Evolving | Revolving
Revisit your own wisdom
I posted a New Year’s Resolution Alternative on Shift Your Spirits that generated some powerful insights from my fellow bloggers in the comments, but it was ultimately the observation of a non-blogging writer, Barbara, who injected some energy into my thoughts about revisiting one’s own wisdom.
Barbara wrote:
After reading about the exercises you employ, I decided to look at what I’ve written over the last year or two.
My writings didn’t have the planning or intention or organization. Yet, as I re-read things I wrote, there was a bit of wonder. As in, did I write that? Where did that come from? I was pleasantly surprised at an insight I had gained.
*Note that she used the word Wonder – delicious! That’s one of my favorite words in the English language.
Andrea Hess responded with:
Barbara’s comment totally sparked something for me - ALL of my “aha!†moments are written about in my blog. That’s where my articles come from - whatever I am working on in the moment, and all that I learn as I go is reflected there. So maybe I’ll just read the articles that I wrote last year for each month of this year …
All the comments are great — but these two in particular sent me on an internal journey beyond my original exercise — and this post represents what the spiritual blogging and writing voices within me have been contemplating…
Don’t forget the wisdom you share with others is still there for you, too.
You’re blogging about personal development or your spiritual journey — you’re processing personal lessons along your path and packaging them for other people. You’re dispensing some form of transcendent advice on a regular basis. My purpose, professionally and spiritually, is an on-going exercise in telling other people how I do what I do, walking with them along their own journeys, and adapting my life lessons in a practical way for others to use.
Sharing your wisdom works in the other direction, too. Like a massage therapist who experiences energy transference — receiving some of the same benefits of massage by giving a massage — I would’ve never anticipated how much personal, intuitive wisdom I discover by doing readings for other people.
Sometimes, what you most need to hear comes out of your own mouth. Sometimes, what I most need to tell myself is best said by telling it to another.
Look at all the wisdom you’ve been putting out via your blog posts:
Have you read your own words as a recipient instead of just the Author? It’s easy to concentrate solely on your professional Voices — listening to your channel for that Uber-blogging Voice that’s always writing, processing, planning posts.
You know the One — a few months into your regular blogging and you’ve got the Volume of that Voice dialed up so high that you sometimes wish he’d shut up and let you just put in a load of laundry without your having to listen to an impromptu Stain-fighting Infomercial!
He becomes a bit of a cocky, blustery gas-bag once he’s been called on — what your readers don’t know is that, while you may post once or twice a week, you actually hear an on-going blog-author monologue like a 24 hour talk radio show that never ends…
Or maybe it’s your Inner Design clairvoyant who constantly whispers Font Names to you as drive past billboards or critiques Flash animation during television car commercials. Or maybe she won’t let you read a magazine without saying “Ooo, lovely page layout!”
The point is: Your intentions are mostly projective. You’re processing, preparing, planning, and putting out. You’re in Publishing mode…
- Do you practice what you preach?
- Do you take your own advice?
- What have you told another person to do that you could stand to do yourself?
(Hey, I’ve got a list on all the above, believe me…)
It’s all right there for you to revisit with a different ear. Start with your oldest blog posts — it’s easier to achieve the necessary distance — to externalize your Author’s voice — when more time has passed, when the article is not so fresh in your mind that you can recite whole paragraphs. The more you’ve forgotten what the original impulse felt like, the better you can hear your own wisdom.
I’m working on some technical design and layout improvements — one of the best new plug-ins I’ve implemented is Clean Archives. (Shout out to Urban Monk for the recommendation!) Not only can my readers see all my posts laid out in one gloriously singular location, I can reflect on the path of past months/years of blogging, too, with a fresh perspective.
Not only does revisiting your own wisdom allow you to examine the patterns of what you’ve manifested with your blog, in the context of the Evaluating the Past Year/Setting Intentions for the New Year, it could also be a great way to generate new posts.
- How has your position evolved on a particular topic?
- What has occurred since you original wrote that old post?
- If you rewrote it today, what would you add? What would you change?
- Are the personal challenges/solutions you explored a year ago still relevant?
Your karmic life lessons — often the flip-side of your mission or purpose — are likely to continue to be both your biggest successes and your greatest weaknesses at the same time. Your Stuff doesn’t really end — the Game doesn’t have a Finish Line so much as there’s a new board to flip, a revved up recycle, a graduation to the Next Level.
Evolving is Revolving.
The Aha Moment that you wrestled to find six months ago, a year ago, five years ago… How has it come back? What new bigger, badder form has it returned in?
With nearly every issue you’ve explored in a single post on your blog, there is an entire Category — a Series — that’s playing out in your real life.
Just as an example, the one post I’ve authored that I re-read and apply as if I’ve never heard it before — again and again — is The Art of Surrender. No matter how many times I “get it,” no matter how much faster and more efficient I become at recognizing the pattern of my need for Surrender, I keep finding myself needing to Hear it again.
New Year’s Energy provides the perfect time and space to look at where you’ve been, where you’ve come from, where you’re going, and where you’re AT. How much does all that time-traveling bring you to the same place?
What is the relationship between Evolution and Revolution?
Slade Roberson is an intuitive counselor, ATP®, professional blogger, and the author of Shift Your Spirits, Automatic Intuitive Response, and the PageCoach Problogging Tutorial Series. Slade on Blogging shares behind-the-screens internet marketing, self-publishing, and blogging strategies with other personal development writers, coaches, and healing arts practitioners.
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7 Responses to “Evolving | Revolving”
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Slade,
A very insightful post. I often give advice to myself like this, and since I started watching for this kind of pattern, I have even caught myself while the words were still coming out of my mouth. That definitely makes for some very akward but funny moments.
I am also one who needs the same advice over and over again. There are some lessons we never quite finish learning, they make us refine our perception every time we go through them.
The “Uber-Blogging Voice” - thank God someone else has that one swirling around in their heads!!!! I thought it was just me, constantly blogging in my head. Every single weird or wonderful experience I have, there’s that Voice, turning it into a blog post.
Great article, Slade!!!
Blessings,
Andrea
Vitor,
Gotta love it when that happens — that’s as good as it gets!
You know, I believe this is actually an expression of clairaudient ability, and have been told quite recently by some grad students researching “ESP” — telepathy, in particular — that clairaudients are often total motor-mouths…
Andrea,
Clients ask me sometimes about channeling and writing, wondering whether my Process is mostly some kind of transcription exercise… God, no, are you kidding me? I couldn’t possibly keep up with that Big Blog Voice Over Dude… He bugs the hell out of me!
See, of course he can’t be some soothing British documentarian — he’s much more like Billy Mays (that bearded man on TV who YELLS everything — the one who hocks Oxy-Clean and all manner of “Not sold in stores — act now and double the offer” products sold off 800 numbers with corresponding Bamzu.com web sites).
Yeah…No wonder I can’t meditate worth a damn!
How many times have you been curled up in bed, trying to lose yourself in a great Story and find yourself huffing and puffing at the ceiling “Would you PLEASE save it for morning? I’m trying to read here…”
Slade,
Since I started reading your work this past summer, I can say the most influential lesson you’ve directed me to is a fundamental one. It is that of paradox.
Your own reference to “The Art of Surrender”, fighting the waters not the way to survive, it continues to remind you as well as me. Makes me ask why I would forget and how not doing happens. Then in this post, the importance of listening to the advice one might pass out and then pass up all in the same breath. I hear “available here first” ringing in my ears.
The last but not least example, reconciling the idea that you might actually have favorite words…more than a bit puzzling!
As always, the time spent reading here worth it’s weight in gold.
Barbara
Slade, thanks for the information about clairaudience being blabber mouths. Is that why I talk so much? Hearing is my main way of getting information.
The only time that I get frustrated with my inner voice is when it keeps me awake sometimes because it won’t shut up. I have learned that those are the times that I might as well get paper and pen and turn on the light because I am not going to sleep until I have written down whatever it is.
Surrender is a lesson that I keep having to repeat. Ego keeps taking back control and thinking it can fix things. Sometimes I can be stubborn in that way.
Hi Slade,
Great post!
All the articles that I have written, so far, in my blog started with a word or two in my head. (There are still too many words floating from head into my to-write list.) I then just sit and start typing whatever comes through, adding subheadings as I move along. After I complete, I just do an edit/review and post it. When I look back and read those articles now, it feels like I am reading someone else writing. So, a relearning from my own articles, as you say, is in order.
It is so true that the wisdom we want to hear most often comes out of our own mouth (or fingers).
Cheers,
- Desika
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