One Brick at a Time

Surfing through YouTube  I ran across an interview with actor, Will Smith.  He was sharing his philosophy of life. In the interview; he told a story about a challenge his father had given him and his brother.  The father had torn down a brick wall in front of his business and told 12-year old Will and his 9-year old brother to rebuild it. The boys felt they had been handed an impossible task, but they did it. A year and a half later, a wall stood where the ruble had laid and it had grown by laying one perfectly placed brick at a time.

If you have been following my blog, you’ve read about changes that have occurred for me this year. My last two posts were about creating a more balanced reality while I process through the result of old thinking. I am managing, but sometimes I feel like a swimmer desperately treading water while an undertow takes charge of the direction.

The last time I felt this way was almost 25 years ago. I walked out of a bad relationship and moved to Florida. I would be a partial caregiver for my recently widowed grandmother; she had Alzheimer’s. A roof over my head and food on the table were the wages offered; some kind of income was needed.  In the past, I had a part-time business selling cosmetics on the party plan. The flexibility of the hours was ideal in this situation and one of the company’s incentives was the opportunity to win the use of a car. I needed a car. However, I did not know anyone in the area except my grandmother, and she of course could not remember anyone she knew. I had hit a wall.

The car was important to me, or at least the freedom it represented.  Once I knew what I wanted I could figure out what I needed. I took the psychological wall and broke it down into pieces by creating a daily plan of action. All I had to do was attend weekly training meetings and focus on the daily steps. In just 4 months I won the car and began qualifications as a sales trainer.

Will Smith’s story became a light in a room that had been slowly graying. The circumstances were new but my feelings were not. I have a desire that involves writing and lecturing, yet just as in the past, the obstacles appearing seemed overwhelming. I had to take charge of the direction; but how? I needed a way to break the whole into tiny workable pieces; and then it came. There was a posted invitation to join an on-line, 40-day writer’s workshop structured around talking to the inner-self. Because of its nature, it came with disciplined steps, rituals, and affirmations that could help writers move into a creative space.  These were the bricks I needed, offering me flexibility, a support group, and a daily plan of action.