Risk and Recovery, Part 3
Last week, we talked about setting up a support system for better risk recovery. Support you set up ahead of time. And we discussed the importance of paying attention to your most vulnerable areas when you risk, making sure you have a soft cushion for landing.
Today’s post is finding the real happiness in your hoped-for outcome. Every risk has something we hope for, otherwise why would we take it? But most of us determine success based on world templates, other people’s opinions, and very rarely our own pleasure.
We’ll explore ways to track what would really please you, right now, as you take your next creative risk. Nurture your own feeling of satisfaction with what you’ve accomplished. It’s a jewel of a tool that’s changed my life. And maybe it’ll help yours!
Just to recap, here are the four tools for risk recovery that have been in my back pocket as a writer and we’ve reviewed these past weeks. You don’t need to use them all—and you may already be using your own version of one or more of them. But if they are new to you, or you are often disappointed in your ability to say yes to writing opportunities, then try one or all of these out.
1. rating the risk—external or internal—and building agility between the two (December 5 post)
2. knowing where the risk will hit your life hardest if things go south (December 12 post)
3. figuring out what would satisfy you (at minimum) and adjusting for it (today’s post)
4. preparing for the risk in an appropriate way (December 26 post)
Elusive happiness
We’re not trained, most of us, to recognize what would make us feel truly happy, proud of our efforts as writers, standing tall with an accomplishment. We may get clearer on this with the trial and error of risk, or as we have more experience in the writing life. But even experienced writers measure success against what the world deems a worthwhile goal.
Just scroll any social media. Easy to feel down, reading posts by all the other writers who have obviously made it much more successfully than you have. Comparison is the fuel that feeds the doom scroll.
Nothing wrong with having good writing life goals—getting an agent, publishing your work, getting a great review or an award.
I call this good, but I also know it’s fleeting. It’s the judgment of the outside world and even though all of this has happened to me multiple times, it’s still easy to feel low about my current project.
The only way I can find that elusive thing called happiness with my work is to determine, for myself, my own yardstick of success. Not judge my work by the occasional sweet thing. The everyday stuff of the writing life is what really counts for keeping me going. I’ve been in this game a long time.
The way to real happiness with my writing and my writing life, which forms the platform of safety for taking the next risk, is to honestly assess what would make me satisfied with my writing, day to day, week to week.
Presume
The first technique for assessing happiness is something I learned many years ago from a little book called Get It All Done and Still Be Human by Robbie and Tony Fanning. In it, they offer an exercise called a presume.
The word is made up—it just means future resume. I use it every time I take a risk, especially a big one.
The steps are simple.
Imagine yourself in the future, when your goal will be realized. For instance, if you’re taking a class and workshopping your writing, imagine the ending day of the class when you’ve already been through the workshop and received feedback.
Now write from that point in time, looking back at now. Describe everything that would make you feel creatively and personally satisfied with your efforts. Write it as if it had already happened. (“The class is over and I’m so glad I attended. The feedback was just what I needed. . . “)
I find it important to write about qualities, not specifics. Qualities that align with who I am and not with the world’s notion of achievement or success.
For instance, I wouldn’t write “my story was called the best in the class and I got an offer from the instructor to introduce me to her agent.” That might happen but if it doesn’t, I’ll probably be crushed and decide I took a bad risk. What if I just write “I learned just what I needed to know to make this story much better”—a quality of satisfaction that would take me further and not put me in a losing game?
Most of my presumes come true, almost to the exact detail, as long as I stay with qualities. And over time, I’ve learned that qualities make me much more satisfied than the fleeting specifics.
Conditions of enoughness
Long ago, I was part of a weekly forum of women called the Oasis. It was hosted by the marvelous writer and teacher,
Jennifer Louden
. I enjoyed the sharing and the exercises Jen offered, but what stayed with me was something she called “Conditions of Enoughness.”
What would be enough, in any situation, to make me feel satisfied?
Along with the presume, I have a habit of writing my conditions of enoughness with each risk I take. Next week, I’ll share four specific risks I took this past year, rather big ones, and how I used these two techniques to feel super satisfied with each one.
My interpretation of Conditions of Enoughness was this: What minimum would make me feel good about taking the leap?
For a workshop I was asked to give at a large writing conference, my minimum was to feel good in my skin, feel unstressed about arrival and the basic steps of being at the conference.
For a new agent who wanted to rep my work, my minimum was feeling comfortable with how she worked with clients, if she was someone whose ethics were aligned with my own.
For a group of short stories I wanted to submit to lit mags, my minimum was to not go into it blind. I didn’t weigh the acceptance as important as the learning.
For a series of podcasts I was invited to be on, when my books were published, it was learning again—I wanted to feel comfortable with this completely unknown venue.
This week’s exercise lets you test these two techniques. To build satisfaction as a way to establish safety for future risks.
Your Weekly Writing Exercise
Using the steps above try writing a presume for a risk you’re considering.
Or read more about Jen Louden’s Conditions of Enoughness with this pdf, a fabulous way to figure out what you need to feel satisfied with your risk.
Did either technique help you assess whether the risk effort is worth it? What might make it more worthwhile?
Share your questions and insights!
Photo by Johan Godínez on Unsplash