Show notes
Before the pandemic, one of my favorite places in the entire world was the Met. I loved to wander around until my feet hurt. I'm not an art historian and really don't even know that much about it, and I think that is what made the experience so great. I wasn't able to analyze the halls and halls of priceless work, instead, I just got to experience and react to them.
You know that overwhelming reaction you have when you stumble on a piece of art and it just places you in a time-warp? Sometimes, good art activates a feeling you haven't felt in a long time. Or it reminds you of your humanity. Ah... I miss art museums!
Imagine, now, that there is an art museum that you could walk through with just halls and halls of frames. No pictures. No art. Just frames.
And each frame was a different perspective on your writing life. Think about all the different perspectives you could have about every little thing that happens. The obvious ones are the frames of "this is good" or "this is bad." But, there are so many other frames, like "I am good. I am bad."
And what if there were multiple frames for each and every moment of your writing life? Each morning or afternoon or evening when you sit down to do your work, what if each of those moments had a frame with a different perspective. And so the morning you didn't write as much as you wanted, there was a frame for "this is good or bad."
The question the frame begs is "this is this or this is that," it is "what makes this good or what makes this bad?" The frame becomes the "what." The perspective, the choice.
Imagine a morning where maybe you didn't write as much as you wanted. And you had the choice to stand in front of the "this is awful and I'm awful" frame or stand in front of the "I took a step and I'm proud of myself, and tomorrow I'll do better."
Imagine how the picture inside the frame would change between the two. What color would be the awful picture? What about the second picture, where you show yourself grace?
As we kick off a new year, one of the most powerful decisions you can make is to choose the frame in which you want to look at your writing life. In 2021, there will be endless moments where your expectations will be met or not met, moments when you'll need to decide on your frame. And the thing is, you will decide, whether it is with awareness or by default.
You control the frame.
And so, in that way, the frame you put around your writing life becomes the picture.
Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for joining me on this journey. And I hope you have a wonderful week of writing.
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