I submit to nycmidnight.com competitions regularly. They aren’t cheap to enter but each piece of work submitted is critiqued by three different people whether you get placed in the competition or not. But much as I loved doing this and would read the critiquing very rarely did I do anything with it until this time.
Here is the piece in the origin and then with my revisions. It’s never too late for revenge. Maybe it was because I was a runner up this time I did something with it.
Anyway this got me thinking about life etc. How often do we put ourselves out there to ask for advise, for support, for how to do something better, and then don’t do something with it? Even if we get unsolicited advice how often do we ignore that? I was even pondering on the times we’ve gone for paid counseling, paid life coaching, paid gym membership, etc, etc and then ignore the instructions, directions, suggestions. It may not be for you but it is definitely loads and loads for me.
Why?
Well with the writing I know it was because it takes time. It means going back and redoing rather than just producing more writing. A new project is more fun than looking over an old project and finding what could be improved.
I have to say with myself the more I’ve done work with QEC the more I’ve been able to listen to others, to not get hurt when I hear advise that I am not sure I like. I was chatting with my QEC practitioner about this and she thought it was that as we deal with the issues from our childhood that it is easier to listen to others and weigh up what we need to change, need to alter, need to think about, whereas with all those layers of childhood survival techniques in place we could fully hear/feel/know. As opposed to either thinking we should do all that we are told or nothing.
I’ve had an incident at work where I know that my old gut reaction would one of the following; to leave because why should I stay if they don’t value me; be super super nice and people pleasing so they wouldn’t sack me; spend loads of time feeling awful that I did that and beating myself up about it; and maybe even thinking “how dare they speak to me when I am older than they are?”. Instead I listened to what my manager said, saw my errors, said sorry, we were also able to talk about how it wasn’t totally my fault and that there were things needed ironing out in this area. Together we have been able to put together a plan that works for who I am and the situation. I feel fine about going to work and have not spent the weekend stressing about it. In fact it has only come back into my mind when I was thinking through how I could share my flash fiction writing within a blog.
I’ve been able to listen clearly because a lot of the rubbish that I didn’t even know was there has been cleared away. Maybe though it is also why I was able to read the comments about my flash fiction and see which ones I wanted to take and which ones I did not find helpful. I was even able to put this in the feedback NYCMidnight asked for about the comments.
So I think it is not that we don’t want to take the advice given, or feel we have to do everything we were told. We do but we have so many issues from our past that cause our nervous system to kick in that we don’t fully hear. So my advise to myself is to think about why I get uptight when someone gives me advice, whether unsolicited or asked for, really listen to my heart [that again], see what has made me either fight, flight, fawn or freeze, and get rid of that bug in my system.
Then I can change what I really know needs changing but also not get hurt is someone has misread me totally and doesn’t “see who I truly am”. [That feels like a title for another blog piece soon 🙂
Aspirational Adventures 