“We never failed to fail; it was the easiest thing to do.”

Southern Cross, Crosby Stills and Nash

     If someone asked you if you want fail, you would probably look at them as if they were crazy. Some strong emotions would start to boil under the surface… “what the hell kind of question is that?” We spend out whole lives fighting to win, place in the top, or at the very least…survive. We were taught to win from every front; home, school, sports, in our play time with our friends, our jobs and through every media outlet possible. Sometimes our goal of fighting is not to win anything grand, but to fight against failure. Or are we?

      Sometimes we want the softer easier way.  Dollars to donuts we would still balk at the idea of “wanting to fail”, but life is hard. Working is hard, being good as something means others are going to look to you all the time for the answer.  Anyone familiar with escapism, not-living up to our full potential, or self-sabotage knows failing is much more familiar than success.  Failure is easier because it takes less work. Success means responsibility, committed effort and sustained performance. Being great once is easy; continually being our best is hard hard work. So it goes on and we become successful at mediocrity, at giving up just a little every day…of failing ourselves.

     People are alike in phenomenally more ways than our independent lives have us believe. Every man, woman or child alive has at some point in their lives been deeply afraid of themselves, their inherent worth and whether they are up to the work it takes to succeed. To feel the fear is the most human of all emotions, the fear of the unknown, the fear of the known but even more afraid of the responsibility to achieve… the fear of success.

     If take a look at this fear… I will have succeeded in not failing today.   

 

Written by Jodi Mathieu, copy write and published by Unlocked Communications, LLC,

Perfectionism…

“I break tradition, sometimes my tries, are outside the lines

We’ve been conditioned to not make mistakes, but I can’t live that way”

Unwritten, Natasia Bedingfield

 

     Perfectionism is a deep rooted mindset that is based on two equally destructive perceptions: perfection and not measuring up. Perfection is by its very nature is unattainable. There is no perfect anything; it is a subjective measurement based on biased opinion. Yet we all toss the word around in our daily vocabulary as if it were an absolute or even attainable. Yet we have been conditioned to strive for it since we were little children. It is in the individual measurement against the nature of perfection that equals us always falling short.

      As a little girl I remember getting yelled at for not doing something perfectly…and yet no-one was showing me what that meant. I was left with this feeling of complete inadequacy and dread that the adults in my life knew what perfect looked like but were not sharing. I didn’t ask what it looked like; you’re just not supposed to question adults that way. So, I was never going to measure up, never be enough. But that didn’t stop me from trying every day. Looking into the eyes of strangers, mimicking behaviors that looked “good” just hoping someone would notice how I was the good girl and would soon be perfect.

     It wasn’t until my late 30’s that I gained the most wondrous freedom of questioning other’s right to measure me. Yes, we all live in a society where we have to play by rules… I was not proposing complete anarchy. What was discovered was freedom of choice, the start of personal mastery with acceptance at its core. How elating, how joyous and how very fundamental… there is no perfect and I don’t need to measure myself against it.

     Where are your tries crying to be outside of the lines?

Written by Jodi Mathieu, Published by Copywrite by Unlocked Communications, LLC

Answering a call…

“2 AM and I’m still awake, writing a song

If I get it all down on paper, it’s no longer inside of me,

Threatening the life it belongs to” Breath 2 Am, Anna Nalick

   

     As I sit here thinking of what to write, it is clear the need to do so is so much bigger than me. It is a culmination of everything I have ever been, seen, experienced and thought, the Jodi Mathieu section of the Akashic Records, if you will. My writing is not from me so much as it flows through me towards the reader out into the universe.

    I have been rebuffing this call for many years; from flat-out refusal or denial in earlier years, to a softened skirting procrastination lately. Don’t get me wrong, I always knew I wanted to be a teacher of sorts…I love learning and sharing; but writing never entered the mind. Grammar and sentence structure have never been my strong suits; my teachers and professors can attest to that. From being separated in elementary English class all the way up to my Master’s program… I have seen more red pen than is good for the ego. I do have so say, I might have gotten one small hint… “Jodi, what you write is amazing, how you write needs help”. In one form or another, those are the words I have heard from every teacher/prof I ever had. Eh, that’s what editors are for, right?

    In Breath, 2 Am, Anna Nalick sings in part …”of song writing as the words of her diary, and if she gets them all down on paper…they will no longer threaten the life they belong to”. To me, this is the exact imagery of the need to answer my call to write. If I do not write these words down, they will (and do) threaten my life. Ironically, my call is to write about music- songs, lyrics – inside each of us that is our healer, our inspiration, our lover, and our guidance… the voice we need to find to empower our very own callings.

    When someone calls us, they want something from us… be it a hello, to answer a question, or to act in some way (maybe go out for coffee, listen to them or to pay a bill). The same is with callings from the Universe… they want something from us. They want us to act! In what way depends on the nature of the call. There are calls to do something, i.e., go back to school, sky dive, and change careers, have a baby, leave or start a relationship…maybe write. There are also calls to be something, i.e., less fearful, more creative, less judgmental, or more loving. According to Gregg Levoy (Author of Callings; Finding and following and Authentic Life) a calling is “…whatever we’ve dared and double-dared ourselves to do for as long as we can remember”. He goes on to explain, “Primarily this force [Universe] announces the need for change, and the response for which it calls is an awakening of some kind.”

    My calling is to serve the Universe through the lyrics of our generation; it is to teach, empower voices, and share the universal healing properties of music. The music of our generation continues to inspire us, songs from Anna Nalick, CSN, Bob Seger, James Taylor, Cat Stevens, Led Zeppelin, Moody Blues, Aretha Franklin, Joan Baez, David Gray, Sarah McLaughlin, Janis Joplin, etc… give us lyrics to live by and learn from.  

   Dr. Wayne Dyer once said, “Don’t die with your music still inside you. Listen to your intuitive inner voice and find what passion stirs your soul.” I answer this call to help other’s find their song.

Published by Jodi Mathieu, Unlocked Communications, LLC 2009