Confused And Doubtful About Your Writing Journey? — Follow Your Inner Compass.
Don’t be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.
Upcoming episode on Becoming A Writer podcast this Saturday — we are going to talk about being slow and steady to have a fun writing life.
Don’t be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.
- Roy T. Bennett
Back in March, I was going through a creatively low phase. It’s not that I was doubting myself, but I was definitely tired of keeping my creative fight going. Eight years of being an apprentice to the writer gods… no wonder I am getting tired.
And don’t get me wrong — all through these years, I have had small wins and nudges that let me know what I am doing is worth the effort and time. (The biggest small win is the satisfaction I feel each night after a day well spent working on my writing dreams.) Now, I wish for a big win, a win that shows me — externally — that I am doing well with my writing.
Just when I am about to throw my hands up, even if it’s only for a minute, a notification drops in on my Medium page. It’s a comment, and here’s what it said -
By the time I reached the end of the second sentence, I was having trouble reading as my eyes filled up with salty water. I sat back and read the comment again three times before replying with a grateful message. Then, I printed the comment and stuck it in my gratitude journal.
By the end of it all, I was humbled and knew I was taken care of and that my efforts with my writing were not going to waste. “Healing and Inspiring” is precisely what I want my words to be, and seeing that at least one person thinks I got it right is so validating. It did make me feel valid!
Now, it’s very easy to brush off such a compliment from, technically, a stranger online as a courteous remark — them being polite. But over the years, I have understood that subtle messages like this one are a sign that you are on the right track.
Many times, when I am feeling disheartened, close to apathy, close to giving up, I will get a sign that all is good.
A line in a song playing in the background while I am reading my book. A dialogue by a character when watching a show or movie to pass my tired self through the rest of the evening. Or, in this case, a comment from a lovely stranger while I was dragging my creative self. One time, when I was attending the Sunday morning mass and crying to Jesus to tell me what I should do, and the choir decided to play one of my favourite hymns — One Day At A Time.
It couldn’t have been any more obviously synchronistic than that! These are nudges from my inner compass telling me to keep having faith.
When such incidents happen, I take a deep breath and get back to what I was supposed to do.
But What Is An Inner Compass? And How Does It Work?
A tiny disclaimer -
What I’m about to say is what I have learnt so far in my life. Is this the only definition and way the inner compass works? I don’t think so. There are so many of us on this planet, so I am pretty sure there are different iterations for it. And while I am sharing my take on it, it may not mean it’ll fit you perfectly. Use yourself as an experiment and figure out for yourself what works for you, not only in understanding your inner compass but also in other aspects of your life.
So, what is an inner compass?
An inner compass is your soul guiding the way — the soul that always remains clean of the world’s rules, wants, and wishes — of what society believes how we should live, how our family thinks we should behave, or how our friend circle dictates how and with whom we socialise.
Your soul knows who you really are when you remove all the labels and tags living a human life puts on you. Your soul knows exactly what you are meant to do in this life. It knows that life is not only about finding yourself but also about shaping yourself into the person you are meant to become.
Your inner compass is calibrated by your values, views, and principles and is influenced by your upbringing, experiences, beliefs, and personal philosophy.
Your inner compass intuitively helps you navigate your life and bring it into alignment with your deeply held beliefs and aspirations.
And how does it work?
Very quietly. It doesn’t shout or scream. It doesn’t over-dramatize the situation. Yes, you might feel an initial jolt of surprise or excitement, but that happens very rarely. Most of the time, your inner compass will remain calm.
When you are on the right track, the inner compass will do nothing because it doesn’t need your attention at that moment. It’s only when a choice needs to be made, or you have fallen off track that the inner compass will nudge you in the right direction. And it’s a nudge, not a shove, which is why it is very easy to ignore it with logic and rational thoughts.
And when you are tired, just like I was, your inner compass will show you why you shouldn’t lose hope. It’ll tell you that it’s okay to feel that way, even take a break, but never lose sight of the dream you are aiming for. You don’t want to be the person who went on digging for diamonds and gave up when he was just an inch away from the treasure. Your inner compass will tell you to keep going.
Your inner compass will use a combination of your values and beliefs, intuition, emotions, physical reactions, self-awareness, experiences and external influences to help guide you to your desired goals.
And no, it will not be a straight path. To achieve your goals, you have to become the person who can achieve them. So, there will be quite a number of detours, roundabouts, and rollercoasters until you learn and embrace that new side of yourself and are ready to level up. And that is when you’ll realise that your life was never about reaching those goals; it was about going through the process to become that person for whom achieving those goals is inevitable.
Why Follow Your Inner Compass?
If you give your inner compass a chance on your writing journey, you’ll soon realise that you actually know what you are doing and where you are headed with your writing. You were simply not letting yourself go down that path because it wasn’t society’s prescribed way. Following your inner compass means that there will be some parts of your journey that will not be approved by others and the past way of doing things, and yet you trust yourself and go for it.
Your inner compass will help you discover and refine your writer self. Your inner compass knows where the treasure — that is, your writer self — is hidden. Following it will help you excavate it, dust it off, and study it. With each passing day, you find another fascinating aspect of your writer self that will reveal to you who you are as a writer and who you can become.
Following your inner compass trains and shapes you into the writer you are meant to be. Over consistent effort, you will get better at your writing skills, and you will find your authentic voice and style. This will fuel your passion and increase your creativity and urge to write. You will also improve your writing endurance and stamina and easily get into the flow of your writing. Your emotional and mental resilience will get strong, and then you will learn how to tackle any obstacle that comes between you and your writing. Give it enough time and intentional effort, and your inner compass will lead you to your writer self.
It becomes easier to drop into the flow state and get the ultimate writing satisfaction when following your inner compass. When you surrender yourself to your inner compass, you will write sentences and dialogues that you didn’t plan but perfectly explain your thoughts. Characters will drop into the scene you never knew existed and will make your story more whole. Or you will start writing and then let it guide you to where it wants to take you and you’ll end up with a piece of writing completely different from what you had intended. When you are not micromanaging your writing, you let yourself get into a trance-like flow and come out of it in a creative high that makes you want to write more.
How To Follow Your Inner Compass?
Journaling. The self-reflective stream of consciousness that you allow yourself through journaling your thoughts allows you first to find your inner compass and, second, use it for self-healing and personal growth. The catharsis that you gift yourself because of your journaling practice opens up the floodgates of your writer self.
Accepting your human self. When journaling, you will quickly find how much of a human you are while not allowing yourself to be a human. Over time, you’ll start accepting the hurts you felt, the dreams you have, the lack you feel, the joy you want. Initially, you might see this vulnerability as your weakness, but then you’ll realise how whole these make you. When you finally start accepting yourself as a human, you can also finally start accepting yourself as a writer. Accepting yourself for who you are at the present moment is essential to become the person you want to become.
Listen to your emotions. Emotions are essentially signs telling us where we are, how we feel and how we would like to feel. If you are nervous about your writing, it doesn’t mean that you don’t know what you are doing. It means that you care about your writing and don’t want to let it down. If you are angry, it is actually grief letting you know you didn’t like the way you were treated by others or yourself. Use your emotions to go deep and see what you are actually feeling.
Trust your guts. If you genuinely feel that you want to go in a certain direction — be it in life or in writing — trust your intuition and go for it. Trusting your guts doesn’t mean you’ll score a win every single time. It means you follow that path and learn the lesson it provides you. Collect enough lessons, and you’ll start to collect wins as well.
Challenge your limiting beliefs. One of my limiting beliefs was, “I hate writing essays.” Now, I am earning my living because of my essay. When you have a limiting belief, many factors contribute to it other than your conscious thought. So if you change those factors, you can change your thought, therefore turning your limiting belief into an expanding belief. In my case, it was the school’s way of writing essays that I didn’t enjoy. Once I found my way of writing my essays, I haven’t stopped writing.
Recalibrate your inner compass regularly. Life happens, and plans get thrown out the window. This is why you must regularly and intentionally recalibrate your life back to your inner compass. Every night, every month, and every quarter, reassess your goals and make sure they are in alignment with your inner compass. Change what needs to be changed. Drop what needs to be dropped. Pause what needs to be paused. Double down on what needs double-downing.
Celebrate and enjoy the process. All this will only be of use if you are having fun on your writing journey. Feeling bored, disheartened, or overwhelmed with your writing journey is an emotional sign telling us we have gone off course. On the other hand, feeling satisfied with an hour spent writing means you are good and steady. This will motivate you to keep taking action towards your writing goals.
