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Speaker 1: Hi, and welcome to your Write Your Story podcast. Good job, Curly.
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Speaker 2: Pick up the pieces of your life Put them back together with the words you write All the beauty and peace and the magic that you'll start to find When you write your story You've got the words inside, don't you think it's time To let them out and write them down Uncover what it's all about And write your.
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Speaker 1: Hi, friend, and welcome back to the Write Your Story podcast. I'm Allie Fallon. I'm your host. And on today's episode, I want to talk about the next step to take in your creative journey to really activate your creativity, that life force energy that is in all of us that lies dormant sometimes, or not even dormant, but that can sometimes get kind of dulled down or repressed and suppressed for all kinds of different reasons, which I'll talk about on the episode today. And there's one simple thing that every single one of us can do every day, all day, many times a day, that is absolutely guaranteed to activate your creative energy, to bring the fullness of you online. Sometimes the experience can be kind of uncomfortable. So I'll talk about that, what to do when it becomes really uncomfortable. But I'll tell you, like, this is fail-proof, like 100% foolproof. This will activate you. It will cue up your creativity. And if nothing else, it'll give you something really interesting to talk about. This is also fascinating to me because this really fits in with storytelling principles, which I teach a lot. The next step is this. Just take what my friend Ruthie calls aligned messy action. I love her wording for this. This is something that I have known to be true and feel deep in my bones. And when she and I first started talking about it, as we were discussing what we were going to teach in this new program that we created together called The River Within, we were creating the outline for what we were going to teach. And one of the weeks we talked about teaching this concept of aligned messy action. And she's the one who gave it that language for me, which I love. for so many reasons, one of which is because this really fits with what I teach about storytelling principles and storytelling techniques. When you're telling a story, the only way to move the plot forward in the story is to have the hero of the story, the protagonist, the main character, take action. The only way the plot of the story moves forward is when the hero takes action. The plot doesn't move forward when the hero thinks about something or The plot doesn't move forward when the hero considers something. The plot doesn't move forward when the hero figures something out. The plot only moves forward in a story when the hero takes action. And this sometimes is, I think, where we go wrong as it relates to our creativity, where we go wrong as it relates to the problems and issues that we're trying to solve in our life, is we feel like problem solving, fixing issues in our life, getting healed, whatever, is a mental thing. process, that it's something we've got to learn a new skill. We've got to learn a new concept. We've got to really understand. We've got to take it in. We've got to figure it out in our brains. And this is just simply not how healing works. It's not how solutions work. It's not how stories work. And the only way that a story moves forward, the only way that your life will move forward is through the hero, the protagonist, the main character taking action. So when Ruthie used this term of aligned messy action, I really loved this. It really resonated with me because I thought, You know, a lot of what's getting in our way, a lot of what's keeping people stuck is a fear of taking action without having first figured something out, which when you think about this, when you really peel back the layers on this idea is counterintuitive because how do we figure things out? We figure things out by first taking action. You take action, you fail at something, it doesn't work. And so then you rethink it and then you try again. And this is how anybody learns anything. It's how a toddler learns how to walk. It's how a toddler learns how to talk. It's how Kids learn how to draw their letters. It's how they learn how to attach sounds to letters. Everything you've ever learned in your life, you've learned from acting, messing up, and then trying again. That is the only way to learn anything. And I tell my kids this all the time. I'm like, you're going to fail a hundred times at things that you try. It's so important that when you fail, you get up and try again. And my son has started taking jujitsu lessons. And I love that the jujitsu instructor teaches this to the kids explicitly. He talks about how when you fall down on the mat, what's the most important thing you can do? And the kids go, get up and try again. And I'm just like, yes, I'm so glad that my son is learning this at four years old, because for some of us, it takes our whole lives to learn that failure is part of life. And that what we have to do once we fail is just get up and try again. That the only way for us to learn is to fail at something a hundred times. And this is something that I'm having to remind myself in my life and something that Ruthie and I were really moved by as we were talking about what to teach inside of this particular container. that we're creating. And so I wanted to spend some time talking about it today, this aligned messy action. I think one of the things that keeps us stuck, that keeps us from living our most creative lives, from being in connection with our joy, from trying things that we've always wanted to try that have been on our bucket list forever. One of the things that keeps us in kind of like, uh, like in the mode of our programming or in the mode of our conditioning disconnected from our true self is the fear of taking aligned messy action. the fear of taking an action that isn't going to go the way that
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we hope it will go. And so what a lot of people do, and I find women do this more than anyone, is perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect. We want to make sure we've got it exactly right before we even give it a try. And what Ruthie and I were talking about is that really in order to heal, in order to get over these roadblocks that are in front of us in order to access our most powerful selves. We have to be willing to step into the action before we feel we're ready. I've mentioned this book before, but there's this amazing book called The Confidence Code by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman. And I'll put the book in the show notes, but it's an amazing book that details how women experience confidence differently than men and how our culture creates that reality for us. Like men are will see a job description where they only qualify for 60% of the requirements and they'll be like, I'll give it a shot. And women will see the same job description. They'll qualify for 90% or 95%, I'm sorry, of the requirements and they'll count themselves out of applying because they think that they don't know that one skill that's on the list that doesn't fit with their resume. So men experience This sensation of like, oh, sure, yeah, I'll give it a try. And women a lot of times are like, no, I have to learn that before I can even apply for the job. This is just a way that women move through the world. And I think it prevents a lot of us from experiencing our deepest power because we're unwilling to really try something before we feel like we have all of the answers, before we feel like we really cognitively understand it. And the paradigm shift that so many of us need to make in order to, yeah, in order to access, like in order to stay in alignment with with our truest selves, we have to be willing to take messy action, which is why I love the language of aligned messy action. Because imagine this, like my kids, for example, they do this art program called art with Lauren. That's so amazing. It's this woman who teaches like a little art lesson on YouTube and, she teaches like a lesson about the artist and then teaches them how to do a certain type of watercolor painting, whatever they're working on that day. And she'll play music and she'll, you know, like, yeah, share facts and quotes about the artists and stuff and walk them through this experience of learning how to do a watercolor. My kids will sit there and they'll ask me sometimes to sit and paint with them. I'm a terrible artist. Like I don't, at least that medium does not, it's not my gift. It's not my strong suit. But in order to sit with them and paint, I have to be willing to take messy action. I have to be willing to just give it a try. Just get some paint on the paper. That's the whole goal this first time around is just get some paint on the paper. And I tell them that all the time too. And kids don't have the same blockages that we do around taking messy action. They don't hesitate to take messy action. The older they get, the more that hesitation comes into play once they've really failed at something a time or two. they really start to feel the anticipatory pain of what could happen if they embarrass themselves or what could happen if they fall, the pain they might feel. But when kids are really little, they just don't have that like self-consciousness at all. And so they're very, very willing to take messy action. And I think that we could stand to benefit from a willingness to take messy action as well. It's like, I could sit here all day and and come up with a strategy, come up with a plan. I could come up with a framework. I could learn a new concept. I could memorize the dates, memorize facts, understand the data. And those could be helpful things, but none of them are helpful or useful unless I do something with it. And so I want you to take a minute and consider in what area of your life you're feeling stuck. And then ask yourself, what is one thing way that I could take aligned messy action. So let me break this down a little bit. So not just like a random thing that doesn't, you know, interest you or sound fun at all. Something that's truly aligned with who you want to be and how you want to be in the world. I'm picturing myself before I started ever taking improv classes. I was like, this terrifies me. I'm going to be terrible at this. And also, this is a growth edge that I can feel that I know I want to lean into. So I'm going to take a line to messy action. So I signed up. Level one improv class, Third Coast Comedy Club. If you're in Nashville, highly, highly recommend. take classes with Third Coast. It's so awesome. But that was a growth edge for me. It was something that, again, I knew that I was going to be terrible at it and I was not wrong. I was in a group of, in that first level, I think, I don't know, 15 or 20 people. And of the 15 or 20 people, I was probably, you know, I'm not being self-deprecating. I was like in the lower 40% of skills of people who are in that group. And then What ended up happening is I ended up staying on for levels two, three, four, five, and six. And the higher up I got, the lower down the totem pole I became. In other words, like all the really skilled people kept going on and I was just determined to keep going because I just really wanted to throw myself out there and get over this fear of what would happen if I opened my mouth and started speaking without a plan. And you know what? I was not the best improver on that stage. We performed on stage several times and I was probably the worst, like bottom tier for sure of improvers on that stage. But one thing that grew out of that was my ability and my willingness to record this podcast without needing to do a bunch of research ahead of time, show up with notes, have a big outline. One of the things that I knew I wanted to do was to have the capacity and the ability to to come into the moment, to stay present, to listen to
what was trying to come through me and just open my mouth and speak, just open my mouth and let what's trying to come through, come through. And I would never ever be doing this podcast if it weren't for my experience with improv. So the aligned messy action that we take, sometimes we don't know where it's going to take us, but we take it simply because it's aligned and it's messy. It's like, this is aligned with a passion I have. It's on the growth edge of how I want to, you know, how I want to move through the world, how I want to grow, how I want to become better. And also, I don't really know what I'm doing. So I'm just going to jump in, and we're going to see how this goes. I'll tell you, I was working with an author who I really admire and respect. This is a handful of years ago, and I can't share his name because I've signed an NDA. But very, very successful author who, again, I admire and respect. There are so many different things about him and ways that he moves through the world that I'm like, oh, gosh, I wish I could be more confident like that. I wish I could really you know, like lean into my skills the way that he has. And he's, he's created something really spectacular. I was helping him work on this book about confidence of all things. And I was asking him how he gained the confidence that he has. And he was sharing this story with me about how he just started giving himself these personal challenges where something would really scare him. Like for him, it was like, you know, he was younger and it would really scare him to go talk, go up and talk to a beautiful woman. And so he would give himself this challenge where he had to go up and speak to this beautiful woman and just find a way to start a conversation with her. And he would throw himself into the deep end on purpose with an activity or a topic that made him feel uncomfortable as a way to exercise that muscle of being willing to be with the discomfort and taking a line to messy action. So he gave me this assignment because he was asking me, okay, well, what gets in your way as it relates to confidence? And I was like, well, I feel like I... can talk to pretty much any stranger I I don't feel like I lack confidence in that respect and I'm like I've been on stages and I do pretty okay on stages and I feel pretty confident as an author I was like what one of the things that really gets in my way is I would never in a million years and this is at the time I was living in LA and in LA you do a lot of like networky things where you just are kind of thrown into a room with a bunch of people that you don't know and you have to just kind of work the room and move around the room and find people to talk to and I was like That is my least favorite environment. I'm terrified in that environment. I feel like I don't know how to wrap up one conversation and move on to the next. I don't know how to start a conversation with a new person without seeming awkward. So he gave me this assignment to basically walk into a coffee shop, wherever I was, walk up to a group of people. It had to be a group of people, of three or more people, and to ask a question or just kick off a conversation with total strangers. And so I started doing this regularly when I was living in LA, this is before the pandemic. So probably like mid 2019, I started doing this as I was working with him. We, I would walk into a room and I would just be like, it was like the scariest thing that you could possibly ask of me to walk up to a group of total strangers in a coffee shop, unsuspecting strangers who were already having a conversation and just be like, Hey, how are you guys doing today? The whole thing felt so awkward to me, but I just started to do it as a way to exercise the muscle of taking a line to messy action. It was like, If I can break through this fear of what might happen if I step into this group of strangers, what could I be capable of? What could be possible for me if I wasn't so afraid of what these people are going to think of me when I walk up to them and start asking questions? And so I had that experience with him. Fast forward many years later, you know, my husband and I, I've shared this story at length on the podcast, so I don't need to get into the whole thing, but my husband and I made a business investment that went south and we ended up losing a bunch of money. It was not, this was absolutely aligned to messy action. I did not know how messy it was going to be when I took action. I did not know that we would lose our life savings. I did not know we would go into like mountains and mountains of debt. It was like, you know, like I said, I don't need to get into all the details of it, but it was like a slow fade where I you're making these small little decisions that over time you're just like, oh no, we've gotten ourself into this big mess. How are we going to get out? So it was like the messiest action I've ever taken in my life and also extremely aligned. And I, as you've heard, if you've listened for many months or years, I have really struggled with the tension between that aligned messy action because we felt so pulled and so called to create this thing that we were trying to create. This wasn't just like ooh, I have a brilliant business idea. Let's give it a try. It was like someone came to us with an idea. We sat with it. We felt like intense curiosity over it. It felt really exciting. Matt and I were both aligned. We were aligned with this partner. We brought on other partners along the way. We were aligned with them. It felt at every turn, it was like there were synchronicities. There were these signs that felt like they were came from heaven to say like, keep going, keep, you know, keep following this path, following your journey. And so many different times where we would be almost about to quit and then something would happen and it would be like, oh no, we're meant to continue with this. So it felt more aligned than
almost anything has ever felt in my whole life. And to the point where I was convinced that a miracle was going to happen and this thing was going to work. And that's not what happened. it turned into one of the most messy experiences of my life, where there was a lot of loss, a lot of disappointment, a lot of grief, a lot of despair over this. It made me call into question so many things. And yet, and yet, it's also, I'm starting to see for the first time, I'm excited to get to share that I'm starting to see for the first time how this experience has changed who I am as a person, how this experience has, has been part of life's intention of calling us forward. Our life is constantly speaking to us. It's constantly trying to call us forward, to call us up. Your creativity is constantly speaking to you. It's that ache that you feel inside, that tug that you feel to go write a book or to pick up a guitar or to go talk to that person or to try to start a business or to start a side hustle or to get on sub stack or to whatever it is for you. Like that little tug that you feel is your creativity trying to wake you up to the fullness of yourself. And in order to meet the fullness of yourself, you will also meet all of your shadow, all of your darkness, all of the scary parts of you, all of the loss, the despair, the shame that like it all is going to come up, which is why I said at the beginning of the episode that taking a line to messy action will probably bring up for you some uncomfortable feelings that as it has for me, even just walking up to a stranger in a coffee shop and saying like a group of strangers and being like, Hey, how's your day going? How are you guys doing? You know, and they're staring at you like, uh, good, I think fine. You know, like that experience, whatever. And maybe to you, that doesn't sound like anything. Maybe to you, you're like, Oh yeah, that would be no, no problem at all. In that case, it's not your aligned messy action. In my case, it brings up for me feelings of embarrassment, feelings of shame that then I have this opportunity to sit with and to face and to think about and to overcome and to step over and to come into the fullness of myself where that's no longer controlling me. It doesn't mean I have to walk up to a stranger in a coffee shop every day of my life, but now I know I'm capable of that. And let me tell you with this business investment that my husband and I made, One of the amazing things that has been born out of this experience is I realized, oh my gosh, these things that I was so scared of my whole life, being in debt, filing for bankruptcy, running out of money. Uh, let me try. I think if there's another way to basically say the same thing, but yeah, like those things are things I have been terrified of my whole life. They have controlled my very existence and I have faced all three of them down in the last couple of years and they're unpleasant and but not nearly as scary as I thought they were.
And that's one of the beautiful things about taking a line to messy action is that it puts us face to face with our fears and it helps us realize that we really don't have anything to be that afraid of. So, What is aligned messy action for you? I think this is what keeps a lot of people stuck in their creativity, stuck in their relationships, stuck in their finances, stuck with their art, stuck in their lives, stuck in their healing in general, is that we're doing a lot of healing through thinking and we're not doing a lot of healing through feeling. And the only way to get to those feelings is to take aligned messy action. So you take aligned messy action like you walk up to a stranger in a coffee shop. It brings up this wave of shame for you. And then you sit with that feeling. And when you're healing through a feeling, no pun intended, you're healing a lot faster than when you're healing through a thought. Does this make sense? So you can think all day, I have a trauma pattern. And it really brings up shame for me when I think about talking to a stranger. That's fine. I mean, that's one level, I guess. But when you actually feel the feeling of shame, that is your real opportunity for growth and for change and for healing. So without aligned messy action, you really can't make that much progress with healing. And I think it's one of the reasons why, as I've talked about, that I have reached the end, maybe not the end, the end of this particular journey with talk therapy. I've done so much talk therapy in my life. And I said in a previous episode, like, I don't think I can do a single other hour of talk therapy. I will just like, blah, like I will barf if I have to hear myself tell the story again. Because there's only so much healing you can do through thinking. But when you get your body involved, when you actually take action, that's when all the opportunity and all the possibility opens up. So what's the thing that you've been thinking about doing but refusing to take action on for months and months and months and months or maybe years? Have you been thinking about writing a book, but you haven't picked up the pen one time? Have you been thinking about hiring a therapist, but haven't actually picked up the phone to call? Watch the way your body responds when you pick up the phone to call. Have you been thinking about going on a date, but you haven't actually gotten on the app? Or you haven't actually texted a friend and say, hey, do you know anyone you could set me up with? Have you been thinking about having a baby, but you haven't actually said to your husband, like, let's try. Let's just see what happens if we try. What is it that you've been thinking about doing or thinking about creating or thinking about healing, but you haven't actually allowed yourself to take aligned messy action? I'm telling you right now, the aligned messy action is the thing that will move you forward. It is the missing lever in your creative life. It is the missing lever in your life of meaning, your life of adventure. If you're feeling bored in your life, if you're feeling That ache, like, oh, I know there has to be more than this. Action, action, action, action. In storytelling, if there's no action, there's no story. If the hero is not doing anything, like imagine going to see a movie where the hero is sitting on their couch watching Netflix, drinking a beer. It would be a very boring, very short, very uninteresting movie. But when we watch the hero be forced to take action that they may or may not even want to take, that's when the movie starts to get interesting. So aligned to messy action can be forced upon us sometimes too. Sometimes aligned to messy action comes because you say yes, like in the beginning of this business investment, we say yes to the idea, we get started, we get our bodies involved, and then all of a sudden things start to get messy, things start to get complicated, and you have a choice. Am I gonna stay in this or am I gonna back out? Staying in when things get messy is where things also get interesting. In every single story ever told, When you stay in the story, when things get messy, that's when things get interesting. So in what ways are you avoiding aligned messy action? I think a lot of times because of our confidence, because of our perfectionism, because of the way, especially as women that we've been conditioned and trained to second guess ourselves, to question ourselves, to hold back our bodies, to live in our minds, because of all of those things, we think, I have to learn more. I have to understand more. I have to conceptualize more. I have to get a better framework. I have to get a better strategy. I need to find an expert. I need to reach out for help. I need someone else to show me. I need X, Y, Z. I need to perfect the plan before I can move forward. I need to think it through some more. I'm not ready yet. You're right. You're not ready yet. You never will be ready. There's no such thing as ready. And now is the time to take aligned messy action. It can be small. It does not have to be you know, invest your entire life savings in a business deal. I would maybe say like, don't do that. If, unless you're, you know, really, unless you're really feeling like you want to jump in the deep end, but some aligned messy action you could take, you could literally pick up a paintbrush and try a medium that you've never tried before. Like you could try watercolor painting and just see how it feels. That could be aligned messy action for you. Aligned messy action for you could be making a phone call and starting a conversation that you have been putting off with someone who you love, but who you've been missing a for weeks or months or years, you could say like, I don't know how to have this conversation, but I know that we need to have it. Could we at least get started? That could be a line to messy action for you. A line to messy action for you could be opening up your
bank account and taking a look at what's going on in there. Maybe taking stock, taking a survey about where am I spending my money? What does that say about where I'm putting my value? Where would I like to spend, like what, where would it feel good to me to spend more money And where would it feel good to me to spend less money? Maybe that's aligned messy action for you. That really gets the body involved. You know, you can conceptualize your money all you want, but then when you start to look at the numbers, it's like, ooh, now my body's involved. Now I'm feeling things. And now you have a feeling to work with instead of just a thought. As long as you're only working with thoughts, as long as your body is not involved, you're going to have a really hard time moving through the experience and experiencing anti-healings. getting to the other side of the rut, whatever the rut is that you're in. So this concept of aligned messy action is extremely powerful. It's so important. It's really often missed because of the world that we live in, because we really elevate and value thoughts, ideas, data, understanding, cognitive, you know, whatever, over the body, over embodiment, over action. over the mess. The mess is an important part of the process. And I'm saying this to myself as I say it to you, because you also might be in the middle of what is an aligned messy action right now, and you might be shaming yourself for it. I know I was. I know I have spent a lot of months, if not years of my life, shaming myself for doing what is actually such a powerful thing to do, taking aligned messy action. Just freaking going for it. Just take a step in the right direction and You don't know if it's going to work out. It may not work out. There's a good chance it won't work out. And you know what? When it doesn't work out, you're going to be fine. You're going to do great. This is how we heal. This is how we learn. This is how we grow. This is how we move through life. This is how you live your life as an epic adventure instead of a boring drag of a life. So aligned messy action might be already unfolding in your life. You might be able to point to where, oh, yeah, already. Look, wherever in your life you see a mess, A line to messy action is already happening. And so cut yourself some slack there and go, whatever feelings this is bringing up for me, it's all part of it. It's all my life talking to me. It's all my deepest self, my true self trying to wake up, trying to get me to pay attention. It's all on purpose. None of this is an accident. This is my creativity speaking to me, whispering to me, asking to, you know, inviting me on this adventure, inviting me to a more exciting existence. And maybe when we stop shaming our aligned messy action, then maybe we can experience it as the powerful lever that it actually is. So take some time to think about where you might already be in aligned messy action in your life. Take some time to think about where your life is inviting you to take an aligned and messy step into the unknown to experience a feeling in your body so that you can move through it and realize it's not going to kill you. And in fact, This is your lever to more, the more powerful version of you, the more creative version of you, the more, yeah, the more confident version of you, the fuller version of you, like more power, more of you. Yes, yes, yes. It is the way our lives are calling us home. Thanks for listening and I'll see you back next week on the Write Your Story podcast.