Guiding stars and the chasm of half-remembered ideas (Archived)

Sodawater remembers.

It looks so peaceful and innocent on the bottom shelf of your cupboard, but it remembers. It remembers every bump and indignity it suffered. You fumble a bottle of sodawater in the trolley or backseat and it will come back to haunt you. Days or weeks down the track, fumble long forgotten, you’ll reach for the bottle to enjoy a refreshing afternoon drink and, instead, suffer a shocking explosion of fizz all over yourself and your kitchen.

We all know people who are prone to explode at seemingly random intervals, making a mess of a situation and getting up everyone’s noses, but for the most part humans are not as good at remembering jolts to our system as sodawater is.

As I immerse myself in training and resource books I will often come across an ‘ahhhh’ moment. These are very different from the previously described exploding sodawater moments (those are more like “eeeeck-oh-God-oh-God” moments). Ahhhhh moments are wow moments. Moments when you hear something that rings true. Moments when something clicks into place and you go “YES that’s cool, that’s my new guiding star!”

Is it?

Usually not. These burning, fantastic pearls of wisdom bounce around in my enthusiasm for a few hours, get sprouted out excitedly at a few friends, then sink into the quagmire of things that were SUCH a good idea, but slipped off the track of my routine and ended up in the chasm of vague memories.

The solution? Cards.

Yes, cards feature as my solution for a lot of things. No, I don’t own a card factory. Yes, I probably should.

I am blessed with an old tower-style computer drive, which creates a lovely canvas of wasted space on my writing desk. It is also perfectly located for me to bluetack enthusiastically inked cards reminding me of the gems, the pearls of wisdom, the things I am totally, absolutely going to do.

When I’m sighing and staring off into the distance and doing anything other than actually hammering words onto a page, my gaze snags on these reminders. When I’m slumped and discouraged, tempted to slip off the chair to ‘get a coffee’ (code for see what’s on TV or poke about in the garden for a few hours), my gaze snags on these gems. When I’m having a bad day, I look to this wall of wisdom and go, “urgh, yessss, that’s right!” When I’m having a good day, I grin at this summary of short snappy quotes and go “YES, that’s right, hi-YAH!”

My inspiring little cards serve a whole range of purposes. I even have one stuck on my bathroom mirror. Every time I wash my hands I look myself in the mirror and say that inspiring intention aloud. You would be amazed how much power ‘mirror’ talk has, holding your own gaze and saying it like you mean it.

Finding a fantastic pearl of wisdom is lovely, but its only part of the story. What will you do with it, now you’ve found it?

How often does a resource or piece of training actually change your life? Are your guiding stars in a visible and inspiring place, or have they slipped down into the chasm of half-remembered ideas?

(Posted 28 May 2020. Follow me at: https://nicolewalshauthor.com/)