Crazy Enough:

“Where are you going?” “Crazy. Want to come?”  This was a sarcastic banter in my house growing up. It was sometimes meant as a way of blowing off someone being nosey. But other times it meant, I have an idea. Are you in? And you had to discern the look in the eye.
 
Alison, a client, was talking recently of her idea for a documentary and a book. She’d been interviewing people and wondered if it had any validity or if anyone would be interested. Her daughter cheered her on, saying in various ways, “Mom! You’ve got to do this!”
 
As she described it, I couldn’t wait to watch it. She is a former Olympic athlete in the prime of her 70s with a story and a way of success to tell to the generations of athletes to come, and anyone interested in their potential. 
 
How often do you pre-emptively judge yourself before anyone else can? Crazy. It’s already been written, said, or accomplished. Doubts. Anticipating criticism. Wherever the voices originated, they become your own internalizations. That is, until they’re not. 
 
When they find their true liberation, it often expresses in a way we don’t expect. Remember this, the illusions that may bind your voice, also occlude what freedom will actually look like. You may expect a pendulum swing to the opposite—from held back to badass extrovert. It’s more like, from held back to relaxed, natural, and free. And freedom is the point, is it not?
 
Ideas look for a place to land. Have you ever taken notice of the compliments you receive and those you don’t? Compliments tend to land where they resonate in some way with what you know within yourself. Otherwise, they float through like a sieve. 
 
Ideas are similar. They look for a place to flourish, a match. Someone willing to say yes to themselves. 
 
Victor Hugo, French poet and novelist said, “Nothing in the world, not all the armies, is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.” In our day and age, marketing technique can overtake and manipulate the actual value of an idea. No matter. Make yourself a vessel for the ideas that are searching for you, for you to shape them with your expression.
 
Whether that idea is how you’re going to leave surprises for your love everyday, a painting that must be painted, a car built, a marketing plan, a child conceived, a business started or expanded, a team culture developed, a body healed, a life lived…
 
Ideas come, and so do the doubts, to help you define what no longer holds sway in your life. And define what does.
 
So, do I want to come? Well, yes, I’d love to. After all, crazy is in the eye of the beholder. And I hang with amazing people.

Here’s to more of You in this world, 

Shelley