#076 - Sometimes You Simply Need to Get Started Even if it’s Messy and Ugly

Hey, Hit Splits family. This is Shelly Hits, the owner and founder of ChristianBookAcademy.com and today I wanted to talk about how sometimes you simply need to get started. Even if it's messy and ugly and you end up deleting everything that you've written or everything that you've created.

There's momentum that happens when you simply get started and take action. So let me share a story from my own life. I'm also an artist. I'm a painter with watercolor and a brush lettering artist. But this last year, it's just, it's been a year. The last couple of years actually. But as if you've been following along on this podcast you've heard me talk about. We had a turnover of our main team twice in seven months. And it was, it was a lot because not only am I hiring and training new people, I'm having to do their job in the meantime, making sure it's done right. It, it, it's just, it's a lot. Plus we had a really big conference in September and then we have changed some things with Christian Book Academy. I've improved thing. I was things, I was adding things. We moved our group. There was just a lot going on. And then I pretty much.

Created my own process for the one day conference. So I took the big box summit idea and then a tiny micro audio summit idea and I morphed it into my own. But that meant it just took a lot more to figure out the first time. All this to say it's been a busy last seven and a half months, eight months probably, let's just say nine months. And this weekend I finally sat down to paint. I love to paint, but there's so much resistance to it. And I realized, I looked back because I keep track. I use this Day One app and I just use the, the free version. It's a day. It's called a day. One Day One journal app I think. And I just add pictures and things that. Significant things that happen because I'm not posting and keeping track of all of that on social media anymore. I like to have the. On this day, you know, this happened or you were here or this, you know, you did this. And I just like keeping track of those things. So anyways, I looked back and the last time I painted was seven and a half months ago.

Oh, it's just, it's been a season and my brain just didn't have margin or time. It was just like I just was so focused on just the next minute. Right. The next step. The next thing. Well, anyways, this weekend, I reorganized the area where I paint, and I just simplified it. I just made sure, like, everything that I needed just to sit down and paint was right there. And I. I just felt this huge resistance. There was just this wall and this block to painting anything. And, like, I have a membership to skillshare. I can get on and do any sort of skillshare class. Just, you know, press play on a video, and in 30 minutes or so, you know, I could have a little painting. But I. There was just so much resistance even to that. I don't know if you've ever felt this way with your writing. If you've gone for a while and you haven't been writing or you haven't been marketing or whatever it is that you're working on right now, and then you try to get back into it and you're just like, oh, this feels so hard, or this. I don't know what to write or I don't know what to do. So I just told myself, just paint. Get out some paints and just create something. Maybe it's messy and ugly and the colors don't work well together and you end up throwing it away, but I've just got to get the brush to the paper. And so I did that. I had no plan. I was using no reference photo, and honestly, the colors really didn't blend well. And I ended up not keeping it. It was kind of ugly and messy, but it started the momentum. There's just something. There's something about when. When we're trying to overcome that resistance, that mind block to creating something, whether it's art, writing, music, whatever it is for you in that creative realm, and most of you, it's going to be writing. We just need to get pen to paper. We just need to sit down and start typing. And even if you end up deleting every single thing that you wrote, you will benefit from that because you've created some momentum. You've created some muscle memories, so to speak. And the next day, I created two amazingly beautiful landscapes. Like, I love them. The first one, not so much. I don't even want to give that one away. You know, it's like, nope. But I got something onto paper. I got started, and it just filled me with so much joy. And I'm like, I love to paint and I want to paint more often. I just resist it so much. There's something so weird that happens in our brains, and it's common whether you're a Christian or a non Christian. This is A common thing for all creatives. So if you've been in a little bit of a slump or if you've, you know, just been ignoring something or maybe not even ignoring it, it's just there's been a resistance to it or block there. Whether it's writing or whether it's, you know, creating a new blog post, writing a new blog post, or doing some marketing materials or whatever it is for you, I just encourage you. Set a timer for like 5 minutes. Make it really smooth, small, easy, something that, I mean, not even 15 minutes. Just sit down and put something onto paper, do something, figure something out. Do, you know, just anything just to get the ball rolling, and then start setting a plan to just get back into your rhythm little by little. I like to say, even if you can just set aside 15 minutes, 15 minutes for your writing or for your marketing. And a lot of marketing is writing. I mean, so many of you write, resist marketing, but it's basically doing what you love, doing more writing. It's a different form of writing many times, but I think if you can wrap your minds around, like, this is something that I can do, like writing a blog post and optimizing it for SEO. That's writing, right? Writing an email, it's writing. Writing a blog post or so. Anyways, my encouragement to you today is just get started. Make it ugly, make it messy. Don't even plan on publishing it, but just sit down and start to write and see what God does. All right, love you guys. Talk to you in the next episode. Bye. Bye.