A Year of Writing to Uncover the Authentic Self (2021)
Lesson 1: Roadblocks

It’s ironic, isn’t it?

You look forward to something new. You get all excited. Then suddenly – bam! You can’t make a start.

This is exactly how I felt when I started this course. I bought it just a few days into the fresh new year of 2021 and thought – wow, this is going to be amazing!

After all. I love writing, I love learning, I love personal development. This course was made for me! It seemed to encompass it all.

Yet there I was, sitting in front of the monitor, reading the first lesson and all I could feel was resistance.

Roadblocks? What roadblocks?

That could apply to anything and everything in my life. Why were the questions so generic? Who was this person who created these questions? This is silly… I just want to write. Come on!!!

So, I sat on the course. For days… that turned into weeks… that turned into months.

Yet somehow, my thoughts would always return to it. Like a nostalgic lover from the past, getting started on this course called out to me.

I knew I would somehow get started eventually. I just didn’t know when.

Well, I’m glad to say I finally did get started – today!

 

Getting started

Since I bought the “A Year of Writing to Uncover the Authentic Self” course from DailyOM 14 weeks ago, I’ve been getting notifications each Saturday morning of a new lesson being available.

If you’ve ever taken a DailyOM course, this won’t be an unfamiliar experience. That’s pretty much how all of their courses are delivered.

You sign up, pay what you can for a course and then for X number of days/weeks you get a new lesson into your inbox to complete in your own time.

I’ve started, and completed, a number of different DailyOM courses previously. Usually, I’ve been very diligent about doing the lessons on or around the day they are released.

However, in this case, since I struggled with the very first lesson – questioning pretty much everything about it – the weekly lessons ended up being a great reminder to finally get started…eventually.

I realise now that that’s probably the very intention of the delivery of courses in this way. It’s a bit like a habit stimulator. Get the email -> ACTION TIME!

And in this case it worked. It may have taken 14 weeks, but the consistent reminder emails got me into action and starting the course now. Yay!

 

Lesson format

The lessons themselves are all written content.

They start with a page stimulating some thoughts around the topic of the week and how to approach it. Then they end with a list of questions that you can work through for the week.

At the bottom of the page you then have a big, wide and very empty box. A place you can let your mind run free and write, write, write to your heart’s content.

In my case, I simply copied and pasted the questions from the lesson into the box.  Then I decided to answer them one by one and just see what came out of it.

The instructions do say, however, that you are able to just pick and choose questions to answer.  You can just choose what to tackle depending on what you’re feeling on the day.

For my part, I wanted to get the most out of this course. So I decided to answer all of the questions – and so I did!

 

My experience

As previously described, it took me a while to complete this lesson. Bearing in mind that I purchased this course in January and it is now almost April.

However, in between romantic shifts, interviews, moving house, making friends, and generally living life, I don’t feel too guilty about that delay.

I feel like you have to actually be in the right mindset to get the most out of writing exercises like this. If you don’t want to do it, and you’re not motivated to do it, then why start, right?

So, keeping that in mind, I must confess that I did try (and miserably fail) to complete this first lesson around three/four times before I eventually succeeded.

I just wasn’t feeling it.

I don’t know if it’s the way it was written, what I was experiencing at the time, or something else. However, I just couldn’t get to grips with the questions.

Until today that is. When I sat down for the nth time and finally got through it. I just started writing – what a relief!

The questions definitely were broad. Questions like “What is standing in your way right now?” and “What is the longest-running obstacle in your life?” are really hard to answer.

I mean, a person goes through so many experiences in life. It can be really hard to sit down and think about them all to come to a clear and concise answer.

Within about 10 minutes, however, I managed to narrow my roadblocks down to three areas of my life: My love life, career and finally – this course.

That did make me feel quite accomplished. After all, I just narrowed down my very big life to identify only three main areas with blockers – and I finally started the course.

Surely that deserves three cheers! 😉

 

What’s next?

Well, I can’t tell you that I’ve had a mind-boggling revelation about my life just yet. However, I do have to say that finally getting started, and letting thoughts and ideas flow, felt liberating somehow.

I’m curious to see how this course develops and what thoughts it may stimulate moving forward. I do feel like it’s a course that could potentially trigger some deep and emotional conversations with the self – given the right circumstances.

For now, however, I’m just happy I made a start. For me, it’s always better to start out easy with new things to build consistent habits and also get a feel of what works for you in any given situation.

As such, I’m just going to look forward to getting started on lesson 2. Apparently it’s all about *surprise, surprise* WORK.

So – since that is related to one of my areas with blockers, I’ll be interested to see what that brings up.

I’ll keep you posted – have a great weekend!