Walking in this World—Week 1, Day 5

Express Yourself

Things you may (or may not) already know about me:

1. I am a writer.
2. I am a performer.
3. I am a freelance life coach.

You'd think that by combining these 3 skills and talents I'd be pretty good at selling myself, right? The sad truth is, I'm not!

This week I've been filling in application forms galore. I need to express myself, my vision for my work and how I hope to progress my career over the coming year. It has been highly frustrating, mainly because it has involved having to talk a lot about myself to the nth degree—and when I start that level of self-analysis, I inevitably begin to question my self worth.

I forced myself to take a break from stressing and putting myself down to re-read some of the grounding statements and positive affirmations from The Artist's Way. As I did so, a postcard slid out the book; I had placed it there to mark the section about creating a collage of images. I always meant to go back and keep adding to my wee flip book of photographs of things I had achieved and things that make me happy. This particular postcard was sent to me by a playwright and friend who has long encouraged and motivated me, and on the reverse simply reads “Keep going—you're doing great!”—it finally has pride of place in my little collection. I added the flyer from my recent tour, a postcard for the exhibition I was part of earlier in the year, and a print out of a poem I'm having published in a few months.

After this, I remembered that I had one more task to complete for the week. Titled Express Yourself, it asks you to list 10 positive adjectives to describe yourself—exactly the problem I've been having with my applications this week!

Here's what I came up with:

1. Passionate
2. Articulate
3. Creative
4. Insightful
5. Funny
6. Intelligent
7. Caring
8. Accepting
9. Loyal
10. Enthusiastic

I immediately wondered if others consider these to be a good reflection—what do you think? Is this how I present myself to the world, whether in person or virtual? If you come up with a word or two that you think describe me better then please share; just don't forget it's the positive ones we're concentrating on for this task!

Armed with my new list of positive ways to express myself, I'm going to tackle these application forms again this weekend with renewed vigour.

We've got our first creative cluster check in tonight. I'll be video calling Debbie in London and Mandi in Melbourne to see how we've all gotten on.

K