THE PUSH.

Photo by Brandi Moore / BMA

As I sit here on an early Thursday afternoon, I scan the vast array of Magazines that lie across my living room floor.

The purpose? To lay them all out and see what came. A few things were noticeable in the patterns and recurring cover styles. Especially the publications I have 2 or 3 issues of. But what stood out most wasn’t so much the covers; it was the noticeable similarity in positioning and wording across most of these magazines.

The biggest notice. How does the reader “deal” with the reality of stress, overwhelm, and life’s other daunting experiences? It was the letter from the Editor-in-Chief of Upstate Dairy that best shared the answer by mentioning each and every Artist highlighted in the current issue. The answer was through creativity. It’s the mindless activity of creating that helps us escape the power of our own minds. And even this morning, scrolling as quickly as possible to get to my YouTube app before getting sucked into the distractions of other videos or advertisements, they snagged me. Just for a moment, a Tony Robbins interview peeks out just below my breath work exercise I was about to hit play on. I hesitated.

Here’s the thing… the universe uses the internet too. I’m laughing inside, and out, but it’s TRUE. To be present, you engage with awareness. In your moment of awareness, a message, a sign, something you needed to see or hear may present itself, and it’s up to us to decide, using feeling rather than thought, whether we should follow.

And so in that moment, it comes. “The Universe is asking me to listen…” Even in all my rushing and determination NOT to look at anything else and do this DAMN MEDITATION so I can function today… I leaned in.

10 minutes in. Tony mentions the “push” and “pull” we do. “PUSH” was the exact word I mentioned in a conversation the evening before, in describing what we often do as Creatives. Let's also give acknowledgment to the shooting star that passed by, just as I said, “We just need to be in our flow and stop pushing.” Talk about confirmation! But the truth was, just 30 minutes before that conversation, I found myself at my desk, pushing. Pushing so hard to want to create that I finally recognized it when things weren’t flowing anymore. I was just forcing creativity at that point.

Have you ever forced creativity?? All I can say is, don’t. It’s a disaster most of the time. Like all life things that never worked out as well as they could have because we pushed too hard.

And as many of the magazines on the floor to my left also mention — The Burnout — I want to remind us all of the light it sheds on the world most people are living in these days.

Let’s all start by creating time to ask ourselves how we feel. Scale it from 1 - 10 if you need to. If you’re above 5, there’s already an imbalance. What does that mean? It means it’s time to make time for yourself. Even the smallest resets can change our entire mood. And that can mean many things for different people. I met a Graphic Designer at a Chocolate shop just the other day, and I shared my chocolate with them. She shared that she designed the labels for a very well-known cleaning product. I asked her how that was going. She mentioned it wasn’t fancy at all and that she did that as her “job,” but her real love was her newfound pleasure in playing the cello. She had always wanted to play as a child. She wasn’t great at it, but it made her happy, and that was all that mattered.

In order for us to show up for ourselves and for everyone around us, yes, that includes the cashier at the grocery store, checking in with ourselves should be a daily ritual. We have an obligation to be good to ourselves and the people around us. And once we can start there, the flow begins…

Be well. Be Strong. Keep Creating. And remember, slow and steady wins. Life is not a race. ;)

With encouragement and always support,

Brandi Moore