Recovering from the Tyranny of Ambition and Detaching from Outcomes
For the Worldbuilders Ep. 051
“As fleet and bright as a lodestar, he wheeled towards Guitar and it did not matter which one of them would give up his ghost in the killing arms of his brother. For now he knew what Shalimar knew: If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.”
— Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (1977)
Dear Worldbuilder,
It’s Thursday, the day For the Worldbuilders and this week I talk about how I’m making necessary adjustments to align my practice with my capacity. Maybe you can relate? Maybe you feel it too? The moon pulling us closer to the shore of our bodies. The sun reminding us it’s okay to bathe in the rays, because constant blooming is unnatural.
Lately I’ve been wondering: what would it feel like to pause and breathe into a longgggg, deep stretch instead of a sprint? I need to continue challenging myself. Rigor, change and curiosity are the electricity of a creative life, I’m clear on that. Capricorn rising, Gemini Sun here. But what does it look like to prioritize the steady over the surge, the flow over the wave? What does it look like to prioritize the practice over the launch?
Inside This Week’s Podcast Episode
We reflect on:
🧘🏾 How our capacity might feel more expansive after releasing, letting go, detaching in healthy ways
🕳️ How working in our Zone of Validation can slowly siphon time, energy and power from our Zone of Desire
💸 The anxiety of temporarily compromising your income in order to honor your desire and shifting capacity
🌉 The dream I had featuring Sonya Renee Taylor, brutalist bridges and black water (more on that in the episode!)
✍🏾 How my book writing process started with a literary agent reaching out after subscribing to the newsletter (my “Weekly Dispatch”)
⚒️ How I’m shifting my creative energy to some of the few things I can control like how and how often I’m showing up inside the podcast, inside the newsletters, inside the book, inside the dispatches from the world I’m tending to
✨ Lastly, I reflect on my birthday new year, with the personal declaration: ambition is out and vulnerability is in
This Week’s Journal Prompt
What does it look like to prioritize the practice over the launch?
Journal with it, free write with it and if you feel comfortable, share your reflections with us by responding via email or in the comments. In this episode I talk about how “Weekly Dispatches” might serve as generative training ground for some of the practices collective liberation require of us: learning in public, visioning new worlds and transforming through accountability and discomfort. More on this next week! We’ll be covering topics like this and more inside The Treehouse, a creative accountability community for practicing inside our desire, learning in public and pressing “publish”. Register for the free Worldbuilding Workshop to learn more and practice alongside us!
So be it, see to it, breathe through it,
Ayana
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