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What If It Actually Worked? · Feel Really Good: Empowering Meditations

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  SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm Brittany Atlas,
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  SPEAKER_00: the creator of Feel Really Good on Substack,
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  SPEAKER_00: and I'm here to read you my article, What If It Actually Worked?
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  SPEAKER_00: Stop waiting until you're ready to pursue the idea you've been sitting on for years.
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  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever had an idea,
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  SPEAKER_00: a really good one, and just kept it to yourself for months, maybe years?
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  SPEAKER_00: You can see it clearly in your head,
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  SPEAKER_00: but something keeps you from actually taking the first step That's basically me all
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  SPEAKER_00: the time.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm the kind of person who has a million ideas a day.
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  SPEAKER_00: Novels I want to write,
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  SPEAKER_00: meditations I want to record,
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  SPEAKER_00: businesses I want to build,
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  SPEAKER_00: and yet the one thing I never seem to be able to do is actually start any of them.
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  SPEAKER_00: Turns out the problem isn't the ideas that I have.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's the perfectionism,
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  SPEAKER_00: dressed up in a fancy excuse outfit that screams, I'm just not ready yet.
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  SPEAKER_00: The perfectionism that holds me back.
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  SPEAKER_00: For years, I taught meditation to corporate groups in person.
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  SPEAKER_00: And because nothing was being recorded,
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  SPEAKER_00: I never worried about messing up my words or getting something wrong.
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  SPEAKER_00: It lived in the room, in the moment, and then it was gone.
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  SPEAKER_00: But the second something was being filmed or saved anywhere, I wanted it to be perfect.
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  SPEAKER_00: Anything that could outlive the present moment Had to look like I never messed up.
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  SPEAKER_00: So back in 2017,
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  SPEAKER_00: when Instagram Live was still a new thing,
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  SPEAKER_00: I gave myself a project to break that pattern.
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  SPEAKER_00: I made myself go live every single morning for 31 days straight with an idea,
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  SPEAKER_00: but no polished script.
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  SPEAKER_00: If I messed up, I messed up on camera forever.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that was the point.
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  SPEAKER_00: It remains one of the fastest crash courses in perfectionism recovery I've ever given myself.
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  SPEAKER_00: I tried a version of that again years later with my novel.
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  SPEAKER_00: I hired a book coach.
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  SPEAKER_00: She's not a ghostwriter,
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  SPEAKER_00: but someone who helps keep you accountable to the pages,
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  SPEAKER_00: helps with pacing, gives you honest feedback on your story, etc.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it worked.
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  SPEAKER_00: I wrote a 400-page novel and then three subsequent drafts.
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  SPEAKER_00: My idea was finally freed from my mind and put down on the pages.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then, almost the moment that partnership ended, I got hit with a chronic migraine challenge.
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  SPEAKER_00: Fast, furious,
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  SPEAKER_00: and debilitating enough that I had to put nearly everything else down to take care
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  SPEAKER_00: of myself.
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  SPEAKER_00: That part is very real,
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  SPEAKER_00: not just a made up excuse in my mind, and I absolutely don't regret choosing myself.
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  SPEAKER_00: But if I'm being honest,
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  SPEAKER_00: I've also used it as my excuse in more recent years for not touching that book again
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  SPEAKER_00: for many years.
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  SPEAKER_00: Both things are true at once.
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  SPEAKER_00: I needed to stop and I've been hiding behind that stop ever since.
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  SPEAKER_00: Analysis Paralysis Here's the other thing about having a million ideas.
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  SPEAKER_00: I get paralyzed trying to pick the quote-unquote right one or figure it all out
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  SPEAKER_00: before I take a move.
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  SPEAKER_00: Analysis paralysis, as it's called.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thinking as a substitute for actually doing.
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  SPEAKER_00: I was listening to a podcast recently,
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  SPEAKER_00: The Art of Accomplishment,
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  SPEAKER_00: and the host or guest I can't remember said something that stuck with me.
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  SPEAKER_00: If you start something today, you'll probably mess it up.
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  SPEAKER_00: But imagine where you'll be in two years if you just kept stumbling forward,
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  SPEAKER_00: falling down,
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  SPEAKER_00: getting back up,
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  SPEAKER_00: trying new things,
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  SPEAKER_00: playing with how you can actually do it differently,
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  SPEAKER_00: versus thinking about the same idea for five years and never taking a single step.
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  SPEAKER_00: Woof.
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  SPEAKER_00: That one landed hard with me.
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  SPEAKER_00: One thing at a time.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is a big part of why this Substack exists.
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  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to start writing again for years, but I kept wanting to feel ready.
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  SPEAKER_00: And a few months ago, I finally thought to myself, fuck it.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'll figure out where this is going by actually doing it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sitting down every week,
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  SPEAKER_00: writing articles on my thoughts,
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  SPEAKER_00: creating new meditations,
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  SPEAKER_00: putting things out into the world instead of just thinking about them.
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  SPEAKER_00: If any of this sounds familiar to you, I bet you've had your own version of it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you watch something like Shark Tank and think, I literally had that idea.
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  SPEAKER_00: Or someone launches a business and you say to yourself, I thought about that back in the 90s.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're all walking around with really good ideas.
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  SPEAKER_00: The only difference between an idea and something real is
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  SPEAKER_00: whether someone actually does something with it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Until then, it's just floating out there in the ethers.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yours, technically, but not actually yours yet.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Perfectionist's Trap.
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  SPEAKER_00: Perfectionism has held me back for most of my life,
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  SPEAKER_00: and I recently made a decision that I'm done letting it.
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  SPEAKER_00: I know it won't poof disappear overnight,
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  SPEAKER_00: but I'm committed to building a deep enough relationship with myself to work
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  SPEAKER_00: on releasing it.
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  SPEAKER_00: What if?
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  SPEAKER_00: There's a quote that I can't place exactly,
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  SPEAKER_00: something like,
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  SPEAKER_00: instead of spending all day thinking of the ways that something can go wrong,
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  SPEAKER_00: what if you spent that same energy imagining every way it could go right?
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm paraphrasing really badly, but the idea is there.
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  SPEAKER_00: So many of us let ourselves sit around all day cataloging
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  SPEAKER_00: the ways something won't work, and that's considered quote-unquote normal.
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  SPEAKER_00: But Why not give equal airtime to the ways that it might go right?
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  SPEAKER_00: Who wrote the rulebook that it has to be a failure before it even begins?
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  SPEAKER_00: Here's what's almost funny.
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  SPEAKER_00: I have actual proof from my own life that things do work out.
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  SPEAKER_00: Every time I've made myself start something before I felt fully ready and I got on
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  SPEAKER_00: a roll, things happened.
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  SPEAKER_00: I didn't need the whole plan.
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  SPEAKER_00: I just needed to begin because that's where creativity,
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  SPEAKER_00: the curiosity, the actual shape of the thing shows up.
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  SPEAKER_00: You can't think your way into creating your dream.
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  SPEAKER_00: You have to actually do something about it to move towards it.
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  SPEAKER_00: The answers find their way to you once you start.
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  SPEAKER_00: Years ago when I was working as a fine art photographer,
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  SPEAKER_00: my art partner and I had a loose idea for a series.
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  SPEAKER_00: Nothing fully mapped out.
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  SPEAKER_00: And against my perfectionist tendencies, we did the first shoot without a concrete plan.
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  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, it was the best decision for that series.
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  SPEAKER_00: If we had sat down and planned every shot in advance,
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  SPEAKER_00: it would have been a completely different, much smaller project.
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  SPEAKER_00: Instead,
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  SPEAKER_00: we did the first shoot And then the film came back
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  SPEAKER_00: with happy accidents we never could have dreamed up,
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  SPEAKER_00: sitting in a room talking about ideas.
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  SPEAKER_00: Those accidents became the entire premise of the series.
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  SPEAKER_00: That series ended up in a museum show next to artists that I'd idolized since art school.
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  SPEAKER_00: David Lynch,
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  SPEAKER_00: Alex Prager,
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  SPEAKER_00: Cindy Sherman, Ed Ruscha, people whose work I used to study, right next to ours.
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  SPEAKER_00: We sold pieces through gallery shows and art walks.
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  SPEAKER_00: And none of it,
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  SPEAKER_00: not one piece of the final series that I was so proud of,
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  SPEAKER_00: would exist if we stayed in our heads,
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  SPEAKER_00: waiting until the idea felt finished before we picked up a camera.
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  SPEAKER_00: Don't wait for the perfect timing.
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  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't exist.
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  SPEAKER_00: So I find it funny and a bit ridiculous, really.
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  SPEAKER_00: That I still stop myself as often as I do when I have this much evidence
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  SPEAKER_00: that starting is the thing that works.
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  SPEAKER_00: Every idea I'm sitting on right now,
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  SPEAKER_00: the novels,
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  SPEAKER_00: the empowering courses,
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  SPEAKER_00: the businesses I dream up in my mind every single day,
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  SPEAKER_00: I can only imagine what even one of them could be if I gave it actual steps instead
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  SPEAKER_00: of just the daydream.
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  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people will tell you that you need clarity before you start.
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  SPEAKER_00: A clear vision, a clear five-year plan, a clear sense of where it's all going.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's ass backwards, at least for me.
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  SPEAKER_00: I honestly don't know where this Substack is taking me yet.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm genuinely unclear on the destination of the next pursuit in my career.
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  SPEAKER_00: But some of the best things that have ever happened in my life came
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  SPEAKER_00: from doing one small thing, which led to another.
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  SPEAKER_00: Which led to another and another until I ended up somewhere I never could have planned for.
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  SPEAKER_00: If I wait until an idea feels ready or until I have 100% clarity on the direction,
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  SPEAKER_00: I know myself well enough to know exactly what happens.
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  SPEAKER_00: Nothing.
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  SPEAKER_00: So instead, I'm picking one of the ideas I've been sitting on for years and I'm going for it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not because I know where it will lead, far from it, but because I don't.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I'm done needing to.
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  SPEAKER_00: If there's an idea that you've been sitting on, consider this a sign to take a step towards it.
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  SPEAKER_00: It won't ever feel perfectly ready.
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  SPEAKER_00: So start anyway.
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  SPEAKER_00: Take the leap and believe in your capacity to follow your dreams one step at a time.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for being on this journey with me
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  SPEAKER_00: as I keep deepening my relationship with myself.
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  SPEAKER_00: I really hope that you're learning something about yourself along the way.
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  SPEAKER_00: Feel free to become a subscriber on Substack at brittanyatlas.substack.com
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  SPEAKER_00: and this article has reflection prompts that will help you along your journey.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much and I look forward to our next meditation and our next article together.