Choose the Next Right Thing
When you need to take a step but don’t know the path; start smaller.
When you need to take a step but don’t know the path; start smaller.
This plant is amazing. So many leaves and variations of color. I really want to draw it but it’s too much. It’s overwhelming. I should just pick something else to draw.
In my effort to develop my art skills I was taking a drawing class that met at a greenhouse. Plants were the perfect subject for building confidence in my skills because they are already beautiful, they hold still, and if I messed up the shape of a leaf, it was much less noticeable than trying to draw a hand or a nose. But I stuck to the plants with big, bold leaves. With those leaves it was easy to understand how to go about representing them in line and shape. Scenes with an explosion of life and leaves and flowers scared me away no matter how much I wanted to capture them. The gulf between the details I could see and the details I could hope to capture was too wide to cross.
Just Chose the Next Right Thing
When I didn’t know how I was ever going to fully capture all the amazing details I envisioned for my drawing, it used to freeze me up. Because I couldn’t picture every step along the way, I would give up before I even started. Or sometimes I would draw something I thought I knew how to represent only to find myself visually lost in my drawing, no longer confident if I was still drawing reality or if I had been tricked by my lazy brain into drawing what it assumed was there.
In the past when I hit this point, I’ve taken it as a sign that I’m not cut out for detailed drawing. I’d learned to push myself to keep going even when I hated how everything looked, but I didn’t really know what to do instead. Usually I would abandon my original vision and work in a loose sketch. Sometimes I would switch to adding patterns or shapes to my design instead of what I could see. I would give up my plan because I couldn’t see all of the steps it would take me to get there.
One night, while working on a realistic pencil drawing of a succulent, I hit the wall. No longer sure which leaf I was even working on, I froze under the weight of how long I’d been working with nothing good to show for it. I hated myself for wasting my time and for failing. But instead of quitting, I stopped looking at how much I still had to do. I told myself to pick a single leaf and work until it was closer to what I saw in front of me. Then I picked the next one, then another. I kept going until somehow at the end I had a drawing that looked remarkably close to what I had set out to draw.
This Also Works in Life
My career in the alcohol industry was amazing. And then the pandemic hit and suddenly all the things I loved about my job, sharing products with buyers, planning events, working with reps, all disappeared. I was drinking too much out of anxiety but was also sick of alcohol. Even as things opened back up, the spark was still gone. I was bored and ready to move on but I didn’t know what I should do instead.
So I tried moving towards the things that were helping me. Like making art and having a small group of friends over instead of going out to bars. That didn’t help with knowing what to do about work, but it helped me see what kind of lifestyle and activities I valued. As I started looking for the next right step, I knew that creativity and moving away from alcohol was going to be a better place for me.
Then one day I called someone who worked for a vodka brand I sold and he told me he didn’t work for them anymore, he was working for a cannabis company now and he loves it. That conversation eventually led to receiving a job offer from the same company six months later. When I was trying to decide if I should take the job or not I didn’t know if this was really the direction I wanted to take my career permanently. But I realized this step was a step closer to the life I want.
Who knows what the next ten years will hold? I don’t know if I will blossom into the artist I’ve always wanted to be or if I will abandon this attempt like all the others. Will I still work for the same company or live in the same state? Given the events of the past ten years, I don’t know if anything will look the same. But I can look at where I am now and pick the next right thing to get me, and the world, closer to where I want to be.
If You Don’t Know the Steps Think Smaller
Sometimes the best way to get moving on something is to put blinders on and focus on what’s in front of you instead of the finish line. This has helped me with cleaning the house and working on my relationships. My kid once came to me to talk about cutting themselves. I had zero clue what to do, and I was terrified. What did it mean? Do I rush them into therapy? Or would overreacting keep them from opening up to me in the future? Ultimately, I took the first step that I felt I knew was right. First I stayed calm, hugged them, and thanked them for telling me. The steps after that came slower, but we eventually navigated through it.
Even if all you know is that you don’t want to be where you are, pick the next small thing you can accomplish to get one step further away. If you don’t know what that step is think smaller. Still not a clue, get smaller still. Maybe the only next right step you know is to let yourself rest. If so, do that. After each step get comfortable there. Then when you are secure, take the next one. The path might not lead where you expect but it will be better than where you are now.
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