Some days we're not just trudging toward bedtime

I’ve started to rest instead of push through.

I don’t know if it’s my age (a "young 39," as someone said to me yesterday??) , hormones, or something else, but my body doesn’t do things just because my mind tells it to anymore.

My body is in revolt against my hyperactive mind.

I’ve heard the “oxygen mask” analogy dozens of times and I’ve written about it myself.

“Put on your mask before assisting others.”

Also, its cousin: “You can’t pour from an empty cup.”

It sounded reasonable. I just didn’t really believe it.

Denying myself rest felt like a deeply personal decision, one that didn’t seem to me like it had to affect those around me one way or the other. As long as I kept showing up, it shouldn't matter to them how I actually felt.

Then, Monday night happened. Monday night at about 5:15 pm I had 45 minutes of time to myself. I could have worked. I was planning to work.

But that thing I said above about my body happened. It kicked in after I talked to my friend Justine about boundary-setting.

I realized I had no energy. Dinner was in the oven. So I did nothing for 45 minutes. I stayed off my phone and let time pass.

When my husband arrived home at 6 with the kids, he was exhausted and flustered. He was coming down with a cold. He’d worked a crazy day, left late, barely made it to daycare pickup, made a second stop to pick up our older son, fought traffic, and arrived home later than he was expecting.

He hadn’t had a break in hours.

After dinner, I told him I could give Morgan a bath (usually his job). He took me up on my offer.

My mission, should I choose to accept it.

Morgan skipped off to the bathroom. Literally. He was in one of those wondrous good moods we toddler parents document with dozens of videos. I ran the water, wriggled him out of his clothes and diaper, and into the bath he plopped.

He picked up a bar of soap. He pinched it, exploring its texture. He rolled it in his hands.

He made a cartoonish biting and chewing noise, smacking his lips.

“Challah! I eat the challah!” he said.

“Oh,” I said. “Yum!”

I usually hate to play pretend with my kids, although...

I loved to pretend when I was a kid myself.

He cradled the soap in his palms and lifted it toward me. His eyes gleamed.

“You want challah?” he said to me.

….

“Yes, please. I’m starved,” I said. I took my own cartoonish pretend bite.

We passed the “challah” back and forth a few more times. Morgan took a non-pretend bite of soap. Twice. But he spat and rinsed and seemed none the worse.

Then he covered the challah with a washcloth and played “Where did the challah go?”

“Where did the challah go?” Morgan asked. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(Side note - Why is it so cute when a 2-year-old does this: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯? I think it’s among the top 5 cutest things a 2-year-old can do.)

We found the challah. We giggled a lot.

I’m telling you this story because Monday night could have gone differently. If I had worked until 6, our kids would have had two parents who hadn’t had a break in hours. Two parents who just wanted their kids in bed, no matter how cute they were being.

Everybody’s workin’ for the bedtime. Heaven knows that happens a lot of nights.

Sometimes our kids, exhausted from full days of their own, are also just trudging toward bedtime, and it’s OK.

But on Monday night, we didn’t have to trudge. My kids were both in a great mood.

Thanks to me giving myself that 45 minutes of calm before they got home, I also had the energy to assist one of them with his metaphorical oxygen mask. To connect with him on his level. And to enjoy him!

I had the energy to assist my husband with his oxygen mask without resentment, because we didn’t both need a break.

I’m telling you this story because I want to encourage you to give yourself time. You won’t find the time, I’m afraid. You’ll just have to claim it.

So claim it. I get it now. It’s not just for you.

Although if it were just for you, that would be a good enough reason.

Maybe you need to rest, like I do.

Maybe you need to write (also like I do).

Also like me, maybe you are not giving yourself permission to claim time to do both or either of these things.

If that permission just came from always believing that I deserve what I need, I wouldn’t always give permission to myself.

I don’t always believe I deserve things.

But now I see permission can come from at least two different wells.

One well is the well of self-worth. Like I said, my well of self-worth is sometimes too dry to sustain permission.

So it’s nice to discover another well. The well of... cause and effect, I guess. (It’s a working title.)

When I rest, I get harmony and love and connection in my life. I provide my kids with the same.

When I rest, I give others permission to rest. (Like my exhausted husband.)

When I don’t rest, I cut off this possibility, for me and for them.

When I write, I open up all kinds of possibilities for connection.

When I write, I give others the permission to spread ideas of their own.

When I don’t write, I cut off the possibility for connection.

I thought it was secretly selfish to say something like, “Taking care of myself allows me to take care of others.”

I’m learning it’s just common sense.

M

PS: Want more like this? Get my weekly letter. Yes that means you’ll be signed up for my list. Where I share writing like this, and writing from my favorite writers who are also mothers, and mothers who are also writers. Sign up.

Maybe we don’t need more empathy

We assume we all see the world in the same way. But we don’t.

Let me start again. I assume. I assume we all see the world in the same way.

When I say, "see the world," I'm speaking quite literally. For instance.

I read this blog post yesterday. “Today I have learned that not everyone has an internal monologue and it has ruined my day.”

Apparently, not all people think in words and sentences.

(Did you know this? Are you one of the people who doesn’t think your thoughts in words? Reply because I’m dying to chat about more about the details.)

The video chat at the end of this post is the best part, so watch the video if you can.

The interviewer is so, so uncomfortable as he confronts the reality of his interview subject and the way she experiences her thoughts.

It’s so hard for him to let her wordless-thoughts reality be her reality.

But, he accepts it. Because he has to.

If he denied her reality - if he refused to believe her or told her she must have misunderstood his questions or she's just wrong - he’d sound kind of nuts. She’s telling him in plain English. (The English she never thinks in.)

He doesn’t empathize. But he allows.

He doesn’t understand. But now he knows.

Like I said, I love this reaction to encountering someone that is just so very different from me.

Allowing and accepting don’t get their due. It’s empathy I hear about. The world needs more empathy.

But we can’t always step into someone else’s shoes because we just can’t.

Or I can’t, anyway.

My brain is narrow and small and often terrified.

It's not always sophisticated enough to set aside its own experience and don the experience of another.

But can I allow other people's experiences to co-exist with my own? Hm.

M

PS: I was on The Secret Sauce podcast, where I talk about how to show up for your writing even when you don't feel like it.Have a listen.

A Tribute to a Man I Never Met

Last week I talked about maintenance writing. (ICYMI, I compared writing to sex, so go look that one up in your inbox or read it on my LinkedIn ?.)

Anyway, my point was that we are not going to write a heartbreaking work of staggering genius every time we put fingers to keyboard. We are not even going to write something particularly good every time. But we are going to write something.

The thing is, I made it sound like you need to show up more to write so that you can make space for those moments of inspiration when you write something that transcends your average effort.

You can only seize that moment if you’ve been writing all along.

But… what if the showing up and creating something, and doing it OVER AND OVER (that’s ?)... what if that in itself is a work of art?

Over on Insta, I talked about Jason Polan, an artist I’d never heard of until he died on Monday at the age of 37.

All I know of him I learned in this obituary, so apologies to his memory if I get anything wrong or miss some nuances.

Here’s what I know. He drew. A LOT. A fuck ton, you could say. He was prolific.

More facts:

• He set himself the task of drawing every single person in New York City. He sketched more than 30,000 people.

• He founded the Taco Bell Drawing Club, which “wasn’t so much about producing great art as it was about finding a meditative, observational moment in a busy city. Many of those who showed up to spend a few minutes drawing with Mr. Polan acknowledged that they had no particular artistic ability."

• The Whitney Museum owns at least one of his pieces.

• He was a commercial artist and drew for brands including Uniqlo. His work has also been exhibited in numerous galleries.

From Jason Polan’s blog.

because he went public with his work A LOT MORE than you and I are going public.

The sketches were on his blog.

The big ideas were public via the Taco Bell Drawing Club and his gallery shows.

Plus, there was the stuff he sold for money, and the stuff that skirted the category of “fine art.”

In total, he probably wasn’t more prolific than many other artists. The important distinction: he was a prolific publisher.

A few hours before I read about Polan, the topic I had chosen for this week was (I am quoting from my very advanced Google spreadsheet where I keep track of my ideas)

“Publish. Quit Journaling. Stop trying to journal your way into confidence.”

Polan could have looked at his sketches as “journaling.” He could have kept them to himself.

He could have said these sketches were practice for the REAL THING he was going to create and unveil SOMEday.

You know, that day when the creation was finally perfect.

That day is definitely coming. Right????

Also, he could have drawn alone at Taco Bell.

...

Listen, we don’t have to quit journaling. Creating in private has its place and its uses. I journal for entirely different reasons than the ones that prompt me to publish.

My act of publishing is the act of me telling myself, “I am entitled not just to think what I think, but to be heard.”

Here's something else I know from his obituary: Jason Polan was a man.

When I look around at the creators I admire, it’s the men who more often seize their right to be seen and heard.

The rest of us… we have more trouble.

But publishing isn’t just an exercise in entitlement.

Publishing creates connection.

When I publish - even when I publish something that I don't think is finished - I am reaching people who agree with my ideas, and we’re connecting in deeper discussion.

I am reaching people who don’t agree with my ideas, and we are teaching each other to disagree while respecting the other person’s right to exist in disagreement with us.

I never got the chance to talk to Polan, but I think he enjoyed the act of publishing as an act of creating connection. Maybe that’s why he did it so much.

And the fact that he published so much allowed him to connect with me posthumously.

He shared stuff, without knowing how good it was or where it would lead.

… Will we left here on Earth do the same?

In praise of maintenance...

… sex.

In praise of maintenance sex.

(I was too chicken to put “sex” in the headline.)

Anyway, hello! I’m talking maintenance sex today.

…

Consider sex in the context of a long-term, monogamous relationship.

When you’re in one of those relationships… the first year is pretty hot. Right?

That’s the year before you know this relationship is actually going to be long-term. You’ve got the unknown, and the danger of rejection. You don’t really, fully “have” the person, and they don’t have you. You are discovering. It’s new.

But 10 years later (JUST FOR EXAMPLE), you have each other. You are all kinds of scrambled up. You are familiar. Familiar is too formal a word for what you are.

And that’s great. But with the risk and newness gone…

You have to figure out a way to get inspiredto want what you already have. And that isn’t always easy.

...

I didn’t make that any of that up. I learned it from Esther Perel.

Perel writes a lot about how to reconnect with the “zing” of desire. (Or maybe it’s the “schwing”? Is this Wayne’s World? I don’t know. Don’t expect me to talk about sex like a grown-up.)

Anyway, Perel has got a lot of great ideas about how to find your way back to this zing/schwing when you’re in a long-term, monogamous relationship. And you can read all about them on her website and in her books!

Here’s what’s germane to our discussion today: maintenance sex.

Even Esther Perel, who has taught millions how to cultivate inspiration... believes that in every long-term relationship, maintenance sex has a place.

I’m talking about sex that allows you to maintain your connection to your partner but is not exactly… INSPIRED.

For large swaths of a long-term relationship, through illness, injury, post-partum, when you’re both completely drained and exhausted… It’s necessary, because the lightning bolt doesn’t strike every time you have sex.

Trying to force it to strike is like trying to will yourself to sleep.

The lightning bolt is more like a puff of smoke. The more you try to force it to appear, the more quickly it dissipates.

But maintenance sex is there! If you show up for sex, but the inspiration doesn’t show up with you, you still get to have maintenance sex.

...

Back in the summer, I heard the writer Eve Ensler on Marc Maron’s podcast.

She talked about writing her latest book, The Apology.

She described the experience of writing it as more like her functioning as a conduit for her dead father. It wasn’t even her writing the words. It was her father speaking through her.

She was holed up in a cabin in New Paltz for 4 months, only focused on the book. The book came out in one almost uninterrupted piece, she said. That’s how completely she connected with this puff of inspiration.

...

OK. But that’s kind of intimidating for the rest of us.

You know, those of us who haven’t written award-winning juggernaut plays. Those of us who can’t channel dead people through our fingers.

Or spend 4 months in a cabin with no distractions.

What do we do? How do we approach writing, inspiration, and wanting to produce something really great?

We’re not Eve Ensler.

But, we, too, are writers.

And sometimes we sit down, and we do maintenance writing. We’re maintaining that valuable connection between ourselves and our alive-ness. The vitality of our ideas.

We’re not waving our arms around, willing inspiration to appear. Sometimes, it does! Like for Eve Ensler.

But those bursts of inspiration are not how we maintain the connection to our vitality.

It’s the practice of showing up.

It’s the practice of showing up—not the lightning bolt of inspiration—that makes me a writer. It’s the practice of showing up that deepens my connection to my ideas. It’s the practice of showing up that allows space for the bolt of lightning/puff of smoke to appear.

And the practice of showing up means doing a lot of maintenance writing in between... puffs (bolt/puffs?).

What about for you? Are you able to allow yourself to write some stuff (most stuff) that is just OK? Or are you trying to force everything to be inspired before it even tumbles out of your head and on to the page?

When you write like an expert, you sound like the opposite of an expert.

Not an expert.

"I'm not an expert in this topic and therefore I can't write about it for my business’s social media."

I love this statement because it seems really reasonable. Like…

“Who, li’l ole amateur me? No… leave this topic to all those experts ‘out there.’ They’re obviously loads more qualified, so they’ll do a better job!”

Yet it’s not reasonable. It’s wrong. Ass-backwards.

FIRST of all, (I’m now typing with 1 hand while my left index finger is pointed regally in the air)...

gather round because I’m about to unveil a golden nugget from my own 20 years of professional experience publishing online:

The internet is a fucking free-for-all.

(I learned that during Year 1. The other 19 years are just gravy.)

...

Whether you’re using it for business or pleasure, the internet is NOT ABOUT sitting quietly in a classroom while Teacher lectures at the front, my friends.

The internet is about getting a sweaty note passed to you during class from the smart ass who sits two rows away.

Surprise! You’re the smart ass.Your experience with a subject stands out more than an expert’s “how-to” take on it, which reads as less immediate and less applicable to your audience’s real life.

…

For example, you know that book, Profit First? I never got through it.

But I’ve talked to a bunch of people about how it has transformed their businesses. Their stories caused me to create a separate bank account and to pay myself from that account on a bi-weekly schedule. I have no idea if I’m doing Profit First right.

But it was my nonexpert friend’s stories that got me to take action. Not the book itself.

For better or worse*, I gravitated to their stories because they allowed me to visualize myself carrying out the method in a way that an expert instruction manual just didn’t.

*(And by the way, it’s definitely for worse when it comes to subjects like climate change and the safety of childhood vaccinations. Someone’s anecdote about their personal experience is a potent hook for deep connection and engagement, in a way that unbiased, expert information just is not.)

…

But you want to know what’s even weirder about requiring yourself to be an expert before you can write about a topic?

When you write like an expert, you sound like the opposite of an expert.

It’s not just that you sound douche-y, (though you might).

More importantly…

you cannot solve the biggest problems in your industry or in the world with a single post. So, when you try, your post sounds the opposite of expert.

You sound amateurish and naive, like, “She must not have that much experience with this topic if she thinks it’s just that easy."

You know what I mean? That’s the reaction I have to posts that are all wrapped up in a bow.

…

I understand the pressure. It’s not imagined. People get “canceled” on the internet for writing things that are anything from thoughtlessly insensitive to completely taken out of context.

But I am the expert in my own life experience. You are the expert in your own life experience.

If something cool has happened as a result of the way you applied your expertise, you need to tell people.

They will learn from what you have to say.

Maggie

PS: If you sit down to write something original and all that comes out is a bunch of tangled up, vague, or generic stuff… you need a guide to help you write your way to more leads, better opportunities, and the business you want.

Funny... that's what I do. Email me if you want to chat.

What do we deserve?

This week is the fourth anniversary of David Bowie’s death. David Bowie was the first celebrity who pierced my consciousness who seemed to be doing exactly whatever the eff he wanted. I miss him.

Anyway. Bowie. ---> Changes. ---> The new year.

It all got me thinking.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote to you about a guy who had a lightning-bolt moment of clarity that caused him to quit smoking. (You don’t have to go back and read it, but if you want to, search in your email for “Remember when people smoked cigarettes.”)

The conclusion from the book I was quoting: “When a behavior comes into conflict with a deeply held value, it is usually the behavior that changes.”

We change when our values and our behavior don't align. We are likelier to alter the behavior than the value in order to bring everything back into alignment.

THAT was news to me.

After I wrote that email, I thought, “If values have the power to drive behavioral change, need to examine some of my values.”

I’m going to tell you what I found. But first.

Here’s something Esther Perel wrote just a couple of days ago:

Ambivalence is a very interesting piece of the human psyche.

“I want and I don't want. I want but I don't believe I can. I want but I would feel guilty if I did.”

We’re always playing this game with ourselves.

Perel, too, was musing over why we decide to do something.

She was talking about pursuing what you want. To pursue what you want, your new behavior has to align with your values.

But what about the parts of us we DE-value?

I guess you could call them our “DE-values.” They’re at the root of the ambivalence Perel is talking about.

They are the reason that whenever we pursue something we want, we carry a part of us that really doesn’t want it to happen.

Maybe we want to quit a boring job and get a better but we’re afraid of what happens if we get a job where we actually have to try. “I want… but I don’t believe I can.”

Maybe we want to (and can afford to) hire help around the house, but we’re afraid of what it means about us if we do it. “I want… but I would feel guilty.”

You could almost say,

When a new behavior comes into conflict with a deeply held DE-value, it is usually the behavior that goes back to the way it was before.

If you have a deeply held belief that de-values you—that questions whether you deserve anything good, or whether you can achieve anything on your own—then your behavior is going to follow suit to align with that belief.

...

And it's also the reason that taking care of ourselves doesn't make us feel any better. Things like taking an afternoon, or even a whole weekend away from our kids. Or getting our hair or nails done.

Those are nice activities. But they aren’t self-care. They are just scheduling.

Unless! Unless we believe we deserve them as we’re doing them.

So, what are you DE-values? Does this frame make you think about motivation differently? Curious, so let me know.

Actually, I CAN sum up what I learned in the 2010s in one sentence.

That's 2019.

The key that allows failures to happen without shame. The key that allows for gratitude and appreciation of all that I have and everyone who supported me this year. The key that allowed me to think bigger.

That. Is. It.

PS: OK so, one more thing: the idea in this sparkly photo also allowed me to develop a weekly writing practice this year that set the course for the entire future of my business.

I stopped waiting to be a good writer and started practicing as the writer I am. As a client said to me yesterday, "I don't know if I'm writing about this topic in the best way, but this is how I'm starting."

If you're thinking about writing for your business but you don't want to waste time writing blah, generic stuff that no one notices, click here to book a free clarity call with me.You’ll get 20 minutes of my time, free of charge with no obligation to buy anything. Just 20 minutes to clarify what you want to write for your business. Book here.

The power in realizing - without rushing to fix

Coming to you from inside the holidays...

Over the past few years, I played the same mental game with the holidays that I used to play with motherhood, and with adulthood in general. I.e.: I started out by trying to force myself to do the holidays “right.” But no matter what I do, they just don’t feel all that right.

Because of social media I've discovered I’m not alone in my discomfort.

My Instagram is full of men and women confessing they just don’t feel that merry, or they hate having to get dressed and put on makeup and go somewhere and tell their children to behave. Bless everyone who has shared their own holiday struggles.

Those Instagram posters aren’t trying to fix their discomfort, or themselves. They are just observing that the holidays - the way we celebrate them in our present societal moment - aren’t fun for them.

I’m not good at feeling uncomfortable and just stopping there.

When I don’t like something, most of the time I want to fix the thing so I can escape feeling uncomfortable.

For the last few years, that’s how I’ve approached each holiday. I figured the solution lay within my power. I’ve tried to host (more control over what and when we eat!) and not host (less mess to clean!) I’ve tried leaving town and also just staying home.

I’ve tried taking more time off and spending less money. I thought one of these things would “work” and I would start to enjoy myself. But I didn’t.

This year, I ran out of ideas for how to “fix” the holidays and escape my discomfort. So I’m living with it instead.

Like those wonderful Instagram posters I mentioned, I have found power in recognizing that I don’t like the holidays that much.

This year, I stop short of rushing to fix it. I stop at recognizing.

…

Earlier this year a friend told me that she liked the book All the Rage (the best book I read this year). But her issue with it was that the author, Darcy Lockman, didn’t offer solutions. She simply identified the roots of the rage that erupts inside many new mothers in the U.S.

But Lockman didn’t spend enough time telling us what to do about it.

I felt so incredibly validated by All the Rage, that I would have felt a little disappointed if Lockman had decided, after writing a book’s worth of facts that validate the rage that accompanies being a mother to young children, to “wrap up” with a summary of how to escape ALL. THE. RAGE.

We have the rage. It’s not just a here-and-there thing. It’s not something each of us brought on ourselves individually, and it’s not something we have to “fix” individually.

We can stop at recognizing. I believe we will find power in that space between recognizing and rushing to fix.

Remember when people used to smoke cigarettes?

I'm reading Motivational Interviewing. It’s a psychology textbook my husband kept telling me about.

I just started reading it yesterday and btw I have no training in psychology.

If you can accept those caveats, I will share some nuggets with you. Because this textbook is the juiciest, nuggetiest textbook I’ve ever read.

One of the things I love about this book is the method - ”motivational interviewing”- was borne of an exercise in asking a different question.

Everyone asks, “Why don’t people change even when they want to?”

A lot of people say they want to change. But they don’t do anything about it. They stay in the relationship. They keep drinking. They stay at the same dumb job. Whatever.

But instead of asking why people don’t change, these authors asked, “Why do people change?”

It turns out lots of people do change. They quit drinking. They quit the job. They stop dating people who are bad for them.

People do change.

But why? And I don’t mean “why” in some cosmic sense. I mean, what is the mechanism? What’s the finger that flips the switch?

Here’s what I got: People have to rerecognize the discrepancy between what is happening and what we want. And it has to bug us, a lot. “The larger the discrepancy the greater the importance of change.”

Pretty obvious.

But here’s an example I love from the book:

“[A man] dates his quitting smoking from a day on which he had gone to pick up his children at the city library. A thunderstorm greeted him as he arrived there; and at the same time a search of his pockets disclosed a familiar problem: he was out of cigarettes. Glancing back at the library, he caught a glimpse of his children stepping out in the rain, but he continued around the corner, certain that he could find a parking space, rush in, buy the cigarettes, and be back before the children got seriously wet. The view of himself as a father who would ‘actually leave the kids in the rain while he ran after cigarettes’ was humiliating, and he quit smoking.

It was the meaning of his smoking--the perception that it had become more important than his children--that suddenly became unacceptable to him.

When a behavior comes into conflict with a deeply held value, it is usually the behavior that changes.”

…

So, not willpower. Not beating yourself into submission. Not throwing out all your cigarettes, lighters, and matches. (Then buying replacements 4 days later after half a glass of wine. Just FOR EXAMPLE.)

And not just naturally being better than everyone else.

It’s the discrepancy. It’s about recognizing when your behavior conflicts with what you value.

That was interesting to me.

Also. Change is never achieved because someone got “the perfect advice.”

In fact, if someone gives us advice to do one thing, and we’re feeling ambivalent, we’ll feel compelled to argue for - over even choose - the OTHER thing instead.

The 2-person interaction - advisor and advisee - is a real-life representation of the ambivalence the advisee feels inside.

THAT was interesting to me. Although I know that people hate getting advice for all sorts of reasons, I’d never thought about how our inner ambivalence gets personified in the interaction.

And here’s a sweet, sweet open-handed smack for us advice givers:

“What we have learned from this is that it can be important to inhibit the ‘righting reflex.’ It is analogous to something that anyone must learn who is going to drive a vehicle on snow and ice. When the tires begin to slide off the road to the right, there is a natural tendency to turn the steering wheel to the left, because that is where you want to go. Doing so, however simply decreases control and increases skidding toward the right. Wrong as it feels in the beginning, you must turn in the direction of the skid, turn the wheel to the right when the vehicle is skidding to the right. This provides traction that allows you to redirect momentum back on to the road.”

...

You already knew all this, I’m sure.

So what implications does it have? What if knowing that gives you the power to motivate yourself to change? To help others in your life connect with their motivation to change?

Just thoughts. Just in case all those sparkly inspirational quotes on Instagram aren’t doing it for you lately.

My Wish For You in 2020

In 2020, I hope you don't create a content calendar for your business. Creating a content calendar is a swell way to do a few lousy things.

Maybe you love nice and neat content grids. But you know what else is a nice and neat grid?

THE BARS ON A JAIL CELL, PEOPLE. (At least the jails on TV.)

It’s a trap. You WILL fail to stick to the content grid at some point. And you’ll feel bad about that failure.

But what would happen if you didn’t create a content calendar, AKA a measuring stick to beat yourself with?

....

Earlier in 2019, I wrote about why I think weight loss is a goal that doesn’t work. I also wrote about how I approach financial planning, meditation, and exercise without a rigid plan.

What do all of these things have in common with each other, and also with a content calendar?

A rigid plan for them manipulates our approach to improvement. Now we are talking about willpower. We are aiming for perfection. Following the plan “perfectly.” Then inevitably falling short of the mark, and then hating ourselves for “messing up.”

Who the hell wants to do that?

...

Even if you do manage to follow the content calendar plan week after week, you might be spending time writing stuff that doesn’t make a difference to your business. That feels like anyone in your field could have written it. That doesn’t inspire you or anyone else.

So, great. You stuck to the calendar. But did you love it? Did you LIVE?

What if improvement in all these areas—health, finances, and writing for your business—could be about exploration and discovery, rather than perfection?

It’s effing hard to go from following the plan to just experiencing what it’s like to write for your business.

But the "falling off the wagon" approach with the content calendar shreds my self-esteem, and I’m sick of it. I know there’s a better way. You can even have fun. If you experiment.

You know how they say, "Dress for the job you want"?

I say, "Write for the business you want."

You need to write for the clients and allies you want to attract, not for the ones you already have. And you don't have to wait until 2020 to do it.

Worried that the topics you're coming up with are all wrong, or that you won't actually follow through? Or that you won't know what to do if people actually start to pay attention?

I coach entrepreneurs who are writing for the businesses they want to create. Hit reply and tell me if that's you... or you want it to be.

Maggie

PS: Until the end of 2019, I’m offering this personalized, one-on-one coaching for $1500. On January 1, the price goes up to $3000. If you want in on the 2019 price, email me