What’s on the iPod: Keeping Warm by We Were Promised Jetpacks
I love the wisdom of the writing community. This little gem came from Chaos in the Country’s Nikki, who said about her career: ” In not wanting to look back, I realize that I do need to get back.”
This from someone who found herself burned out a bit on the writing career because she wasn’t doing what she loved, but rather just doing the job. Who wouldn’t burn out on that?
She’s insightful. She understands there’s a difference between getting back to where she was and looking back. Looking back is holding you back from advancing into something real. Getting back is finding your center of balance, that place that makes you feel fulfilled and happy.
So are which are you doing? Are you looking back at the past, at successes (and failures) long gone? Do you get how harmful that is to your career? Let’s say you love ghostwriting and want to make it your specialty. Suppose your first client is an ego maniac and has to have full control right down to how you edit. He introduces errors. You remove them. He loses files. You double your efforts recreating them. Every day is another issue and he’s blaming you. At one point he says “You’re a lousy editor and I don’t like your writing!” He breaks the contract. After a legal tussle, you get your payment, but you swear off ghostwriting. It’s just too much hassle.
Fast forward a few years. You’re now more sure of yourself and you can recognize that those past issues were more client-related than a matter of your skill level. Yet you still won’t take on a ghostwriting project. He’s broken you. And you have allowed his opinion to taint your own opinion of your abilities. You can do the job. You just can’t work with someone like that again.
Using that same example, let’s assume things ended exactly the same way. But instead of swearing off ghostwriting, you decide to revisit the whole scenario a few months out after the emotional upheaval wears off. You examine what you could have done, and you revisit your own reactions to see where you may have gone wrong. You loved the work. You just weren’t fond of the client or his super-large ego.
In this case, you realize your own skills, and you understand that personalities weren’t meshing. What you didn’t do was internalize that bad experience to the point where you limit yourself. You still live with the lessons learned, but you stop looking over your shoulder and letting that voice say “you can’t do it.”
Nikki was talking more about finding those things in her life that made her happy and made her love her work, but there are other ways – this example included – in which we allow looking backward to affect our happiness.
Nikki also said “Sometimes you have to start over if you want to go farther than where you are right now.”
Amen, sister.
So what’s causing you to look back? And where do you need to get back to?
12 responses to “Getting Back or Looking Back?”
There's also learning from your mistakes and not repeating them. If you really feel you can go back into an arena where you've been burned because you'll have a better experience this time, do it. But if you're going to repeat the same negative patterns — you've got bigger problems than your career.
I'm not a huge poetry buff, but I will answer in the form of the one poem bookmarked in my browser: "Ithaca," translated from the Greek by John Cavafy
I can't remember when or how I stumbled upon it, but it never fails to give me chills along with a healthy dose of perspective. It's short, and lovely, and expresses my feelings far better than I could.
Negative patterns – exactly that, Devon. Going back to fix those is exactly what we need to be doing.
That is awesome, Jake. Thanks for that. It fits perfectly with our journey.
Thank you Lori – It is about the balance and for far too long I thought that in order to be successful at this I had to bring in the money. Well, I'm finally able to say I'm bringing in the money but in the process I lost my center and my love of the words that I was putting down. It was the mechanics of it all and so funny (to many anyway) that it took me actually seeing the money coming in to know that this wasn't making me happy or really more successful. My eyes see things differently than they did when I started and so now it's about loving what I do again.
I've definitely had my share of bad experiences and I'm glad to say that those negative experiences didn't break or sour me.
Jake, I am bookmarking Ithaca to read today, thank you for the inspiration.
Thank you again Lori, for understanding and seeing through my rambling! 🙂
Gah (oh my typos).. and I should say that it's funny to ME. I mean it could be funny to many, who knows?
Thank YOU, Nikki. It's something all of us need to hear, memorize, and act on.
I knew what you meant. Typos are welcome here. Shows we're human. 🙂
Thanks for sharing this, Lori. I could definitely relate to your story. That nagging sense of self-doubt can be difficult to overcome. When I look back at the past, I tend to get totally nostalgic. There are a couple years that stand out from all the rest, and when I am having a bad day I wish myself back there. I want to value all those great memories, but not focus on them so much that I forget how blessed I am now to be doing what I’m doing. I want to find gratitude in today and not get stuck thinking about “glory days.”
Sarah, remember before those glory days? Consider today that same time, only your next glory days will come even sweeter than the last ones.
It's what keeps me going. 🙂
Wow — talk about a timely post. Through much of the last 1/2 of 2010, I found myself spending *way* too much time looking back, particularly at a few missteps I'd made on the job. (Stunningly, this did not serve to enhance either my mindset or my performance going forward).
For me, a significant part of getting myself forward-focused again was to take a very honest look at which parts of the problem were due to my actions, & which weren't. Once I'd identified (and accepted) those factors, I was able to have a couple of frank conversations with a few folks of significance in my career.
This allowed me to express the misgivings I'd been having about my performance & to get feedback from some folks who were close to the situation yet (obviously) had seen things from a slightly different perspective than I had.
The result: Clarity. Sweet, sweet clarity 🙂
And we live for sweet clarity, Hugh. 🙂
That self-assessment is a great idea. That you took it a step further and sought out feedback – golden. We can't know how we're coming across to folks unless we ask, right?
If I didn't use experiences like the example, to learn from, then my shoe would still be caught on the bottom rung of the ladder of success and I would probably quit trying to get it unstuck and quit my dream altogether.
Nice analogy, Wendy.
Too many people stay stuck. It's less work than trying to figure out a way to break free. Kind of how content farms work on the psyche, I guess.