I Failed And I'd Do It Again.

What do I love so much that if I failed, I would do it anyway? 

It’s a question that has been following me around lately.  It’s become helpful in all sorts of unexpected and compelling ways.  It has taken mental and soul weights off of me, if you want to know the truth.

You see the question used to be “What would I do if I knew I could not fail?” 

The answer was always the same:   I would live authentically.  I would love myself and others well.   I would make things and share with others.  I would pursue a life well lived.

But I found that question seemed to have the opposite effect on me.

Instead of taking weights off and finding freedom to pursue a good life, I felt elevated pressure and anxiety.  The question was unrealistic, because failure is always part the picture of being human.  It is unavoidable.  So the question of ‘not failing’ never gave me peace of mind.

“I should not be worried about failing.”  I’d say to myself in quiet moments.  Then worry that I was not living up to being a loving wife, or mother, or artist.  That I was not being authentic enough.

Recently I’ve begun to ask myself a new question: 

What do I love so much that if I failed I would continue on?  What is so important that failure, when it happens, loses its power?  

When I started asking this question, immediately, my heart got lighter.  I felt a new shift in perspective.  It was as if I had been walking around with large weights tied to my feet, and I was able to take them off.

Because failure is part of living fully.  Living fully is what I wanted all along.

In spite of the certainty of failure, imperfection and life’s inevitable setbacks, I continue on with resolve and resilience.   My heart knows heaviness, but it also knows lightness…and lightness is winning.

Guest Post: Tom Eggebrecht, author of Fully and Creatively Alive

I am excited to introduce you to my new friend, Tom Eggebrecht.  Tom's new book Fully and Creatively Alive is available on Amazon, but he's giving away a free copy today on the blog.  To enter, like this post and message me with your name.  I'll draw a winner at random on Wednesday, April 12th.

Here is a part of Tom's story, a story committed to the creative life:

The Power of On-Line Positivity

It all started when our son went to college in Nashville to begin the pursuit of a career in music. I had spent very little time in Music City. When we began to make frequent visits I was immediately enamored. It wasn’t the honky-tonks or the Grand Ole Opry. What I fell in love with were the neighborhoods away from Broadway. More specifically, I began to notice Nashville as a buzzing hub of creative entrepreneurs.

The longer our son lived there the more I began to meet some of these fascinating people. They made jewelry, sold handmade pottery, designed web sites, took photographs, ran sound for bands, and even started businesses doing accounting for all of these people. I knew that one day I wanted to interview them and learn from them. More than that, I wanted to write a book about them.

So that’s what I did.

Over the course of almost a year I made phone calls, jotted down notes, and began to write an outline for a book. It would feature people who pursued their passions, chased their dreams, and made a living doing so. They say that you should write the book you would want to read. The final result was my book, Fully and Creatively Alive.

Not only did I want to learn from creative entrepreneurs. I wanted my readers to, as well. So I wrote each chapter around an inspiring characteristic of a particular artist. And each chapter would end with three questions to move the reader toward a more creative life.

But what I really discovered is that at the heart and center of all creativity is a creative God who created us with a creative gene. As my book says: “At the beginning of all things, Scripture tells us, God created the heavens and the earth. He did it by simply speaking all things into existence. That is, until he made the crown of his creation: human beings. When God created Adam and Eve he did more than speak them into existence. He formed them from the dust of the ground. Like an artist using clay, God lovingly formed his most beloved creatures, paying attention to every detail.”

That’s you. Whether you know it or not – whether you believe it or not – you have been created to be creative.  If you dig down deeply enough you’ll find a creative spark in there somewhere. It’s my life’s mission to encourage everyone I know to discover her or his own creativity. So here’s some encouragement for you to do just that today.

What creative spark has been placed inside you and how can you use it and share it with the world?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tom Eggebrecht is Senior Pastor of Ascension Lutheran Church in Casselberry, Florida. He’s also an active blogger (http://www.tomeggebrecht.com/free), bicyclist, and music lover who enjoys encouraging people to pursue their passion and chase their dreams. Amongst the greatest joys in his life is the blessing of the time he gets to spend with his family, and recently becoming a grandfather for the very first time.

When Enough Became Enough

When I was completing my Master’s Degree in Fine Art, I studied abroad in Italy.  What I learned there changed everything.  I had come with the idea that I would encounter an ancient culture, and by ancient I mean a culture that was less advanced than what I knew.  I found just the opposite. As I was walking through the remains of the city of Pompeii, I realized that we have not done things better than in Renaissance Italy.  Partially because of the intelligence, the design, and the innovation.  But mostly because of the hand-made craftsmanship that is everywhere.  The handles on cutlery found in a Pompeiian home are painstakingly well crafted.  The quality of the marble floors and intricate detail of the mosaic walls, the expanse of the architecture, it all holds up and surpasses anything that would be made today.  In a postindustrial, information saturated age, the cost of such craftsmanship is irreplaceable.  We couldn’t afford it.

 When St. Paul writes in Ephesians 2:10 that, “…We are God’s handiwork…”  I consider his words in the context of the culture Paul was writing in, a culture similar to what I observed in Pompeii. I am not talking about Religion or a Christianity that is overly Westernized or simplified.  I am searching for what it means to be fully alive and human.  The Greek word Paul used for handiwork is “poiema.”  It is where we get the English word for poem.  Some researchers would go so far as to say that Paul is describing humankind as God’s Artwork.  In Paul’s day, artwork wasn’t in some quiet museum waiting to be observed, it was all around. A part of everyday experience.  Everything was handmade, and considering what I observed in Pompeii, handmade extremely well. Paul was a craftsperson, financing his travel through work as a tent maker.  I imagine craft would have meant a great deal to him. Considering where Paul lived and traveled, he would have been exposed to Etruscan frescoes depicting beautiful landscapes and Roman Architecture with grand and expansive columns and ornate reliefs. I wonder if Paul was thinking about a particular work of art when he wrote this passage, and if so, what kind of significance did it have to him? I do know that he asks me to remember my identity is a beautiful, one of a kind, hand-made thing.  Maybe he knew something about creativity and craftsmanship that we have forgotten today.  Maybe this is how we are designed, to make and invent things.  Innately, just because…

I used to think my value as an artist came from what I did, but now I know that the real flesh and blood matters are found in my artist’s heart.  The heart I was born with.  I used to put the mantel of financial success on my work. Or how popular my work became.  Or praise I got for its uniqueness.  Because if I am honest I have a real fear that…when it’s all said and done that I will have missed it. That my life will pass and that I won’t make a significant contribution, that I screwed it up—my one chance—and now I will dissolve like a vapor into the unknown and nobody will notice or care.  There is this primal longing within me to matter.  I try to get a handle on this fear by performing.

We live in a culture that affirms the idea that people who work hard enough, who are smart enough, invest their money well and don’t buy expensive jeans, that keep that twenty something appearance well into middle age, or who get all A’s, who exercise when they are supposed to, and who have a diet of only greens and lean protein. That they are the ones.  They are the ones worth it.  They are the ones keeping all the rules just right.  Those who reject this social norm we label dilatants, slackers…they are shamefully insignificant. It’s probably why we don’t value our elderly like we should, or our mentally challenged, or even our children.  Because when you get down to it, we find a person’s real value resides in the status of what they do.

But we are poems.  We are artwork.  It sounds too good to be true. It sounds like a lie that dreamers believe who don’t live in the real world where results matter.  But what I have observed is this: Those who are truly doing creative work, who have the kind of lives that everybody else wants, they know this.  They let this belief reside in their bones.  They don’t do work chasing anything, they do work because they already have it to give.  They have changed the dynamic of life from one of a transaction i.e. you do this to get that, to one that starts and ends with joy.  It is life changing.  It is changing me.  It changes the space from which I make my work, whether it is work that supports my family financially or not.  I no longer work for money, I work for money that supports a life well lived.  Money is a means, not a master. It creates more opportunities to be grateful on all kinds of levels.  And when I get a chance, I break bread and wine with others, and maybe cry and then laugh, and then cry some more.  Because poems we are.  Every one of us.

If you like the ideas I have shared and would like to take this information to the next level, sign up to my News Letter to receive a free digital download on Creativity and Finding Your Individual Voice, here.