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I have a new website! It's called Cash and Joy and its mission is to increase the awesomeness of the world - of course - through glorious and meaningful marketing.

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Ignore your feelings

By

I don’t want to.
I’m scared.
It’ll be incredibly boring.
I’m so embarrassed!
Not with her…
I just want to read my book.

For nearly a decade I lived my life in accordance with my desires. I worked at decent jobs, ate and wore and lived just as my feelings told me. I was happy.

Happy, but unfulfilled.

Gradually, I realised I needed more than pleasure. I needed purpose. I needed meaning. I needed challenges.

And I realised that I was going to have to ignore a lot of my feelings a lot of the time to get them.

The emotional civil war

On one side, dressed in bright attractive colours and sequinned epaulettes, are the troops of the Comfort Legion. Thousands of decadent desires, commanded by Colonel Pleasure. The troops look soft and unwarlike, but beware! For they are persistent, cunning, and remarkable stealthy for troops dressed like a clown on acid.

Facing them, the comparatively grim and dour-looking troops of The Army of Purpose. Upright, disciplined and with excellent morale, they are still outnumbered twenty-to-one by the Comfort Legion. Their commander, Major Meaning, has fought a hundred skirmishes and been fought back remarkably few times. She believes that her army will triumph, eventually.

Every time these two armies fight there is a winner and a loser. Draws are not possible.

If the Army of Purpose wins, then off I go to do great work. I will be uncomfortable and scared and lonely and proud and I will Get Stuff Done.

If the Comfort Legion triumphs? Hello couch, and book I have read a dozen times before, and chocolate, and movies, and to-heck-with-work.

Either/or. No matter what I do, I have to ignore one set of feelings.

I’m getting quite good at it.

I have to, otherwise I would go completely insane.

Your five-minute mission, should you choose to accept it…

Spend five minutes fighting on the side of Purpose, and ignore every other feeling that gets in the way. And then come tell us about it in the comments!

14 Comments - Join the conversation!
  • http://www.MavenDiary.com Wendy Maynard

    I think each post you write is getting more and more fun, and increasingly creative. Great visuals in this one!

  • http://www.BeAwesomeOnline.com Catherine Caine

    Thanks! I really think I owe Gareth a royalty cheque on this one, I haven't used that style in awhile but he inspired me. :)

  • BirdyD

    Love the style & the visuals, tho' it also freaks me out quite a bit as well. If life was going to suck anyway, then why didn't I just settle for the cubicle & the soul-sucking & the sorta-kinda-steady paycheck? (Alright, maybe I need to get out into the Sunny Evening now. I'm detecting the signs. :-D )

    To answer your question, tho' it took a whole HECK of a lot longer than 5 minutes (picky much, WP? And who knew bulleted lists were macros? I didn't, tho' I certainly do now!) I have spent all of a Sunny Afternoon (except for a brief luncheon) inside at the computer achieving this… http://www.blanketuniversity.com . In other words, the sales page is FINALLY up for review by Remarkables & other Friendly Folk. It's the only thing up on the site at the mo', but since I've been working on it for a Truly Ridiculous Length of Time, I don't want to wait any longer for review.

    And yesterday, I finished polishing http://www.anencouragingbird.com, so that it is now ready for reading & commenting, which it would be totally loverly if friendly folks wished to do.

    And now that these things have been accomplished, I am going to take the dog for a Walk before she Explodes, as she refuses to use the yard when there should be a Walk. :-D (Goodness, and I haven't even been reading the Verbhounds site! No Idea where all these Capitals are coming from, except that I'm pretty sure my Brain is Fried. :-D )

    Okay, flying away now. :-D

  • http://www.BeAwesomeOnline.com Catherine Caine

    I don't know that it SUCKS, per se. It's just having to adjust to the fact that you can't be lazy AND productive at the exact same moment, so some desires must be ignored.

    And hooray for Birdy!!! LOVE the Blanket University idea. Is it crotchet? Because I love to crotchet in winter while watching/listening to stuff. I'll be there with tiny bells on! I laughed out loud at “We could care less whether you call the energy: chi, magick, energy, grace, Fred, or late to dinner.” It's so… YOU. Delightful and intriguing and low-woo. I'm fascinated by the number of people who are slowly encouraging me woo-ward. I do think it's the labels that have been turn-offs for me. I am fine with the idea of consciousness management, but “vibes”? What-ev.

    How much is the intro pricing? Enquiring minds want to know.

    Also, a thousand squillion thanks for the article in An Encouraging Bird. Will you have email subscription, I'd like to keep up with the doings!

  • BirdyD

    Ah! Thank'ee's for the clarification. That's a more comforting way of looking at it. When I hear that the pushing & the fear never stop, that scares me at a fundamental level. Which is why I haven't allowed myself to succeed before now. Been afraid of the fear. :-P (Another section for your product, if you haven't covered it already? :-D )

    My blood-family has had (or had-had, since they've pretty much all passed except for my dad, which should tell you something about the method) a bad habit of putting-off-the-playing-forever, so one of the things I've had to learn (and still struggle with from time to time) is finding the balance between the two.

    SOMETIMES, it's not laziness, or fear, or whatever, it's your body telling you to take a break.
    SOMETIMES, it's the fear, or the laziness, or whatever.
    As with so much, the trick is to learn to tell the two apart. *sigh*

    Thank you!!! You have made my day once more. The hard work done & to come, and the today's swearing both at & by WordPress is all vindicated by your wonderful words. :-)

    Yes, it is crochet, as I haven't yet managed knitting. Kyool! Will look forward to seeing you there!

    Thank you! I'm particularly fond of that bit, I must admit. :-D

    I totally get what you're saying about the labels thing. I'm more tolerant of them than I used to be, since language tends to fail miserably at about that point, but there are still some that set off my rolling-eyes-meter.

    Thank you for pointing out a post that we should do over at CrowTarotTours, which will also be coming up very soon from now, since Mike has used FireBug and is now a Theme-changing dynamo. It turns out that 'vibration' isn't necessarily as ghastly as it sounds, woo-wise ('vibration' in all its forms used to make me vigorously eye-roll! :-D ). I'll let Mike explain it, as he's the more scientifically-based of the two of us, and there is actually some science-science in there, if my understanding is correct.

    Will be posting pricing in the Remarkable forum, to do a bit of a reality-check before I post it live.

    I'm so glad to hear that the low-woo is really there. That's our goal – it's nice to know we've achieved it.

    You are most welcome! To answer your question, yes, just as soon as I figure out how & also get a few questions answered on the forum so I don't annoy people with six copies of a post because I keep seeing edits I'd like to make or typos that need fixing.

    Thank you, thank you for your kind support! :-) You should see the smile on my face right now – it's huge. :-D

  • http://www.BeAwesomeOnline.com Catherine Caine

    I come at it from the other direction, all play no work. :) But the “is this laziness or is this a real need to relax” thing is hard for me, too. I've written before that I allow very few excuses because my excuses are tricksy hidden warriors of the Comfort Legion.

    I'm excited that you're excited, which is odd but great. It's a postive feedback loop!

  • http://twitter.com/selfactivator Sinclair

    Excellent metaphor(s)! I did this little mental tango today, in fact…

  • http://www.BeAwesomeOnline.com Catherine Caine

    Hello there Sinclair!

    I don't know about you, but I lost about 50 pounds (look at me translating into silly imperial measurements) of pressure when I realised I couldn't have both. Because trying to keep both armies happy at the same time? Does. Not. Work.

    Which army won today's tango skirmish?

  • http://fight-mediocrity.com/ Gareth

    Excellent. glad to know my writing is having an effect. We still need to see whether the effect is good or bad, but time will tell.

    What I find is that the army of purpose normally takes the field with a specific goal in mind. (Write that post, capture the muffin) whereas the Comfort Legion can be a little haphazard. This is useful as you can achieve what the Army wants before the Comfort Legion can get organised and overwhelm you.

  • http://www.BeAwesomeOnline.com Catherine Caine

    Yeah, if only there weren't so MANY of the little buggers and they weren't so annoyingly persistent. :)

  • gvollrath

    Check out the book “The Shift” by Wayne Dyer

  • SusG

    You know what, Cat? This post is awesome, and you should feel awesome. I'ma fight the Good Fight this evening in the garden!

  • http://www.BeAwesomeOnline.com Catherine Caine

    Suziella! Glad you're rocking the English garden. :)

    It was incredibly foggy this morning and I thought, “Ooh, England weather. Suz would love it!”

  • SusG

    LOL. I will have you know that it's not foggy ALL the time here. ;p It's freezing, freezing cold though. Night frost! In May! I want to know who is responsible. This week, I'd happily trade the humidity of QLD with the Icelandic chill… Hey, a girl can dream, right?

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