What if we stopped being so darn serious, started messing around, and see what we learn?”
In all honesty, I had been feeling a little blah during that meeting (okay I was 100% Chicken Little, “The Sky Is Falling” for the entire week). I was feeling a little overwhelmed, and very nervous that I couldn’t see my path clearly. I have IDEAS… I have VISIONS… but the details are just not falling into place the way I would like them to.
I’ve been working on my signature talk. It’s morphed over time as one would imagine a talk does, in a very organic way. It originated as a talk about redefining self care. I did a successful spin off for an author group – self care for writers. This next iteration feels kind of like a Gremlin that I keep adding water to and feeding after midnight, and it’s popping out new heads right and left.
- Lessons of Faith
- Lessons in Taking the Pause
- Lessons in Acknowledging where YOU are right NOW (not where you wish you were or where you want to be…)
- Surviving the trauma of caregiving… many of us don’t realize we’re actively living through a trauma as we take on all the Other Duties As Assigned (FYI – that would have been ME).
I feel like they are all important messages – and I can speak to each of them with ease because I’ve lived it. However, they don’t necessarily feel all warm and fuzzy smashed together. They feel like what my grandmother used to call “Slops” – she would take all the leftovers from the refrigerator and slop them together into a whole new meal. Sometimes it tasted like a miracle. Other times… you wish you had eaten all of the spaghetti on Monday because it did not go with Thursday’s Chinese…
In the last 30 minutes of our mastermind meeting, our organizer presented the concept of “F*ck Around and Find Out” and we had three minutes to write down different ways we could just mess around. No strings attached. Childlike. With fun. With no wish for a specific outcome, but instead with curiosity and joy.
My Chicken Little mind lit up.
The third thing I wrote down was “ask people who read my book what their favorite stories and lessons were.”
<< mind blown >>
So that’s what we’re doing here today. I’m unbearably curious to find out what YOU got out of my book <<First Name>>.
Was it a funny story that resonated with you?
Was it one that made you cry?
Which story made you say, “OMG YES, how did she know I was feeling that way too?”
Please tell me. ‘Cause I really need to know (HINT: it can be more than one…). I’m really excited to see if the same story pops up multiple times, or if I get 100 different responses.
Because your input is going to help me craft this next talk, which I’m planning for a big stage… (details to come… soon…).
And I want to hit all the right points so this audience can begin to understand what it’s like to be a Caregiver, the feelings (fear, guilt, overwhelm, the disconnection), the commitment (HELLO “other duties as assigned”), and of course, the love…
Because it’s all about love
