Close up, everything is magnificent and specific. You can see all the intense geometry of this flower, the petals inside petals inside architecture that creates what, from a distance, looks like a simple, shining daisy. But up close, the daisy is much more intricate. In the close up you see that part of why this daisy is so compelling is that it has a music and a modeling that is precise, ordered and wondrous.
If you have been looking for more confidence, for more creative prowess, for more certainty and sparkle in your life, chances are that you’ve been advised to go bolder. Bolder color. Speak with a louder voice. “Go out there and kick some ass!” or “Cause a spectacle,” are two bits of advice I have been perpetually given, neither leading to anything really good.
Here’s a idea, instead, that is far more compelling and, dare I say it, transformational.
Be more specific. Pay more attention to details.
This is a giant concept. Broken down it is really easy to achieve. It can help you to weed your life of things that don’t make sense. It can help you to get organized. It can help you create art that matters and communicates clearly. It can be the principle that guides your closet clearing, your home design or how well you do at your career and in your relationships.
I don’t know about you, but I am inundated with generalities. General words, general sentiments, general images.
Would you go to the doctor and tell him or her that you have a general feeling of being slow and sluggish and without any testing or further exploration would you take whatever prescription was given to you? This is how I wound up with a Prozac prescription that I took for a few weeks over a decade ago that I thought had permanently scrambled my brain after a few days. It is also how many people I know wound up addicted to painkillers and put on crazy medications that were unwaranted.
Treating the general. With more general. Loud, aggressive and general. Never really addressing the specific problem.
I have a neighbor who is intensely general and not too confident about his new business. I know because I can hear him talk about it all day, at a Level 10 volume. On business calls he turns it up to Level 15 volume. Louder does not create more confidence. But we are encouraged to be louder, bolder, take more full-throttle approaces to things, “Lean In” to more work and more and more brassiness….
It’s how many of us are being indocrinated to look at life as we lose our attention span, become engrossed in too many things and yet everything feels like a blur.
People come to me to figure out how to get the spark back in life and it often starts with turning things from blurry generalization into focus.
When I ask what is happening… and how it keep reoccurring, typically I hear the following:
I don’t know.
I try everything and it doesn’t work!
I just can’t get it right!
You just won’t understand even if I explain it!
All of the above are very valid, and yet super-general, ways to identify a problem.
This is how many of us (me included!) have gotten stuck in a blur. It is very hard to correct blur.
I don’t start adding fountains and fire to homes and moving things around in radical ways. That’s how many people respond to the general feeling of blah: stirring it up. Making things move in radical ways.
Instead, we become very specific. Simple. Specific. Focused.
Usually things change before any furniture moves!
The most confident people I know are not super-loud. They are super-specific. They pay attention. They know themselves and they accept themselves for all their specific talents and quirks, too.
Idea for the day: Pay more attention to the details around you. Look closer. Touch things. Smell them. Get acquainted with the specificity of each sensation.
This makes the blur of a day turn into a very charmed and energized excitement. Invaluable. And what we all seem to need much more of right now! xoxo Dana
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I love this. When you feng shui’d my room 2ish years ago it had a big impact on my mindset. My pink “girly” room was not fitting me because I wanted to be more of an adult. This week I got my Assessment done for my NeuroFeedback.. most surprising thing is.. I was told at 12 years old I had A.D.D. I have been taking Adderall for 20 years. My brain tells me that I am naturally calm and focused. It is my anxiety and obsessive parts of my brain that are overactive. It seems crazy that for 20 years multiple doctors prescribed me this medication.. when the technology was there all along to just identify the actual problem. Crazy!