I didn’t care. I didn’t even know the person. Seriously. I did not care.

Alright. Maybe I cared a tiny bit. I do, after all, still remember. . .

Paul Graham wrote “there are two senses in which writing can be good: it can sound good, and the ideas can be right. It can have nice, flowing sentences, and it can draw correct conclusions about important things.” I am interested in a third way: writing that is authentic. Writing that leads the mind to the heart by way of personal truth.

What could be more important in an age of AI-generated content, when what we read, watch, and listen to is turning into a nightmarish soup of soulless sameness? What could feel scarier?

It requires that we give up control and show who we are, not who we would like to be. It stirs up a contradictory fear of revelation: a fear of failure and success, of being fully seen and invisible, of rejection, indifference, and applause.

If we let the heart speak, what would it say?

If we let the soul sing, what would that sound like?

How comfortable are we with everything that makes us unique? Could we stand it if someone called it boring? Could we embrace success that looks nothing like we imagined?

Out of fear, we reach for protection: we put on the armor of authority. We hide behind the shield of a proven style. That’s what writer George Saunders did.

Saunders started out writing about his time “in the oil fields in Asia.” He chose the style of a “Hemingwayesque realist,” as he explains in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. His writing was “minimal and strict and efficient.” By nature, he “reflexively turned to humor,” yet his writing felt “lifeless” because he wore a mask.

One day, he wrote a story for himself. Just for fun. His wife picked it up and when he heard her laugh, “a switch got thrown” in his head. He dropped all notions of what stories should sound like. He allowed himself to be himself.

How fortunate we are that Saunders floundered at first. The world did not need another Hemingway. It needed someone who could create books as strange and touching as Lincoln in the Bardot.

I am still learning how to make friends with my voice and write true words. It can feel more like listening than writing, like befriending a voice that has always been there.

“It’s kind of crazy but, in my experience, that’s the whole game,” Saunders writes. “(1) becoming convinced that there is a voice inside you that really, really knows what it likes, and (2) getting better at hearing that voice and acting on its behalf.”

Our true voice has always been there, but we drop it, forget it, even deny it. We walk right by it. But what is worse than being rejected for it? To never try and connect with it. To never feel the resonance of your truth fully.

Alright, you say, but how?

“You can choose what you write but you can’t choose what you make live.” — George Saunders

When we sit down to write, the old stiffness returns. Words appear like a golem made of the voices we admire, infused with our desires to be heard but also to be safe. Ooops. Back to square one.

Let’s look at a few ideas and exercises to find the live current running behind the grey walls of “should” — including a very powerful idea I picked up from the amazing Henrik Karlsson.

Also: contact me if your voice as a writer/creator feels blocked. I will make time for a few people a month to explore this together.

Explore different dimensions.

Last year, I did an intense vocal workshop. I realized that writing was just one dimension of my voice, deeply connected to speaking and singing. Ideas from one dimension could help me in the others. The core idea was based on the work of Alfred Wolfsohn, a WW1 veteran who healed his severe shell shock (PTSD) through singing.

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Last weekend, I stood in Times Square in a shamanic-energy-dance circle. Like, an actual circle of flowers. On the floor. At the heart of Times Square. With a person banging the drum and a handful of people moving. The event had been organized by a wonderful dance teacher with her Siberian shaman friends visiting the city.

Depending on which part of me you ask, the whole thing seemed either earnest and precious or very cringe. Like, hyper-cringe. Mortifying.

Step into the circle. Move. Be weird. Be witnessed.

I felt an incredible amount of resistance but also an intuition to go. And at this point I try not to argue with my inner voice of clarity. So I joined this tiny dance to a lonely drum. A little vortex in the massive stream of traffic, tourists, and flashing lights.

Honestly, I felt wave after wave of embarrassment wash over me.

People stopped and stared. A few took pictures. Some laughed, others shrugged. We shared the corner with a guy and his big sign. Occasionally, he’d tell the crowd to repent and resist the devil. Accept Jesus as your savior. Times Square: still a place of free expression.

After a while, things started to feel unreal. I might as well have been a character in a video game. The feeling of humiliation faded.

People came and went. Faces of a faceless crowd. An infinite stream of flickering attention. Curiosity or judgment followed by a thirst for the next source of entertainment. I realized that it didn’t matter. They didn’t actually care. I was dealing with my experience, with my reaction. There were still jolts of anxiety and self-consciousness, but the bedrock sensation turned into a kind of equanimity.

People, traffic, sounds, my feelings . . . it was all one big stream, layered rhythms rising and fading.

Alright, you say. So what?

Well, I’ve bumped into this idea of the witness repeatedly recently. In dance, music, in coaching and healing spaces, and, yes, in writing.

I’ve been experimenting a lot with journaling.

What is the most powerful way to spend 15-20 minutes with pen and paper?

What is possible?

This brought me to intention and intensity.

While regular journaling is valuable, it can easily turn into a trap. It’s helpful to crystalize our stream of thoughts. Fixed on the page, the inner world can be examined. But the level of mind can be its own comfort zone. Stories turn into loops and journaling becomes an excuse to keep thinking and avoid feeling.

But I don’t want to passively record what happens to me.

I want to re-write my story.

I want to shape it.

I want to tap into more energy. I am looking for greater flow. I know there is a source of greater creative potential — and I want to connect with it.

I am looking for movement.

Movement on the page.

Movement in life.

Which is why I look for that which refuses to move, that which yearns to dissolve.

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“Every man has . . . matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret,” Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote in Notes from the Underground. “But there are other things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself.”

This may be the most important quote I know about journaling. If you can meet yourself with radical honesty, I don’t know if I have anything to teach you.

That which we are afraid to face even in the private space of our mind cannot move. It is frozen.

I am talking about the locked rooms of our inner house. Yellow tape on the doors. I am talking about barrels filled with emotions and memories labeled unsafe or undesirable.

You may know the symptoms.

Lack of energy, clarity, and creativity. Lack of flow. Maybe physical ailments like tension or back pain. You know the tired eyes behind the masks.

I always think of Dante and the beginning of his Divine Comedy. The poet finds himself lost in a dark forest.

When I had journeyed half of our life’s way,
I found myself within a shadowed forest,
for I had lost the path that does not stray. — Canto I, Columbia’s Digital Dante

“I cannot clearly say how I had entered the wood; I was so full of sleep just at the point where I abandoned the true path.” He awakens to his situation. Add a smartphone and some singing bowls and that’s kind of how I feel.

Dante can see the sun which “which serves to lead men straight along all roads,” but his path is blocked by three beasts. He needs help. Roman poet Virgil appears to guide him on “another path” out of the “savage wilderness.”

It’s a pilgrimage into the realm of shadows. Every circle of hell offers Dante a chance to develop greater awareness of the human condition. He watches souls tortured in infinite loops and of course gets most “triggered” when he detects his own flaws in them.

At the very bottom, Dante and Virgil find Satan, the “emperor of the despondent kingdom,” in a frozen lake.

It is a place beyond language. “I grew faint and frozen then,” Dante reports in Canto 34. “I cannot write it: all words would fall far short of what it was.”

What a powerful image.

It’s the place farthest from the light, devoid of motion and warmth. Frozen. The energy of death. Satan in Doré’s illustration seems to be stewing in resentment. Stuck in his commitment to a futile rebellion against creation. A denial of love and forgiveness.

Dante’s pilgrimage is a microcosm of how I think about the potential of journaling. To find our path forward and upward, we must occasionally make a detour.

If we find our way blocked, it’s time to follow the trail of shadow words and enter our maze.

We must visit the spaces we avoid and meet the parts of ourselves that have been judged, disowned, and abandoned. We must meet what — who — is frozen in time.

Signs I look for:

• Inaction on a goal, change, or decision. Not doing the thing.

• Lack of clarity. Unsure what “the thing” even is.

• Feeling disconnected:

  • From emotions, inner truth, and guidance;

  • From flow, energy, and creativity;

  • From the present moment.

• Feeling the weight of holding on to the past — to ideas, projects, relationships, or physical matter. Is there space for something new to emerge?

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Then I look for the trail. . . What have I been avoiding? What am I hesitant to even think? What words are stuck in my throat? I try to get out of the way and let the pen tell the story.

All it takes is pen, paper, and privacy. That’s the portal. (I know that if another person is in the same room, some amount of self-censorship of the authentic experience will happen.)

I seek to meet what I find with curiosity and warmth. If possible, I play with increasing the intensity of experience. This can be as simple as saying the words out loud after writing them (hearing the thought → letting it be written → then consciously speaking it out loud).

Afterward, what is frozen may want to move. How could I give it shape? What forms of creative expression are possible?

I believe there is gold to be found in the shadow. There is art, wisdom, and energy yearning to be shared. That doesn’t mean going public, let alone stepping into Times Square. It can be as simple as a conversation with one person we trust. But something changes when we are being witnessed.

Meet what feels cold and dead with light and heat.

Let it dissolve. Let it move.

Bring it back to life.

Meet it, experience it, give it shape, express it, be witnessed — and let it go.

Here’s the tricky part. I’ve learned a lot about going into shadow. I am still figuring out what comes next.

It all seems to boil down to love and acceptance: “Is it okay to be me?” Am I okay with all that I am? Is there space in this world for everything I am? Big questions once you get a glimpse of the many rooms in your house. Important questions, too. If we can’t accept all that we are, can we accept others fully?

That path leads away from the page. It is not a path of reading, writing, or thinking. It is a path of direct experience. I find that the frozen often exists in a realm beyond language and I think the same is true when we look for an answer or way to express it.

That’s what brought me to these odd shamanic spaces: the path upward is energetic. It’s about connection and capacity, capacity to love and forgive what weighs us down. It’s not about finding objective truth. Or at least it has not been that way for me.

I couldn’t quite put my fingers on it when I wrote about writer-director Taylor Sheridan, but the connection between creativity and energy now seems obvious. It’s all people, places, practices, and intention — and how those translate into action.

For me right now it’s simple stuff: meditation, walks among trees, the room of intimate conversation. I am building a little stack of tools and frameworks — breath, sound, tapping, TRE, Internal Family Systems. But nothing has been more profound than embodied creative practices — vocalization and free form dance above all.

I like to write (and talk), but language is just a map. It can point you toward a realm of possibility, but it is no substitute for walking.

Journaling works best when it feels least like writing.

It works best when it turns into a channel, when it feels like movement and connection to something deeper, greater, stranger, and more powerful than the conscious mind.

It works best when it creates more aliveness. Sometimes that leads into darkness and involves tears. Other times it happens in the bright lights of the Big Apple’s flashing billboards.

— Frederik

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Prompts I’ve found helpful recently:

• Nobody must ever know that I [thought / said / did / desired] . . . [x].

• What important moment(s) explain where I am that I would never share (that I would never put on my bio/CV)? What am I hiding and why?

• If I truly and deeply loved myself, would I . . . do this / keep myself from doing this / let this be done to me / accept this in my life? What can I find out about what is behind what I don’t like about my life?

• Try the Sarno method. Brain dump every big stressor in your life (past, present, character traits). I don’t know about you, but chances are that you’re censoring how you really feel about these. Notice that. Where do you hold yourself back?

  • Gun to the head: imagine you woke up in the middle of the night with a gun to your head. You hear a voice: Tell me more about this . . . tell me the whole story. Everything. Be honest!

  • Imagine that every time you hold back, every time you stumble, every time you police your language and make it nice and polite, imagine that the voice knows. Imagine it thundering: Tell me the truth! Tell me your truth, the truth as only you experience it right now.

  • Be as specific as you can. Write it down. Say it out loud. Keep going until you find what is truly frozen. That can turn into a source of motion, wisdom, and energy. It might not happen in a short journaling session (though I hope you can release some of the pain and tension). But this is your access point.

  • You can do the same exercise with your life’s story. Say your “elevator pitch” or imagine you gave a TED talk about your life. Then bring in the voice.

I woke up under the weather and with a headache. Trump crashed markets. People were operating diesel-powered cutters down in the yard. And yet . . . and yet: we sat down to write. We slowed down. We allowed ourselves to be curious, to connect with our truth and inner wisdom.

Thank you to all who joined! I learned a ton. Here’s to many more of these experiments. Join me if you dare!

I’ve attached the recording of my introduction. I also share these on youtube.

NEXT EVENT

Next week Thursday, April 10, at 6pm Eastern Time. → Register here.

I will alternate times and weekdays to give people in different time zones a chance to join.

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Journaling prompts to try.

If you didn’t get a chance to attend, why not try one of these prompts this weekend?

Pen and paper. 15+ minute timer. Make a conscious decision to step into radical honesty with yourself. Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, like voo-humm. Get centered in your body. (I recommend 5 minutes of relaxing HRV breathing.)

• If I truly and deeply loved myself, would I . . . let myself do this, hold myself back from doing this . . . let this be done to me . . . carry this weight . . .

• Everything would change if I could forgive this person:

• If money could speak, this is what it would tell me:

• What important inner wisdom am I not acting on? Why?

• If I had the time, skill, courage . . . I would tell [the world / someone] this: ___ (“Or: “these are the words stuck in my throat”)

Some things I learned:

• Regular journaling is a story we tell ourselves at the end of the day.

• Mindbody writing is about movement, connection, and energy

• Movement on the page → movement through life

• Shift from thinking to feeling, from mind to body and beyond — to the unconscious, to intuition

• What is stuck? What do I carry? Can I release that energy? Can I let myself the energy of the shadow words and find the gold that lies behind?

• I forgot how foreign pen and paper have become to many. Took me a while to get used to it, too. In the beginning my hands cramped. It gets better and easier over time. Think of it as an investment.

• That’s one big advantage of the page over the screen: the hand can reflect the emotion. You can go really BIG and tiny, fast and slow, ALL CAPS or cursive . . . make circles and lines and big loops or boxy letters, . . . the screen is very limited compared to what can flow through your fingers.

• It’s a chance to step away from all screens, to disengage from the land of fomo and stress and be present and curious with yourself.

“Pages must be done longhand. The computer is fast—too fast for our purposes. Writing by computer gets you speed but not depth. Writing by computer is like driving a car at 85 mph. Everything is a blur. “Oh, my God, was that my exit?” Writing by hand is like going 35 mph. “Oh, look, here comes my exit. And look, it has a Sonoco station and a convenience store.” — Julia Cameron

• My writing is still often messy, sometimes illegible. Messy is okay! It’s not supposed to be neat or pretty. It’s about giving shape to “what is”, about meeting yourself with as much honesty as possible, about getting out of the way of what could flow through you.

• If creative sparks fly, you’ll just type them up after. It’s not a big deal compared to not being able to tap into all your inner wisdom and energy. I keep a second little journal for highlights and nuggets.

• I have tons of prompts and a toolkit of different practices. I tried to jam too much into one session. Next time will be more focused.

• Also: I like hearing myself talk. Will set a timer for my introduction.

• Setting, process, rituals and cues are important. I want to explore more what tools help us enter the right “mind body space.” Also the tools to integrate what we find. I’ll have to put together a basic workbook. And watch me try to screenshare youtube or spotify next time🙈

• One hour is pretty short. We’ll skip the offering next time.

If you plan to join, take some time to reflect on the questions below (journal about them :) ). See where they can lead you. Things can shift long before we sit down to do the work.

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Event format

• I will talk for ~15 minutes about the practice

• ~15 minutes of solo writing time

• Time for discussion, questions, sharing, and feedback

• This is a private space. No AI bots. I record the introduction but not the discussion. Everything you write is for your eyes and benefit only. There is time to share and discuss if you feel called to do so

What to bring

• A pen that flows well (I use basic ones like these sharpies and pilots)

• I recommend a dedicated journal for these exercises

• Reflect on things you want to explore

  • Think of something you want to move in your life. A project, a goal, a decision, a relationship, a project, or an area in your life in which you feel stuck.

  • And/or: make a list of sources of stress and anxiety

Questions to reflect on

Rate each area of your life: how satisfied are you? (1 lowest, 10 highest)

• Career & Work:

• Money & Finances:

• Partner & Love:

• Family & Friends:

• Creativity:

• Spirituality:

• Personal Growth & Learning:

• Health & Fitness:

• Fun & Enjoyment:

In which area(s) are you settling for less than you deserve? Why?

What are the top 2-3 things currently causing anxiety or unease?

How clear are you about compass? How connected do you feel to your purpose?

What important moment(s) of your life cannot be found on your CV but explain(s) where you are today? Which of these do you . . . share, celebrate, hide?

If you had the time and skill, what story would you tell / what idea would you share?

What important inner truth are you not acting on? Why?

If journaling could lead to 1-2 outcomes or changes in your life, what’s the best you would hope for?

If you had a magic wand, what major change would you make in your life? What is your highest and best hope? What is getting in the way?

What are you unusually passionate about? How do you share or express it with others?

What would you love to tell the world, but it feels impossible? What words are stuck in your throat?

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It works for noticing shadow. “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves,” as Carl Jung put it. But where there is shadow, there is also gold.

I’ve been having lots of meetings recently and a lot of the people I meet are covered in gold. The stories and ideas they carry sparkle like a pile of gemstones. Well, almost. Their treasure exists in the realm of potential. It is unmanifest.

When I notice, I can’t help but ask:

When those words cross my lips, I know I’ve entered “most wonderful job in the world” territory. I can feel myself light up.

I find myself in the presence of something subtle and holy. Like communion. Not the Christian sacrament, Communion with a capital C, but communion as an intimate space of sharing, of being witnessed, of being vulnerable. A moment of inspiration and aliveness.

I’m not saying everyone should write in public. It’s just an expression of curiosity: that’s so interesting, have you dug into it? Have you given it shape or shared it? Have you written, spoken, painted, drawn, danced, sung, built, drummed, or carved . . . that?

. . . then I hear the shadow words. And the real communion begins.

You know the words I’m talking about.

What if I failed? What would people think? What — and who — could I lose?

What if I succeeded? Who would I be? What would I have to sacrifice?

It’s too difficult. I don’t know enough. Nobody would care or understand.

I could never . . . I am not a storyteller, not a writer, not interesting enough, not smart enough, not funny enough . . . not . . . enough.

Shadow words are as old as time. Exodus 3:10-11: “What makes you think that I could ever go to Pharaoh and lead the children of Israel out of Egypt?” Who, me? I could never!

Shadow words can feel like the weight of a lifetime. A ball and chain to keep us in place. Back pain to distract us from our gold.

Shadow words exhaust me, but I respect them. They tell me that I’m in someone’s labyrinth. There’s gold here, but also people’s demons.

I try to slow down and tap into my intuition. I reach out and feel the walls. What is the texture of this space? Are there markers to guide us? Can I find a light switch?

What I do, and someone had to point this out to me, is that I channel my inner bunny.

Picture a rabbit: big ears. Soft and warm. Gentle. Totally present. A good listener. A patient witness. The bunny does not judge. It is not pushy. By its nature it is excited to go down a rabbit hole.

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Shadow words point toward an age-old nasty cocktail made with ingredients like fear, doubt, judgment, and pain.

I am afraid, I worry.

I don’t think I can.

I am not worthy. I don’t deserve.

I feel alone, separate, disconnected. . .

They point toward a simple question: Is it okay to be me?

Is there space in this world for . . . who I am, for how I am, for everything I am? Am I okay with all that I am — with everything I have done, thought, and felt? Can I meet everything I am with love and forgiveness?

Because if I could — if I felt completely comfortable and deeply in love with every aspect of myself — then of course I would share. It would be the most natural thing. Like asking for the butter at breakfast.

Unfortunately, the world can feel cold and threatening, judgmental and competitive. Maybe it does not feel like a place where it’s okay to be visible and take up space. Maybe it feels like you’re alone in your tower at night. The wolves are out there, howling at the moon. Maybe it feels like you need to protect yourself.

I get that. My safe space is a kind of isolation.

Give me a screen, books, journals. I am comfortable by myself. I don’t like to think about the downside of this behavior, the many relationships that died for lack of nourishment.

And of course there can be sacredness in solitude, in the communion with a greater force of being. But the gold I’ve been finding recently becomes visible in connection. It requires a shared space in which energy can flow.

It requires a conversation like a communion.

A magic space of curiosity and sharing that leads to the source of infinite possibility.

A space in which it’s okay to just be me.

That’s what the bunny means to me. Let the wolves be wolves for a moment and hang out with an animal that is friendly, harmless, and attentive. How nice to be heard and witness. How nice to just . . . be.

When we feel seen, accepted, maybe even understood, we remember that separation is not truth. We see a path to face the shadow and find the gold that lies behind it. We get a glimpse of what is possible.

To get there, we need to see our glow reflect in the eyes of another. To find our light, we need others who light up in our presence. We need to see it so we can believe it.

I need that, too. Last week, someone told me my questions were very intuitive. I blushed. What, me? Nooooo, you’re not serious, awwwww . . .

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What I’m talking about is simple and available to all of us.

It’s as ordinary as setting an intention and preparing a space.

It’s as trivial as loving, gentle curiosity.

It’s as unremarkable as staying curious. Tell me more. I would love to hear about that. Actually, I totally think you could!

It’s as mundane as an empowering question: Have you written about that? What if you just . . . went for it?

That’s how we find the diamonds among our pebbles. That’s how we see the ancient patterns hidden in the endless sand. That’s how we remember the sun is right there, behind the clouds.

These conversations help us feel our lightning and hear our stream.

It must be the most wonderful job in the world to have them over and over, to be a mirror for magic, an instrument of sympathetic resonance, a tuning fork that vibrates in the presence of aliveness.

When we spot the gold in others, we get to enjoy the glow.

When we share our light, we get to be the light.

That said, what really excites me is that I don’t have to do the writing afterwards.

— Frederik

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Channeling the rabbit for more magical conversations.

• Preparation. Big ears and stillness.

  • Approach conversation with intention. Think of each as a room. What does the space feel like? What is the invitation?

  • If I can’t be present with myself, how can I be a good listener? Meditation, journaling, and walks anchor my days. Something simple like a few minutes of breathing — HRV or 4-7-8, for example — can help me find my center. When I overschedule on the other hand, my attention starts to frazzle.

  • This goes both ways: for my guidance calls, I send people questions to prepare. If someone can’t be bothered to invest ~10 minutes to reflect ahead of time, that has proven to be a meaningful red flag. My tolerance for this declined when I realized that my opportunity cost is a magical conversation with someone else.

• Soft, warm, and gentle.

  • Prepare to share. Remember the levels of intimacy. People will meet you where they perceive you to be. If you’re all polished and business, the conversation will likely remain at that surface level.

  • We all experience inner conflict. I find it more interesting to explore polarities than to weigh in and support a side. There is information in resistance. Harmony requires that all voices are heard.

  • A mantra: I’m not here to tell anyone what to do. I don’t know what anyone should do. I just try to be present, curious, and I allow myself to get excited.

• Ready for rabbit holes.

  • It’s nice to prepare, but don’t let an agenda get in the way of aliveness. I look for what wants to move. Sometimes it’s obvious, other times it hides below the surface. Both light and shadow words can lead us there.

• Meeting shadow.

  • I find that treasure often lies at the intersection of talent and trauma. Where does the struggle to be human meet passion, skills, and knowledge?

  • I try to notice objections to curiosity, aliveness, and dreams. I try to inquire gently: What is behind the resistance? What makes this negative statement true or not true? What makes the other person think so — what part of them believes it to be true? What feelings or memories come up?

  • The emotional component is more complex.

  • First, the mind avoids discomfort. “I think” is a clue that someone is returning to their story after touching emotional truth. Sometimes it’s good to analyze, but often this is a diversion.

  • We all wear masks and people can be disconnected from their emotions. There is a lot of wisdom concealed, but I don’t know whether the other person wants to go there. I am curious: What is behind the fear and the tension? What is underneath the anger? But it’s all up to the other person.

  • I tend to recommend mindbody writing or specific prompts. Sometimes it’s obvious that follow-up conversations would be invaluable.

• Eye on the prize.

  • The end goal, as I see it, is to meet everything within us with love and forgiveness.

  • Dealing with shadow is not easy. Affirmation is worth its weight in gold.

  • I picked up two prompts from James Pennebaker’s Opening Up by Writing It Down, a book about the science behind ‘expressive writing’ — writing about stressful or traumatic events.

    • “Benefit finding: Identify an event and then focus on the positive aspects of the experience; this might include a focus on how you have grown or changed as a person . . . and how you might be better equipped to meet future challenges.”

    • “Best possible future self: Think about your life in the future and write about this life as if you have worked hard and succeeded at accomplishing all of your life goals.” What is your highest and best hope?

    • Use these to ‘close out’ an investigation of the shadow space.

Time for more experiments!

I’ve written a lot about the power of different journaling methods. I’ve long wondered what it would be like to explore these together. I will explore a few online space as free experiments while I figure out the format I like best.

The first will be next week Thursday, April 3, at 11 am Eastern Time. → This is the link to register.

Future ones will be at different times and weekdays to give people in different time zones a chance to join.

Rough format:

• 1 hour

• Have pen and paper ready (I would recommend either a fresh journal or one you use for journaling/writing exercises)

• I will share some thoughts and pointers about the writing practices I use

• ~15 minutes of solo writing time

  • Your choice of trying a stream-of-consciousness method or a prompt. Pick what feels most interesting/relevant

• Time for discussion, questions, sharing, and feedback

  • Maybe pointers/prompts on how to continue the practice on your own

I want to record the introduction and prompt to share them later. I will not record the discussion. This will be a private space. Everything you write will be for your eyes and benefit only.

On this note: does anyone know how to keep out AI bots like Otter that create automated transcripts?

Price of admission. The first few spaces will be free but I ask for an offering. Bring one thing that moved or touched you. Could be anything — a quote, the name of a song, book, movie, a poem, a moment in your life, an image . . .

And for yourself: bring something that you want to move or whose movement you find challenging. Something stuck or maybe something moving in the wrong direction. Reflect on it ahead of time . . . maybe it will come up during the journaling exercise. Or maybe not. You never know.

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Prep Questions.

I share different versions of these questions with anyone getting on a personal guidance call with me.

If you plan on joining the call, spend some time with these. Copy them into a fresh document. See where they lead you. Things can start to shift long before we sit down to do the work.

Before you write anything, make a conscious decision to step into radical honesty with yourself. Close your eyes, take a deep breath. Get centered in your body. (I recommend 5 minutes of relaxing HRV breathing.)

Rate each area of your life: how satisfied are you? (1 lowest, 10 highest)

• Career & Work:

• Money & Finances:

• Partner & Love:

• Family & Friends:

• Creativity:

• Spirituality:

• Personal Growth & Learning:

• Health & Fitness:

• Fun & Enjoyment:

In which area(s) are you settling for less than you deserve? Why?

What are the top 2-3 things currently causing anxiety?

Do you feel stuck? If so, how?

• Stuck on a specific goal, change, or decision

• Stuck in an area

• Disconnected from purpose, flow, energy, creativity

• Disconnected from emotions, inner guidance

Different kinds of writing (among other practices) can help in each area.

Do you know your compass? What do you refuse to compromise on? How connected do you feel to your purpose?

What are you unusually passionate about? How do you share or express it with others?

What important moment(s) of your life cannot be found on your CV but explain(s) where you are today? Which of these do you . . . share, celebrate, hide?

What would you love to tell [the world / your partner / your family / your boss / … ] but it feels impossible?

If you had a magic wand, what major change would you make in your life? What is your highest and best hope? What is getting in the way?

What important idea/truth do you know but are not acting on? Why?

If journaling could lead to 1-2 outcomes or changes in your life, what’s the best you would hope for?

If you had the time and skill, what story would you tell / what idea would you share?

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Officially, Brian helps writers improve their work at his firm Think Deeply Write Clearly. Practically, he is a person I love talking to — a unique sounding board for ideas, a guide who knows the creative trenches, a scribe at home in the labyrinth of language. Also, someone to have a good laugh with.

Every conversation with him left me with quotes and ideas I revisit and I realized it was time to invite him for a chat. I planned to talk about the writing process, but I also wanted to better understand his journey. When and why did he realize he wanted to help other writers?

This led us down a deep rabbit hole that began with acting, Shakespeare, and the power of using a period rather than a comma. It surfaced Brian’s passion:

Through a process of writing books, I learned to become addicted to sensemaking. Through sensemaking I learned to become very fascinated with how people produce their language and communicate their sensemaking into the world — with a heavy bias toward people who produce thoughtful material.

As a writer, Brian was in a co-evolutionary loop with his book about artist Amedeo Modigliani and the latter’s lover Jeanne Hébuterne (who committed suicide two days after Modigliani’s death). The deeper Brian went in his investigation, the more the more complexity he found in the story — and the more it affected him. It’s an intimate example of letting yourself be shaped by the process of writing.

“The most intimate thing we can do [as writers] is share our own reflection,” Brian once told me. That captures a theme in the conversation and his work: the importance of sharing not just what we think but why and how we came to our conclusion. The room of our work becomes inviting when we share our engagement with perception and ideas, rather than try to impose our conclusions.

I don’t care what you think. I care why and how you think it and the quality of whether or not I’m invited into your worldview, whether or not I see that as an accurate or inaccurate representation of the world. I need to understand your perception of something, not your conclusions of something.

I don’t know whether to think of Brian as a writing or thinking coach. Forget the labels: he helps us lead the dance with our readers.

I am very happy to share our conversation full of laughter and insights. I’m sure we’ll do a round two because I barely got to ask him a handful of the questions on my mind.

How does the writer go deeper and perfect her ideas?

How does she establish trust rather than being just another voice?

How do we make sense of the world, find truths, and communicate them well? That’s a lifelong journey.

In the meantime, in case you are interested, Brian coaches people one-on-one at Think Deeply Write Clearly. He also offers an ongoing “intellectual home” for anyone into writing with the Credible Conversations program (first three months are free for my readers).

Enjoy and have a wonderful weekend!

Frederik

You can look at writing as the investigative process of our instincts. If we go through an investigative process well enough, we might learn something deeply true about ourselves and about the universe that we live in. And then writing is delivering the clarity of that thought in a way that people can understand it and it can benefit their lives.

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There is nothing behind this paywall except access to the full video/audio.

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Few things might be more impactful — and more challenging — than giving space to what has been avoided for a long, long time.

Because that was me. With the exception of brief outbursts, I didn’t allow myself a lot of emotions. It was difficult (and expensive!?) to re-connect with my heart and body. Every week I stepped into a bland office with tired carpets and waited for the dreaded words: “How does that make you feel?”

I was not feeling anything.

If anything, my body felt empty. There was a void. And tension. Like someone holding a door from bursting open.

The head was my safe space. I wanted to think about my life, not feel it. Kudos to my therapist who gently prodded me back to my body when I tried to divert and tell a story.

Anger might have been the hardest to access.

Hot flashing anger. Boiling anger. Stewing anger. Even today, anger is a tough one. I still push it away. If I get angry, I may feel a short pull, a hint at something happening. Then it gets bottled up and placed in the toxic waste storage somewhere down in my guts. Anger does not feel safe.

I had to learn, like a toddler, that experiencing anger was not the same as being an angry person. I had to teach myself not to feel guilty for anger simply arising. I had to grasp that being angry at someone I loved did not threaten to break our bond.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t want to act from a place of anger. I don’t want my life to be filled with anger. No, like all feelings and thoughts, it arises and vanishes. The anger burns off. The better my overall state, the more centered I am, the less interesting it is. (This was where meditation changed my life profoundly.) But the self-denial, I found, leads to a dissociated existence, to a disconnect from my truth.

It creates tension and numbness in my body. It leads to behavior that is hard to explain — like suddenly avoiding a person or place. It leads to the willful destruction of the gift of time to experience distraction and release.

Then I climb down the ladder and open the anger barrel. Ah. That’s what’s going on…

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” ― Carl Jung

I have found different ways to access that space. What seems to work best is movement, movement that lets the body express and release without the mind as an intermediary. Workouts, dance, TRE, breathwork all seem effective. And, yes, even writing — which has the advantage of being available for free to anyone at any time (well, provided some privacy).

It’s dead simple, but not easy.

I learned this technique from the books of the late Dr. John Sarno (I shared it here with other notes on journaling). Years ago, Jim O’Shaughnessy mentioned Sarno to me, but I was not listening. Sarno focused on chronic pain, particularly back pain, and that was not a major issue for me.

Last year, one of my stepbrothers used Sarno’s method to overcome long COVID. The way he described it was very moving, as if he was dropping the weights he had been carrying by communing with his heart. It blew my mind.

Strange as it may seem, people with an unconscious psychological need for symptoms tend to develop a disorder that is well known, like back pain, hay fever, or eczema. — The Divided Mind

“John Sarno was a rehabilitation-medicine specialist at N.Y.U.,” writes Sam Dolnick at the New York Times. A doctor frustrated with his tools which didn’t seem to be effective. His encounter with psychology made him see “his own physical ailments — an irritable stomach, itchy skin, shrieking headaches — as manifestations of his emotional well-being.” Mind and body appeared to him as one system and chronic pain often as a psychosomatic phenomenon — a physical symptom caused by psychological factors (he called it TMS)1.

I don’t know whether he is right about pain being a ‘distraction’ but I don’t doubt the connection between mental and physical health.

As with Freud’s patients, I found that my patients’ physical symptoms were the direct result of strong feelings repressed in the unconscious. — The Mindbody Prescription

The medical community thought Sarno, who called himself ‘a heretic’, went too far.2 “Because his colleagues wouldn’t listen,” writes Dolnick, “he bypassed the journals and instead wrote best-selling books, conversational in tone, that detailed the link he saw between emotional distress and physical pain; he sold more than a million copies.”

I didn’t suffer from chronic pain, but I was familiar with the issue of bottled-up emotions. How else could they manifest? What issues was I risking down the road?

Sarno focused on rage perhaps because that was his predicament (“I am furious!” he said. “It’s there all the time! I’m in a rage!”). What about the other stuff we push away? The sorrow, shame, guilt, envy, fear, all the hurt and judgment and nasty stuff we would rather avoid.

What if Sarno didn’t go far enough?

“It is perfectly acceptable to have a physical problem in our culture, but people tend to shy away from anything that has to do with the emotions.” — Healing Back Pain

I wanted to know the truth about how I felt — the embodied truth, not the story my mind would come up with. And I wanted to drop the weight. I needed to know how Sarno had helped people.

For some patients, knowledge was enough. That’s why Sarno’s books analyze the condition, the treatment methods, and (Freudian) psychology. Unfortunately, Sarno buried a key idea among his many pages (kudos to his student Nicole Sachs for re-surfacing it): if knowing about the connection between psyche and body is not enough, you can choose to face and release whatever you are holding.

The best description I’ve found is in the chapter ‘treatment’ in The Divided Mind. Barely five pages of a “daily study program.” It’s that simple.

• Make three lists with all the sources of your emotional pain:

  • One list for your past: “Anger, hurt, emotional pain, and sadness generated in childhood will stay with you all your life because there is no such thing as time in the unconscious.”

  • One list for your current life circumstances: “List all the pressures in your life, since they all contribute to your inner rage.”

  • And one list for your personality traits, whatever contributes “to the internal emotional pain and anger.” For example: being a people pleaser, self-critical, a perfectionist, very driven, shy, self-sacrificing etc. — “The child in our unconscious doesn’t care about anyone but itself and gets angry at the pressures to be perfect and good.” 3

• Set aside time and “write an essay, the longer the better, about each item on your list. This will force you to focus in depth on the emotional things of importance in your life.” I called it write Until the Heart Catches.

• Ideally, do this daily. More realistically, commit to it as an experiment, say for a month, then regularly to check in.

This is done by hand. With pen and paper. I know you all want to type it and have AI analyze it. Or speak it into a transcription app and avoid typing altogether. That may be effective in different ways, but in this what matters is not insight but to have an emotional experience that was previously avoided.

The point of the pen is movement. We need to move from head to body and stay with discomfort. We need to see the words take shape and be able to stare at them. We need to feel the emotional charge. It’s work. If you stay at the level of trivial chatter, your experience will likewise be trivial.

Yes, your hand may cramp in the beginning. It gets better.

Yes, it may be illegible. That does not matter. We’re not writing to share.

This is about healing, growing, and a chance to get closer to your essence.

What happens on that page is for your eyes only. It may be effective to destroy the pages later on. I haven’t tried that yet, but I know it can be useful to ‘release’ written statements — say a letter of forgiveness — to the ocean, fire etc.

Occasionally, this writing yields creative sparks. Ideas and insights, songs and poetry, maybe waiting for you. There is gold in your shadow. When that happens, you just write the spark up somewhere else. Keep the mindbody writing between yourself and the universe.

A few things I’ve learned doing this many times:

• Turn off the phone. Practice discipline. You may feel the urge to go to the kitchen, the bathroom, to text someone, check the apps, to do work, to do anything but experience what has been avoided for so long.

• Set a timer. It can take a while to go deep. I often start at the level of story with my gaze outward (“my problem is [person] is [doing]”). Give yourself enough space to go beyond the surface. Keep writing until you find the trail of feeling, then discomfort. Look for I feel [X] and, frankly, I’d rather not…

• Stay with the body. The mind will try to distract you. For the purpose of this exercise what happened is irrelevant. The story does not matter. All that matters is whether you can give yourself permission to feel what your unconscious is holding.

• Privacy. This is about experiencing emotions that don’t feel safe to feel, let alone express around others. Even with my therapists and my IFS coach I censored myself. The more privacy you have for this work, the better.

• Mindbody experience. I’ve broken pens, punched through pages, sobbed, cried, yelled, and cursed. I tend to shift back and forth between writing auf deutsch and in English. Many of my pages are illegible. Sometimes the letters get very large, at other times the writing is tiny. Allow yourself a full body experience. Give your parts the space to express themselves the way they want to.

• Try speaking. Try reading the emotionally difficult/juicy stuff out loud. Don’t think or dictate but rather let the hand write and then say out loud what appeared.

• Let go. We’re not trying to make this our reality. The goal is to visit the dragon’s cave and return to the village. Say what needs to be said, cry if you feel like crying, and when you’re done, close the notebook and leave it behind on the page.

• End with soothing. Things might get loud and wild and you might feel raw and upset after. Give yourself time to calm down and comfort yourself. I’m not joking. Don’t do this and hop on a work call right after.

  • Find a couple of self-care rituals as rewards for doing the work — a walk in nature, yoga nidra, a nap, hot bath, soothing music or guided meditation..

• Add self-love and forgiveness. We’re looking to meet ourselves on the page as honestly as we can. You might bump into shadow that can be difficult to face. That’s valuable, but we also need to make sure we don’t stay in that mindset. Aside from soothing self-care, end with an affirmation to love and forgive yourself. Perhaps find someone to share that love with. Share a hug.

  • The weirder this sounds, the more important it is. If everything love and forgiveness gives you the ick, try something like Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It by Kamal Ravikant.

I’ve used mindbody writing for life circumstances like money or writing, for relationship and family issues, for hang-ups like my avoidance of intimacy, and for the big leaps I have not allowed myself. I could easily find dozens more for which I haven’t explored with it yet.

Like my reluctance to ask for help. Gotta be independent! Can’t rely on others… oh. Is that so. I wonder what feelings are hiding in that space. Or my teeth clenched at night. I wonder what wants to be expressed there…

Still, I’ve found it very effective already. I feel lighter and less tense. My story has been changing. I find peace and bliss on the other side of broken pens and mad pages.

It is simply one way I meet my darkness and stuckness to release it, one page at a time.

Maybe it’s time to start the work?

I hope this helps.

— Frederik

• Create a list of big goals,

• Hype myself up — let’s get after it,

• Work,

• Notice that I was not achieving the goals and … make a new list of goals?!

I liked the burst of enthusiasm of writing a new list. Each goal was like a distant peak waiting to be conquered. At that moment, everything seemed possible. … Just one more list. More ambitious goals! This time it will work! Instead, I got mini burnouts.

“Today, everyone is an auto-exploiting labourer in his or her own enterprise,” Byung-Chul Han writes in The Burnout Society. “People are now master and slave in one. Even class struggle has transformed into an inner struggle against oneself.” I was really good at that, struggling against myself. Aim, motivate, push… and falter.

Maybe you’ve shared that experience? Somehow, after a bunch of work, you are still here and all the goals are still over there. You pushed the boulder, yet it doesn’t feel like you made progress. I hope not, but that’s what it felt like for me.

There was something else going on with the goals themselves. They didn’t seem to stick. It was as if the mountains changed shape when I slept. Some even disappeared. I held them in my head but not in my body.

Even so, I continued to set new goals. It was my safety blanket: Look, I’m still trying!

I dug through my notes for a few examples of ‘mountains.’ The main bucket was about achievement and money.

Write a bestselling book… Or a book a year…. Get to a hundred thousand Substack subscribers… Write a post every day… Create a finance YouTube channel and reach millions of people…

A second bucket about relationships, spirituality, and fun.

Be in a loving relationship with an inspiring partner… Raise a family… Own a townhouse to host dinners and sound meditations… Create music… Dance… Be in nature… Travel the world…

Finally, there was a word cloud filled with values and ideas like love, service, forgiveness, creativity, healing, God. Let’s call it loosely ‘purpose’.

I think what happened is that the list of goals turned my gaze outward and to the future. All I could see was the mountain, the distance, the obstacles. When things didn’t work, I could blame the world. That prevented me from being more aware of my inner state.

Specifically, I’m thinking about inner conflict. Perhaps the list of goals was too long? Diagnosing a lack of focus is easy. A more interesting question is why so many goals? I see people as fractal with an “inner family” of sub-personalities or parts. What if there is an inner struggle to get different goals on the list? How much energy is wasted managing that disharmony? Is it possible self-sabotage is partially an inner battle over supremacy?

Let’s say ‘success me’ wants to grow the substack and decides posting more frequently is the way to go. I know there is another part that is horrified by the commitment to write on the clock. Push and pull.

The same goes for turning the finance profiles into a YouTube channel or a book — ideas I took stabs at. Interesting goals? Maybe. Was my inner world aligned to do more finance content? No. On the contrary: it was in rebellion already.

Then there’s the issue of the mountain behind the mountain. How often do we climb Mount Money while thinking about Mount Meaning later? If you are aware of this while climbing, how could you climb with all your energy? I think this one is an energy killer. You can do that for a few years. Say, get a degree and get through a few grueling junior years in a difficult career path. But it’s going to take a toll. (I wrote about this in Marshmallow Mind, also known as the arrival fallacy.)

The goals I could see as mountains tended to be about having. That doesn’t make them bad goals — it’s valuable to prosper and be able to provide — but they are mere waypoints, the future foundation for more meaningful experiences. It’s important to push the and then what button until you find the goals of being and doing for which they stand. They can also obscure unresolved inner states (I must earn X amount to be worthy of the relationship I want — because inherently I do not feel worthy…).

Goals of having are not bad, but they are not alive. They’re focused on objects of brief moments of achievement. At least for me, they required a steady infusion of energy. Meanwhile, what gave me energy — what was alive and meaningful — was up there in the clouds, ungrounded. The mountains took priority. We’ll get to the fun stuff later…

There was not even a hint of flow. I felt disconnected from the voice of my intuition and my creative night shift. I had no idea how to tap into my stream. So yeah, burnout.

Brian Whetten helped me shift my perspective fundamentally.

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People tend to look at the clouds for an answer, Brian pointed out to me. They look for ‘The One’ purpose, “that one special career, activity, or relationship,” he writes in Yes Yes Hell No: The Little Book for Making Big Decisions. But purpose, he told me, is always relational. The meaning of life is “growth, contribution, connection, and creativity.” Purpose can show up in “millions of ways.”

If we don’t feel its energy, it’s because we don’t connect with it through specific and intentional action. Action is the lightning rod that channels the charge in the clouds. Brian’s mantra: “Help one person solve one problem.”

Help one person with one problem. Make one connection. Create and share one thing. Teach one idea. Be of service, now, and notice when you light up.

“If you want to have a great life,” he writes, “make your values more important than your goals.” Find the essence behind and then what goals and turn your highest priorities into a compass. That is where I have been shifting my attention: to direction, presence, and action.

• Direction: Am I clear about my purpose and values — who and what matters (see also: the energy of legacy and direction of destiny)?

• Presence: Am I showing up fully for the person or task in front of me? Am I grateful for the gift of this moment?

• … and action.

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Henrik Karlsson wrote about the shift from vision to unfolding, a “feedback loop that embeds the context’s knowledge into your design,” in his mind-blowing piece. “My goal is to write a few good essays,” he writes in the footnotes. “The problem is when a goal becomes more than a direction, when you start to visualize the specific design you want to end up with. You want to hold long term goals loosely so that you can easily course correct when the context gives you new information.”

That was my problem. I want to hold goals more loosely now and move in harmony with the flow of reality. I want to listen to the stream, respond to it, follow it. I’m done trying to dig canals. Time to drop the boulder and unfold in alignment with purpose.

… but I am also curious: what would it feel like to catch lightning? How much energy is out there, waiting for us to tap in?

— Frederik

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Daily feedback loop.

Connect to the inner compass. Ground in the present. Take action. Learn. Repeat. This loop feels alive, aligned, and responsive to feedback. I suspect it will compound over time. It also allows me to check in daily:

• Am I acting in alignment with my purpose?

• Am I being intentional in my actions?

• Did this (inter-)action give or drain energy?

• How else can I be of service?

• Am I learning? Am I listening?

Let me know: the video.

Let’s chat.

As mentioned, I am opening weekly slots for Zoom calls again. If you feel stuck on a big goal or decision (or stuck staring at too many big goals), contact me. I will share some questions for reflection. Then we can see if something is ready to shift.

Also, if you are in the US and fear is getting in the way of a big leap: I want to pay it forward and would be happy to buy five copies of Yes Yes Hell No for people going through the process with me (also check out Brian’s podcast with Tom Morgan).

✍️Prompts: Cure goal-setting addiction and catch lightning.

Make sure you read this by Henrik Karlsson.

Goal overload.

• Brain dump.

  • Write down every one of your goals by hand and from memory. Notice which ones didn’t make the list.

  • If you only had time in your life left for one — or if one was to define your legacy — which one could the world not live without? Cross the others out. Notice which ones were most painful to delete? Why?

• Probe for emotional resonance.

  • Which ones do you have the strongest opinions on?

  • What do others get wrong? What goal frustrates you the most?

  • Which is scariest?

• Consider the language.

  • Which goals appear in your authentic voice and which are borrowed from your influences? Watch for slang and key words you’ve borrowed from the people who admire (or envy).

Exploring inner conflict and stuckness.

• Try the inner dialogue journaling method.

  • How does your inner world really feel about your big goal? What opinions have been ignored? What if everyone was allowed to speak their mind? What opinions, fears, emotions are present?

• Use Brian Whetten’s Yes Yes Hell No to make friends with fear and find the concealed message (remember, there are no problems)

Goal behind the goal.

• Group your goals into having, being, doing, and change (letting go of unhealthy behaviors, relationships). Compare the length of each list. Consider how satisfied you are today with what you have, do, and your general experience of life.

  • Separate what you like from what you think you should like.

  • Spend time on your values and purpose — where does it show up in your goals? What goals are and then what stand-ins?

• Which goals are created by an unresolved inner state — look for pain, judgment, fear, shame, grief…

  • Push the and then what button until you hit solid rock.

    • For example: I want money → to signal status (car, home, travel) → to date → to have sex → actually, to be in a loving relationship → to feel loved → could I feel loved today? Do I feel worthy of love today?

    • You can still pursue all the success goals you want after. You’ll just do it feeling better about yourself :)

Tap into lightning.

• Find clarity about your inner compass: what is non-negotiable regardless of how much material success you achieve?

• Connect the cloud to the present:

  • What action can you take now to connect with purpose? Help one person with one problem. Get feedback. Notice energy. Repeat.

  • Back to basics: what delights? What brings joy? What energizes?

• See the prompts for The momentum of mission.

Inner dialogue led me to aspects of myself that I had been avoiding, it surfaced deep fears, strange ideas, and startling beliefs. It showed me that my youngest parts speak in my native language. Inner dialogue made me scream and break pens, but it also offered me guidance, peace, and even poetry. Above all, it helped me move.

That’s how I think about writing by hand, as a practice of movement. Compared to typing on a computer or phone, the hand moves across the page. That creates inner movement and, ideally, movement in life.

That’s why I return to it whenever I feel stuck or tense. I see these as signals of possibly unexplored or unexperienced inner polarities, of simmering conflicts that disconnect me from inner wisdom and guidance.

This stuckness could be about a specific something or someone, a lack of clarity about a person, decision or situation that translates into lack of movement. Or it could be unspecific and feel like stress and a lack of progress in some area of your life — like work, family, relationship, or money.

I think of people as “fractal” assortments of inner sub-personalities or parts. In moments of stuckness I find that I am “up here” in my egoic construct (and “in my head”), disconnected from information and emotion existing within the rest of me. Inner dialogue is one way to reconnect and explore what is happening on the lower levels.

I picked this up from screenwriter David Milch who recommended it to students as his favorite exercise (my previous post about it).

It’s very simple. You offer an open space to let your parts share their opinions. Take a page and a pen and let “voice one” and “voice two” speak (in later sessions you could experiment with more). Set a timer and write (20+ minutes). Just let your hand move.

“For the next five days, find a time each day, preferably the same time, and sit down and write not less than twenty minutes and not more than fifty minutes. Don’t think about what you’re going to write before you do it. … Two voices, one and two. No names. No description.

Don’t think about what it means. Don’t think about who they are. Just follow, just hear what they say. — David Milch

Movement is the whole point. Movement from mind to body, from thinking to feeling, from conscious to unconscious. And to let what is deep within you — unexpressed, pushed away, unheard, censored, lost in the noise — move up to your awareness.

Write only for yourself. Lock it away after, throw it out, whatever removes the last barrier of self-censorship. Just keep the pen moving.

A good sign is surprise — surprising emotional intensity, language, or content and direction of the ideas expressed.

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“The next day, preferably at the same time, sit down and do it again. They may be the same voices, they may be different voices, don’t worry about it. Whatever comes out is fine. Don’t think about it. Just do it.”

What emerges may be about what you’re wrestling with. It could also relate to other areas of your life that need attention. It could be a creative impulse. Your only job is to give space to whatever is alive and wants to be expressed and to experience the emotional charge.

I revisit inner dialogue regularly, like now when I wrestle with topics like money, fear, home, and identity.

Part of me wants to live in the Alps, another in New York, a third wants to blow it all up and just travel.

Part of me wants to “be a man” and make a lot of money, buy a house. Another only cares about art, play, and spirituality.

I bet you can find this diversity of inner opinion for every important topic in your life. These parts don’t go away; the polarities remain. But once they are seen and acknowledged, you can make a decision from a place of greater understanding and less tension.

Good luck!

— Frederik

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• All my notes on shadow journaling.

• In David Milch’s words

• David Milch - The Idea of the Writer

They seemed to have more energy, work with less effort, and move with a subtle elegance. They appeared immune to distractions and doubt, and I wanted the same. I yearned for focus, energy, and clarity. Instead I felt like I was stuck walking in circles.

How unfair, I thought. They move in flow state while I have to grind. They are on a mission. I am merely working.

If this sounds familiar, I have good news and bad news.

Good news first. Profound energy, clarity, and focus are available. They are waiting to be tapped into. But they are not ours to demand. Rather, they arise. They arise when we shift from pushing to letting ourselves be pulled, when we tap into our stream and let ourselves be carried.

More good news: no need to wolf down another book or podcast. You probably already know what you need. You carry the answers within you. (As my friend Spencer joked: the self-help book we need has “one page and says: ‘you already know what to do.’”)

More bad news: what makes the stream so powerful is also what can prevent us from finding it.

Last year, when I was stuck, I tried to push my way out.

I wanted wins, momentum, points on the board. Turn my essays about Buffett or famous investors into a book. Or go all-in on money, emotions, and meaning. Definitely a book there. Or: burn it all down, pull a Gurdjieff, travel the world and interview spiritual teachers…1

My mind had ideas, but my body said no. All push, no pull.

This year, I am feeling a new energy. I heard a whisper, felt a subtle tug. I followed the thread. The mission had been there all along. My mistake had been to think I could pick what it was.

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Few things touch me like when a reader opens up in conversation in response to something I’ve written. That fills me with a renewed sense of urgency. And it is, I believe, what our age demands.

“I’ve just come to realize AI is smarter than I am. This is an existential moment, akin to what Kasparov felt in 1997 when he realized Deep Blue was going to beat him at chess,” screenwriter and director Paul Schrader wrote on Facebook.

Is this the end of the road for writing and storytelling? I don’t think so.

How to write better is an interesting question, but not nearly as compelling as why write at all?

Imagine asking ChatGPT how to live a good life when you could ask yourself what you want your life to be about. Information is a commodity and AI will answer (or read my piece about happiness). But that’s not what I’m interested in. I don’t want to live a good life — I want to live mine.

There’s nothing wrong with seeking happiness and comfort. But I know there is more to life than a generic version of “meaningful work and relationships.” I want to meet my destiny.

Don’t you?

If you ask me, our collective story is failing. The world as we know it is dying, metaphorically speaking, and we have entered some kind of transitional twilight zone (Buddhists would call it the Bardo, the time between death and rebirth). And we don’t get to exit this place until we re-write our story.

Is AI going to do it? More likely, we will lose ourselves in a new world of infinite personalized distraction. We will be bombarded with more entertainment than you could consume in a thousand incarnations.

Perhaps AI will be a game changer for the top tier creators, people like Schrader, more important even than the invention of the Espresso machine. Maybe the power of their new second brain will turn them into hyper-creators capable of weaving a new myth for us all. I’m not counting on that.

I think the writing we desperately need relies on an inner encounter with truth. This is something that can be done by anyone except AI.

“I am a big believer in not letting robots dream for us,” actor Nicolas Cage just told Variety. “The job of all art in my view, is to hold a mirror to the external and internal stories of the human condition,” he added.

“If we let robots do that, it will lack all heart and eventually lose edge and turn to mush. There will be no human response to life as we know it. It will be life as robots tell us to know it. I say, protect yourselves from AI interfering with your authentic and honest expressions.”

That’s it.

AI will beat us at creating entertainment. If that’s your job, AI will help you do it better. But does it know what feels urgent and intimate to you? Can it turn on the light in you and everyone you meet?

This is why I tell anyone asking me about writing to go in the opposite direction.

Close the prompt window. In fact, close the computer and turn off your phone.

Pick up pen and paper.

Take a deep breath.

This is your bridge between mind and heart, a place to commune with the sacred.

This is your portal.

It’s all you need.

Well, this and some courage.

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Psychologist and holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl offered a very useful way to reframe the question about the meaning of life. Avoid endless ruminating and ask yourself instead: what is this life asking of me?

When he was asked about the meaning of his own life, he wrote the response on a piece of paper and asked his students to guess.

“The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs,” one of them ventured.

“That was it, exactly,” Frankl said. “Those are the very words I had written.” (As recounted in the afterword to Man’s Search for Meaning.)

That’s what I’m talking about.

When you meet pen and paper with undivided attention, curiosity, and courage, you find a gate to your underworld. Like Dante, you must journey through the world of shadows and face all aspects of your being. When you emerge and see the light again, you get a chance to re-write our story. You also get a shot at transcendence.

Once you share your experience, when you bare your soul, you give others permission to do the same. Your soul-searching becomes a portal for both you and the reader (or listener).

How? I am collecting everything I learn about this process on this new page.

Sharing the gold we find is like dropping pebbles in an infinite pond.

The words ripple through time in concentric circles.

They touch the people we love, the people we meet, the people they meet. They may impact people who have not even been born yet.

This is how we move forward.

One page at a time.

I have a funny suspicion, or perhaps a delusion. I am convinced every single one of my readers is part of the answer. “Every soul is vast and wants to express itself fully,” George Saunders wrote in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. Everyone has within them the sparks that will light our way.

We can’t control what the algorithm does. We don’t know how the most influential creators will use their power.

But what we can control is our attention.

What we can do is re-write our own story.

And we can help others do the same.

Our age may require nothing short of a rebellion of authenticity, an insurrection of intimacy.

The goal of this work can be nothing less than transformation. The reward has to be a path to freedom and a new world.

Writing is just one way to do this. It happens to be available at any time, no training or investment required. All you need to do is put the phone down.

Then again, that can be harder than it sounds.

Try it out. You got this.

— Frederik

A month ago, I joined one of those group exercises in which everyone journaled about the new year. It sounded so exciting!

What’s your vision for 2025?

Drum roll.

Nothing.

No, seriously. Absolutely nothing. I stared at the page and… Could. Not. See. A. Thing.

It’s been like this for a while. There’s a kind of event horizon sitting in between ‘me today’ and, like, the rest of my life. There’s a point past which no thought can seem to go, a black hole of paralysis.

That point is — and this is going to sound silly — the end of my lease. May 31, I am out of here.

You see, the building I live in was sold last year and every day there’s a crew here doing renovations. They’re fixing floors and walls, replacing lights and doors. Let’s just say it would not surprise me if rent went up by a lot. Even if it doesn’t, New York City feels basically unaffordable. Which troubles me because I don’t quite know where home is.

And because I’ve turned into such a spiritual cliché, I keep hoping for guidance. Hey, intuition, you got any ideas? Universe, you see this? Help a friend out. What should I do? Where should I go?

But God is no celestial butler and the void of space can be awfully quiet.

So, there was this vast nothingness after May 31. Just thoughts swirling. My survival brain looping. Who gives a shit about the long-term and all this spiritual nonsense? Dude, we’re going to be homeless! Fix this, now. EARN!

This is where Mike blew my mind with a very, very simple idea.

“I slammed two ideas together” he explained:

1) anything my mind is looping on as a “problem” is concealing an emotion I’m avoiding, and then 2) the path forward is moving into the experience it is trying to warn me about in full embodied intensity.

In other words, to exit the prison of a problem, separate what is to be done from what is to be felt.

He learned this from the Samurai who meditated on the fear of death to defuse it. They visualized death in battle — getting pierced by arrows, stabbed, trampled, torn to shreds — until they found “acceptance of death as an inevitable part of life.” Having seen the mental movie many times, they could meet combat with calm and clear-headed focus.

Unlike the Samurai, we learn to “manage our fear.” We miss the message it conceals. “Fear is actually a facade,” Mike noted, that shields us from what feels overwhelming.

Today, death is primarily a metaphor: it is what feels like the end of the world, “the point past which the mind cannot think.” Which brings me back to my lease.

Mike immediately spotted my loop (he would make a good coach!). “Here’s my suspicion,” he told me, “to your internal experience, the following scenarios feel like death.”

And he was right. “Not making it” in NYC, failure in business, failure as a writer, failure with money — these all felt like little deaths, like the end of a life or identity. They led into the caverns where I store icky feelings like shame, embarrassment, and sadness.

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Failure is a gate to rebirth. For a new chapter to open, an old one must close. But to see this, we must first give ourselves permission to experience the ending, to grieve, to feel embarrassed or ashamed or guilty or whatever it is. This is true even for individuation, for voluntary growth toward our distinct identity and potential. What one part of us seeks, another may fear like death.1

When you find yourself stuck, unable to develop vision, zoom in on the point where all thought collapses. What really happens there? What emotional charge is contained in that event?

What threatens your sense of self-worth, your status, your peace of mind, your self-image? What is so unimaginable that your mind frantically tries to distract you?

For me:

What if I leave this city like a beaten dog, tail between my legs? What if this was a stupid idea? Writing online? What, are you nuts? What if it’s all a dead end? What if I’ll never be a dad?

It’s a kind of unhappy unboxing of negative loops all coming out of one event — shit, I don’t think I can afford this place right now.

The point is not to ruminate and think in loops forever, but to feel. To meditate on it. To experience it, like the Samurai, until it becomes… okay. Until you can see the loops as fabrications of the mind.

Maybe these things will happen in the future, maybe they won’t.

Even if they do: life will go on.

It sounds simple because it is. It sounds simple because it’s not about thinking or knowing but about holding the experience while it burns its way through your body. Until it’s done.

I’m not saying it’s fun. It’s not. But it does pass.

What happens on the other side?

You are, again, receptive. The static noise disappears.

The voice of intuition can show the next step.

You bump into new ideas, new people. You can move. You feel flow. Then the real work begins.

“A ‘problem’ is only a ‘task’ or series of tasks laced with emotional intensity,” Mike said. “Every single time I would catch my mind labeling a circumstance a ‘problem’ I would stop, find my way to stillness, and probe for the emotional experience I was avoiding.”

It’s that simple and that difficult.

The challenges don’t disappear. Half an hour of meditative journaling won’t magically solve your life.

But problems turn into circumstances. “I see the dishwasher is full. I will take steps to unload the dishwasher,” as Mike put it.

The end of a lease means there are things to organize but there is also a blank canvas with endless possibilities.

The future re-appears and there are lots of things to do.

I can’t think of a better exercise to kick off the year. Good luck.

— Frederik

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✍️ Transformative Writing exercise.

• Where does your mind seem to get stuck? What have you not been able to tackle, to think past or through? What ‘emotional charge’ is attached to this ‘problem’? What feelings come up?

• Take a pen and a blank page. This is your portal.

• Put your thoughts on paper and feel into your body. If this happens… If I do… What happens in your body? Where? Where does it lead? What emotion comes up next?

  • What if the first layer of emotion is a shield, a distraction, a misdirection?

  • What if the story you tell yourself is a way of avoiding how you feel?

• Keep writing, feeling, and giving your inner world a voice.

• What is really going on? Allow yourself to experience this fully.

• Use different journaling practices, especially the inner dialogue, if you get stuck.

• Remain curious, notice, and allow yourself to feel until you can separate what there is to do from what there is to be felt.

When the fear abates, the mind stops looping—it is no longer in survival mode. When the emotions are seen and consoled, all of the things that used to pull the lower self into getting involved simply become things “you see” (as the impartial observer). — Samurai trader Mike-San at Trading from a Place of Being

Unlock your creativity,

Meet your shadow,

Find your gold,

Get unstuck,

Find flow.

All you need to re-write your story are pen and paper. Also, courage. Perhaps a prompt or two.

Quick start: the method in three minutes.

Get:

• A pen that flows well,

• Paper (a fresh notepad),

• 20+ minutes of time without distractions (turn off the phone…),

• Ideally privacy.

Pick one practice and/or a prompt. Set a timer for 20+ minutes and whatever happens, keep writing. Don’t worry about spelling, grammar, just let it flow. That’s basically it.

Treat every session as an experiment. Approach it with curiosity, earnestness; playfully but committed.

Depending on your situation, different approaches may be most effective. Unstructured stream-of-consciousness writing is accessible but can lead to avoidance of deeper issues. If we’re stuck or in a difficult transition, specific prompts or targeted practices can be helpful.

I think of it as a combination of:

• Practice: how you write

• Prompt: what you write about

• Pointer: help if you get stuck

I share detailed practices and pointers in the longer section below.

The most powerful rotation I’ve found is: Sarno method to get to my emotions, prompts for specific issues, inner dialogue when I get stuck.

• If you’re dealing with any kind of chronic health issue, I would recommend the work of Dr. Sarno as developed into a journaling method by Nicole Sachs. More details below.

• If you feel emotionally stuck or tense, I would also recommend the Sarno practice to “break open”.

• Stuck on a big decision? Try the inner dialogue to explore inner resistance. Get curious about your inner opinions and conflicts.

• Looking for more creative flow? Try unstructured stream-of-consciousness morning pages.

• Dealing with a lot of anxiety? Look at the Samurai method.

• Looking to re-write the story of your life? You might use of all these in spurts. Start experimenting.

Zooming in.

• How it works

  • Dead-simple things to try right now

• Setting and mindset

• Specific writing exercises

  • The Value of Discipline: Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages

  • Can writing heal? JournalSpeak by Dr. John Sarno and Nichole Sachs)

  • Inner dialogue: The Screenwriter’s Prayer by David Milch

  • There are no problems: The Samurai method

How it works.

• Solo writing. The work is done by hand with pen and paper. The goal is to go as deep as you can. Move as far as you can from thinking to feeling and intuition. Ideally, “let the writing flow through you.”

  • Get a fresh notebook/journal and a pen that flows well. Set aside at least 20 minutes (ideally longer; takes time to get into flow). Pick a prompt and write stream of consciousness until you get past the initial clutter and to emotional responses or surprises.

  • Try to be as perceptive as you can to any feelings that come up, especially those that disappear again in the blink of an eye. Follow what you are avoiding with curiosity.

• Set up an experiment (use the Ness Labs framework). The highest value would be a daily journaling session for at least a week (or perhaps a month..). It can take a few sessions until things start to happen.

  • Play around with the different prompts. Set a timer and keep writing. If something feels flat, write about that. I don't like this writing exercise and I want to do something else and... until something happens. Maybe you hit the emotion you’re avoiding, maybe you get curious, maybe something surprising comes up.

• Collect what sticks out. Don’t stop writing but put a little dot or x next to meaningful words or sentences — memories, emotions, beliefs, ideas, insights, surprises, questions, fully formed quotes… Especially the surprising, shocking, heartbreaking, and unspeakable…

  • Keep a second notebook to collect these moments. Use this place also to track your journey. Look for themes and changes.

• One voice. Experiment with speaking the words out loud while you’re writing. Let the inner voice guide the hand but let the rest of the mind-body experience the sound of what you’re formulating. This can help you understand what holds an emotional charge.

Dead-simple things to try right now:

• Tap into your unconscious ‘night shift’: use sleep, naps, and other quiet space to answer questions with the The Most Important Question method.

• Journal before bed (use prompts like gratitude or surprise or energy — see this conversation with Devin Martin; or the rose, bud, thorn)

• Brain dump: write down everything that is on your mind. Write until your hand hurts and there is nothing left to say. Of all the things cluttering your mind, which need more attention? What have you been avoiding? What is a distraction from what matters?

Setting and mindset.

• The page is there to face your truth. Give it undivided attention. Meet it with curiosity and courage.

• Structure and environment. This is a dance. Structure and routine are good. Same time and same place will condition your mind to get into flow more quickly. However, once you have a routine, it’s good to break it up!

  • Set a timer. Try to do at least 20 minutes. It can take time to get in the zone, especially early on.

• No distractions. No phone, no nothing. Noise-cancelling headphones yes, music no. Soft ambient is ok (and can be important if you’re in a noisy space like a cafe).

  • Music can be very effective for writing but it can steer us, speed us up, slow us down. The artist can take you where they are, but the point of this practice is to listen to what is already present within you. We’re not looking to ‘get in the zone’ but be curious and aware.

• The more privacy the better. My most intense sessions left me sobbing. I’ve broken pens. I’ve poked through pages. The minute you are around other people a degree of self-censorship happens.

• Build a ritual. Experiment with different ways to enter the practice. You could start with a few minutes of breathing, with a moment of silent reflection or gratitude. You could say a prayer or ask for guidance.

  • If you’re doing an emotionally intense exercise: make time to soothe and relax after (I love Ally’s Yoga Nidra).

• Support the process with other practices. Anything that allows the unconscious to surface is good. Anything embodied is good. Anything offering stillness or stillness-in-motion is good. Could be anything as long as you are fully present (no music, no podcasts…): gardening, doing the dishes, martial arts, surfing, meditation, breathwork, sauna, cardio…

  • Easy, free, and extremely effective: silent walking (no podcast, no audiobook, no music, no calls). Walk as long as you can afford, ideally in nature. Solvitur ambulando, “it is solved by walking.”

• Cleanse. I would highly encourage a content diet. Get as much distance as possible to what everyone else does and cares about. Stillness will make you more sensitive to your inner guidance.

  • Cut out podcasts, newsletters, and ideally most social media for a week (a month?!). Max out time with family, friends, walking, nature. (Mindless TV with family, (old) films, and books are ok :) )

If in doubt: Pointers.

• Resistance is a messenger, stuckness is a prompt. Notice the urge to distract yourself. Notice what you avoid. Return to where you left off and what you felt. Where do I feel this in my body? What am I not saying?

• Fear is a signal. be curious. Make friends with it. Hit the “what else” button and look for the emotion behind the emotion. See the Samurai method: Fear for example often conceals something else.

• You are the they. “What if I am everyone in the dream.” Notice any judgments about others. People are your mirror. What triggers you about them often reflects how you feel about yourself. Re-write your statement about others with your name instead. (“X frustrates me so much because she is unreliable and selfish. … am I unreliable and selfish…?)

• People are fractal. I find it helpful to look at the mind as a combination of multiple sub-personalities, parts, in the framework of Internal Family Systems. Each part can have a different perspective on reality. When you feel stuck, conflicted, constricted, you can relate to that part of yourself.

• Study transformation frameworks. There is tremendous power in metaphor. Look for stories and myths that offer the source code of your journey. I’ve written about The Maze and Dante.

• The answer is love. This may sound cheese but if you’re really stuck, take a step back and ask: what about this — situation, person, … — am I having a hard time loving? Why? So many times it comes back, eventually, to the love we feel (or lack) for ourselves.

  • This is the acid test for any behavior: if I could radically love and accept myself, would I still want do this?

• Just keep writing.

  • Write your way through grief and sadness, loneliness and failure, judgment and self-loathing.

  • Write through your mechanisms of avoidance.

  • Keep writing when you want to check the phone (turn it off!), or go to the kitchen or talk to someone.

  • Keep writing when you’d rather stare at the wall. Or stare for a moment.

  • When you can’t bear it anymore, write a little bit more.

  • Write until the gates open.

  • Write until what has been left unsaid is right there, on the page, staring back at you.

  • Write to admit to yourself the most difficult truths of your life. Give them form. Spend time with them. There may be some to leave behind and some that turn out to be the gold in your broken vase.

  • When in doubt, just keep writing.

Writing exercises

The Value of Discipline: Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages

Are Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages the best known writing practice? It’s where I started many years ago. Three pages every morning. By hand. Consistently.

It’s a great place to get started because it’s hard. Three pages can take a long time when you’re not used to it.

But it’s so simple yet effective. Get into flow, into motion. Clear out your mind, dump it all on the page. See if there’s a nugget or two in the clutter.

When to use: when you have no writing practice, when you need hard discipline, when you are brutally stuck. Challenge yourself to get started with a pen every morning.

Can writing heal? JournalSpeak by Dr. John Sarno and Nichole Sachs)

Dr. John Sarno explored the mind-body connection to help patients who suffered from chronic back pain. “As with Freud’s patients, I found that my patients’ physical symptoms were the direct result of strong feelings repressed in the unconscious,” he wrote.

For me, it wasn’t the back. My jaws were clenched. My stomach and abdomen were tight, sometimes in pain. I struggled with anxiety and depression. I was disconnected from my feelings. I avoided intimacy. My relationship with pornography was unhealthy.

‘JournalSpeak’ is the dead-simple practice fleshed out by Sarno’s student Nicole Sachs. She explains the method in the first episodes of her podcast and YouTube channel.

If I had to boil it down: write until you cry — Until the Heart Catches.

• Make a list of stressors (Sarno: “List all the pressures in your life, since they all contribute to your inner rage.”).

  • Nicole recommends three lists: past stressors, current stressors, and personality tests.

• Pick one and write for at least 20 minutes.

  • Sarno: “Write an essay, the longer the better, about each item on your list. This will force you to focus in depth on the emotional things of importance in your life.”

  • Sachs: “Tell the radical truth and don’t be afraid to go deep. Invite your feelings to rise. They won’t always do so right away, and that’s okay! True readiness is everything. Just stay the course and you will be surprised what comes out. The key is to stay focused on your emotional response.”

• Sachs recommends “a self-soothing meditation for 10 minutes” afterward. I definitely need a break after an intense session. I swear by this Yoga Nidra channel (lie down, cover your eyes, listen, sink and float…).

• Challenge yourself to do this daily for 28 days.

Inner dialogue: the Screenwriter’s Prayer by David Milch

» See my video and post.

When David Milch (Deadwood!) wrote his first book, he got stuck writing “the same twelve pages” over and over, “almost word for word.” For six months!

He practiced a kind of anti-writing. He didn’t write, he dictated. He tried to “disembody” himself and dictate what emerged. If you read his book or watch his talk you will notice that he is deeply spiritual. “Every day, before I start to write, I pray,” he wrote, “and I ask to be willing, and then I see what happens.”

His writing exercise is an exercise in getting out of the way — to let your inner voices speak and, perhaps, eventually transcend into something greater. Become the observer, the vessel. Let yourself be surprised.

For the next five days, find a time each day, preferably the same time, and sit down and write not less than twenty minutes and not more than fifty minutes.

Don’t think about it, don’t set it up on the computer, don’t think about what you’re going to write before you do it. No exceptions.

Two voices, one and two. No names. No description. That means no description. Voice one and voice two. The setting—don’t say what the setting is. Write for not less than twenty minutes with those two voices. Just follow, just hear what they say. Not more than fifty minutes.

Put it in an envelope, seal the envelope, and shut up. Don’t talk about it. Don’t think about what it means. Don’t think about who they are.

The next day, preferably at the same time, sit down and do it again. They may be the same voices, they may be different voices, don’t worry about it. Whatever comes out is fine. Don’t think about it. Just do it.

There are no problems: separating emotions from circumstances

See my full piece: There are no problems.

1) anything my mind is looping on as a “problem” is concealing an emotion I’m avoiding, and then 2) the path forward is moving into the experience it is trying to warn me about in full embodied intensity.

When the fear abates, the mind stops looping—it is no longer in survival mode. When the emotions are seen and consoled, all of the things that used to pull the lower self into getting involved simply become things “you see” (as the impartial observer). — Samurai trader Mike at Trading from a Place of Being

• Where does your mind seem to get stuck? What have you not been able to tackle, to think past or through?

• Find the ‘emotional charge’. If this happens… If I do… What happens in your body? What body part? Where does it lead? What emotion comes up next?

  • What if the first layer of emotion is a shield, a distraction, a misdirection?

  • What if the story you tell yourself is a way of avoiding how you feel?

  • Allow yourself to experience this fully. Give yourself time.

  • Try the inner dialogue exercise to give the feelings a voice.

• Remain curious and allow yourself to feel until you can clearly separate what there is to do from what there is to be felt.

“I would read Balzac, Baudelaire, and Flaubert,” Pacino wrote in his memoir, “from pocket-size books with the tiniest type you’ve ever seen.” Before his career took off, he spent his free time at the library and coffee shops with his “little books of the great authors.”

There was something so absorbing about that gift of reading. It could calm your mind and give you another world to be engaged in. Television was too distant; books were more intimate, like having friends and enjoying their company. I would be reading A Moveable Feast and thinking, I don’t want to finish the pages, I like it here too much.

It reminded me of Stephen King’s On Writing in which he called books “uniquely portable magic” that offers the reader an “escape hatch” from reality. But is the same not true for the writer? When King sits down at his computer, that’s his escape.

Gertrude Stein once wrote that masterpieces “tell about time and identity” but must be created while time and identity cease to exist. In other words, the creator must lose themselves to the work. It’s like a portal opens that allows both reader and writer to experience a moment of freedom from themselves.

Even though I’ve struggled to publish recently, I write a lot. Not just for the Substack but by hand for myself. I write in journals and notebooks, at home, at coffee shops, at the library, at airports, you name it. I’ve accepted writing as my default response to life, my way of processing and translating my experiences. “I have to write. Because if I don’t write something and keep on being obsessed by it,” Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges said. “I have to write it and be rid of it.” That’s what it feels like. A compulsion, almost.

I often wonder if it is not self-indulgent navel-gazing. And yet I believe we all should write.

Writing sharpens your thinking. The page exposes the edges of your knowledge and sheds light on your biases. In your sentences, you stumble over the gaps in your understanding. Writing is re-writing, William Zinsser pointed out in the classic On Writing Well. Re-writing is a chance to re-think. And what you can’t see, your readers will helpfully point out.

Writing is also about feeling. Before translating an experience into words, we must allow ourselves to experience it fully. In the excellent Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg called the writer the “carrier of details that make up history.” We must be present and sensitive to our lives “at once ordinary and mythical.” Writing means, Goldberg wrote, “to say a real yes to the real truth of who we are.” This can also help us be more curious and compassionate about others: a good character sketch, I learned from David Milch, is an exercise in capturing contradictions.

The experience of writing strikes me as a form of alchemy. It is a chance to change our story by accepting our history, then leaving it on the page.

“Your hand is pouring out the record of your senses,” Goldberg explains and tells aspiring writers to keep their pens moving no matter what. Write until you learn what lies beyond the thinking mind. Write until the ink leads you from mind to heart.

I have fallen in love with these stream-of-consciousness handwriting exercises. Dr. John Sarno made his patients write to release emotional pain which he thought was manifesting as physical ailments (like back pain). It’s a simple technique that reliably leads me to the tears of buried feelings (one of his disciples has a podcast that explains the method in the first few episodes). Another technique I use is David Milch’s inner dialogue.

Writing helps me move through the maze. Sometimes the page offers sanctuary from the storm. On other days, it is the dragon’s cave waiting in my deepest inner caverns, beckoning with a trail of bleached bones. The pen is like a torch that lets me move forward in the dark. The page also keeps me awake when I am terrified of slipping back into numbness. It exposes comforting lies that could lull me back to sleep. The page may not have an answer, but it knows where the bodies are buried.

“A writer is deeply conflicted,” Leonard Cohen said, “and it’s in his work that he reconciles those deep conflicts. It doesn’t set the world in order. It doesn’t really change anything. It just is a kind of harbor.”

The search for true words is a way of exploring your inner palace and finding its secret wings. It is a chance to meet yourself and let your shadow speak. At its best — raw, unpredictable, vulnerable — it feels like a confession. It connects the three selves and lets them speak into the silence. This, I’ve realized recently, makes it a form of prayer.

If nothing else, writing is movement and a sign of life. If the pen moves, I move. I am still here, still kicking and breathing. Writing is a way of moving through life — or letting life move through me.

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An invitation.

Write for yourself. Write something selfish, but write it honestly, as honestly as you can bear. Write until the page is drenched with the truths you avoid. Write something so selfish it takes you beyond yourself.

Write not because you know the answers, but because you can’t bear the weight of the questions in silence. Write until your heart lightens.

Write not because you’ve seen the light, but to light a candle until dawn.

Write about what is left unsettled when everything has been sorted out.

Write words that weigh you down. Write when you crawl off the battlefield in defeat, covered in mud and blood.

Write words that lift you by the spine. Write in triumph, when you roar with the force of a thousand horses.

Write because the words of the dead came alive inside you. Write because someone once dropped a pebble in the pond of time and you were touched by the ripples.

Write to send out your spirit. Write until you feel the heartbeat of a lonely person on a distant subway. Write them a crooked text, a ramshackle dwelling, an imperfect shelter.

Don’t write to understand, write to take a stand. Then let yourself fall.

Write out of defiance. Write to show you care. Write to show your core.

Write because there must be hope. Write for a future of reading, breathing human beings coming to terms with what it means to live and die.

Write yourself a bridge to the future. Cross it, burn it, forget it.

Write like you’re the last witness.

Write to become immortal, then let yourself be forgotten.

Don’t write to earn a living but because you’ve tasted life. Write to feel alive, as a way of life. Write to live.

Why write? Why do anything. To fill the world with more of what we love. Write as an act of faith, to create the world you want.

Write because you’re still here. Write because you can. Write like the world depends on it. Maybe it does.

I write because I believe it has the power to transform. I write because I believe. I write because I love it and because it lets me love, or at least accept, what may otherwise feel unlovable.

— Frederik

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I’m thinking about offering a (monthly?) Zoom session to get together to write and share/discuss.

Previous reflections on writing:

• Three Years Of Writing Online - Don’t write for money unless you can’t help yourself

• David Milch and the Alchemy of Story

• Reflections on Writing, Grinding, and Money

Things I’ve recently enjoyed about writing:

• Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within (How to become a good writer? “Read a lot, listen well and deeply, and write a lot.”)

• Ted Gioia: I Give the Worst Writing Advice in the World

• River Kenna: Writing is the form of prayer that chose me

“Writers are great lovers. They fall in love with other writers. That's how they learn to write. They take on a writer, read everything by him or her, read it over again until they understand how the writer moves, pauses, and sees. That's what being a lover is: stepping out of yourself, stepping into someone else's skin.” ― Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

1) “I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

2) “I wish I hadn't worked so hard.”

3) “I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.”

4) “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.”

5) “I wish I had let myself be happier.”

These are all worth pondering for what could be better than to look back at life without regrets. One of them seems more challenging than the others.

“I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

It’s not the courage that stuck out to me, but the fact that this regret insisted on a second part — the expectations of others.

You can bend your way to success but not to happiness. What makes this so difficult is that the world keeps pushing you to abandon your truth.

There is a paragraph in the Lyndon Johnson biography The Path to Power that drove this point home to me like a gut punch.

I’ve mentioned that Robert Caro was obsessed with discovering the truth, the truth hiding behind the carefully curated image of President Johnson. Caro spoke to two people — Latimer and Jones — who Johnson recruited from the high school debate team he had coached. Latimer worked for Johnson all his life, Jones left for law school after a few years. Here’s what Caro wrote about Latimer:

For Gene Latimer—sixty-five years old at the time he spoke, sitting alone in a little apartment in a little town in Texas, a tiny Irish elf with sad eyes that often spill over with tears as he describes his life as an employee of Lyndon Johnson, so that he periodically excuses himself and goes into the bathroom to wash them off—understands, even if he was unable to cure, his own psychological dependence on Johnson: to listen to him talk is to hear a man who is fully aware that during his sixteenth year, he surrendered—for life—his own personality to a stronger personality. To listen to him talk is to hear a man who is fully aware that he has been used as a tool.

Man, that broke me.

“I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

Johnson was a force of nature. He had what we today call a reality distortion field. “He could talk you into anything,” Latimer recalled. “He can make you cry, he can make you laugh—he can do anything. … You felt like I belong to him, and he belongs to me. Whatever you do, you do it for him.”

It’s easy to marvel at people with such energy and charisma. I guess it’s fun to imagine ourselves bending the world to our will. It is more useful — but uncomfortable — to ponder what it means to live around people with such drive and force of personality.

“Your time is limited,” Steve Jobs said in his famous commencement speech, “so don't waste it living someone else’s life.” Well yes. What he doesn’t mention is how many people it took to stage the story in which he was the main character.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. You can of course be true to yourself working for other people (and getting Apple stock must have been a sweet deal). I’m not saying don’t compromise. I am saying the world is ready for you to cast you as an extra in someone else’s story. To avoid this regret, you have to build something like an anti-force field around your truth.

We’re so used to doing the opposite. We’re rewarded for pitching ourselves, for condensing our lives into easily digestible tiny Hero’s journeys. But words shape reality and the stories we tell get etched into our minds. One day, we wake up and think that’s us. Decades later, we wake up and regret.

Life doesn’t follow a simple template. Life — my life at least — can be messy. It’s filled with contradictions and detours. You can only connect the dots looking backward, as Jobs used to say.

What is more interesting than the hero’s journey? What grips us about a drama is when the characters feel so real that we can see ourselves in them. Watching a real person confront the challenge of life and wondering, ‘Well, what are they going to do now?’

This is where the anti-force field is hiding, in a kind of anti-pitch. We must also learn to meet ourselves the way a writer would: with curiosity and the right questions. A writer does not care about a character’s success but about its truth. What would it mean to place this character in the story? What questions, challenges, and energy do they offer?

“It’s the business of writing,” David Milch wrote in Life’s Work, “to get all the things that are spinning inside a person going at once.” Milch was paid to create entertainment, but his mission was to capture the “irreducible obstinate finality of a human being.” His “first and primary obligation as an artist,” he wrote, was to stay true to the “reality of the characters and their situation.”

That’s exactly what we’re talking about. The question we must ask is how someone like Milch would sketch us as a character. Fortunately, he offered a little example that we can turn into an exercise.

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Granted, sometimes I ramble or get lost in it. On some days, I barely get through the mental clutter. But often a nugget emerges — a phrase, a moment of clarity, the kernel of an idea.

I’ve toyed with different writing practices — Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages, Katie Byron’s The Work, and journaling prompts like gratitude (Tom’s recent chat with Devin Martin has a prompt about personal energy). Imagine my excitement, when I found David Milch’s favorite writing exercise.

Milch got stuck writing his first book. He wrote “the same twelve pages” over and over, “almost word for word” for six months! I don’t know whether he used the exercise back then, but his entire writing process was designed to “disembody” himself and allow a natural flow.

I am adding a poll at the end of this piece in case you try the exercise and are interested in an opportunity to share and discuss.

👉 I will be walking and working in Berlin until next week. If you’re a Berliner and are interested in sharing a walk, coffee, or beer early/mid next week, email me.

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I opened Life’s Work to a random page. David Milch was pitching HBO a show about the rise and persecution of Christianity in Rome. There was only one problem: HBO was already working on Rome. “Can you give us the same story somewhere else,” they asked. I felt irritated just reading that response. But Milch was a pro. Yes, he knew exactly how to do that. I’d never heard of him before. My bad. He’s a big deal, the mind behind shows like Deadwood, NYPD Blue, and Luck.

In this case, he wanted to explore a society whose dominant symbol changes. Rome had been organized around the emperor when the apostle Paul offered the cross. Milch called these symbols the ‘lies agreed upon’ and simply pivoted to a different one, gold. “The agreement to act as if gold had a particular value,” he wrote, “and organize behavior around that collective agreement, was really the same story.” Gold had no intrinsic value, but the belief in its value, in the symbol of gold, could unleash significant energies. Voilà, the gold rush Western Deadwood was born.

I was impressed by Milch’s conceptual depth and flexibility, but what hooked me was why he wrote. I realized he used storytelling to save himself. “Storytelling is not therapy,” he wrote, “but storytelling can be an instrument of healing in the sense of fulfilling the capacities of our humanity.” For Milch storytelling was alchemy.

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Part of me wanted to enjoy a big breakfast, go for a long walk, sit in a café, read, think, do nothing.

But that part was not in charge.

The part in charge was panicking. There’s no time to rest, idiot, it urged. We have to make progress. We have to get shit done.

So, I sat down at my desk to edit and finally publish the piece. I had to make the business grow again. I had to earn. I had to make the voice shut up.

Honestly, by then I was tired of the draft. It had a couple of interesting ideas which had grabbed me, but it was starting to feel stale. My curiosity was moving on and yet this thing was still on my desk. And it was growing in length. Some part of me believes my posts must be lengthy to be worthy of being published. Write more words to be a ‘real writer’.

It’s insane, I know. In a sense, the opposite is true.

“When I was a young writer,” Neil Gaiman reflected in View from the cheap seats, “I liked to imagine that I was paying someone for every word I wrote, rather than being paid for it; it was a fine way to discipline myself only to use those words I needed.”

That’s one to tattoo on my forearm.

But sunk cost fallacy is a real and vicious beast of the mind. I sat and watched myself spend a precious Sunday morning polishing words until my perfectionism had been satisfied.

The work was okay but not inspired. Worse, it no longer felt truly interesting and meaningful. Somewhere along the way, I’d dropped the ball. I’d lost the message.

I hit publish.

I felt no relief, no excitement. Instead, a heaviness came over me, something bordering on shame. I felt like I’d fallen for a compulsion, as if some bad habit had returned to my life. It felt like discovering a pack of cigarettes in my parents’ drawer or watching a neighbor dump a garbage bag with empty liquor bottles in the dead of night.

Suddenly, I wanted to be as far away from my desk as possible. I realized I’d stepped into an old trap. Grinding had chased curiosity, joy, and truth off my page.

A week later, I felt optimism returning in small steps — during long walks and deep conversations, on my meditation cushion, and at the gym. Music, books, and the song of birds carried it back into my life in tiny bits.

I knew I could do better. And I would.

Sometimes you need to see your reflection to see how silly you’re acting. Like this meme from My Dinner With Andrew, which made my day.

“While he lived he was America’s finest writer,” Gaiman writes about Edgar Allan Poe, “a poet and a craftsman whose work made him very little money, even as his poems were widely quoted, adored, parodied and reviled.” No, by comparison, I can’t complain.

“Writing for a living can be a frustrating experience,” I wrote in my reflection last year. Earlier this year, I wrestled with the shift in my curiosity and the changing nature of my work. I thought I’d made my peace with a declining subscriber count but the visceral experience of watching your income drop is different. It’s very uncomfortable.

Like I said, I fell into panic mode and started to grind harder. I began to work on a new project and simultaneously wanted to accelerate the regular writing.

Years ago, I read The Power of Full Engagement whose author Jim Loehr (recently on Farnam Street) argued that we must manage our energy rather than our time. He advises to alternate between being fully engaged and fully dis-engaged, between intense spurts and deep rest — real rest, not the low-burning engagement which leads to burning out.

I have a hard time with this. Even my not-doing is usually a kind of doing.

Rest for me is mostly activities like reading, walking, meditating, conversation, or working out — always with the subtle hope that it will spark ideas. Call it resting with an agenda. Short naps are the closest I get to being at peace with doing nothing — and even those are supposed to fuel my work.

It gets worse when things aren’t going well.

Once in panic mode, the grind feeds on itself. I let work bleed into evenings and weekends. My inner critical voice gets louder. No time to disengage. No time for other people. No time for joy.

Inevitably, this leads to a contraction in life, work, and in one’s heart. The world feels darker, more narrow, and more lonely. Work loses its spark. Every half-finished draft drains energy. Flow states become a distant memory.

You sit there, wondering why you’re doing it at all.

Years ago, I would have spent a lot of time in that space.

I didn’t have practices to carry me through. I used to give in to my tendency to isolate. And I didn’t grasp that this was not the world being unfair to me but a misery of my own creation.

The answer to contraction is expansion — reaching out, hanging out, working out, walking out, praying, chanting, even crying out loud.

Today, I feel very grateful that I can catch myself. I feel grateful for the people and practices in my life that help me push forward and through these moments of stuckness. I am grateful that I can see what happens as a phase, a passing experience, and not ultimate reality.

And I am grateful that despite all the AI hype, despite the infinite wall of content, despite the wasteland of dopamine culture, the internet allows us to create, share, and make a living.

I feel grateful that optimism is returning in small steps.

Before I forget: I occasionally revisit old pieces only to realize that I’ve forgotten much of what I’ve written. This is simultaneously amazing and horrifying. Well, it’s finally time to extract the key ideas and collect them in one pdf document (similar to 11 Things I Learned About Investing). I’m going to add the stack of unpublished ideas to this for a “version 1” with observations on the money game. I will publish these as I populate the document so expect a bunch of little emails with ‘money game’ in the subject.

I will also re-organize the sections/structure of the substack. But I will put that in a separate email. I’ve already used a lot of words today and now it’s time to go for a walk with a friend.

Have a blessed weekend,

Frederik

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On the page, I can tell when I don’t speak my truth. I read the words and realize I’m no longer using my authentic voice.

Maybe I’ve fallen into a story to make myself feel better. Maybe I wrote what I thought people wanted to hear or would pay for. Maybe I wanted to make people laugh or make something go viral. Honestly, as soon as I start thinking about other people at all, things go downhill.

Hemingway wrote about moments of writer’s block in A Moveable Feast. “I would sit in front of the fire,” he mused, “and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, “Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there.”

I don’t have the roofs of Paris to look at, just a few trees and the brick wall of a dormitory. But I can relate. Over the past few years, there were countless times when I was so close to quitting.

I would hit a mental wall when all the writing felt lifeless, pointless, and circular. Sit and write some words. Hate the words. Go for a walk. Talk to a friend. Return to the writing. Sit with your thoughts. Delete it all.

I felt like a caricature, like the New Yorker who talks about leaving but never does, not knowing where they would go. I was always struggling, grinding, complaining, never finding the river’s flow. And I couldn’t figure out why I kept getting stuck in the tar pits of burnout.

A few months ago, it dawned on me that I had forgotten Hemingway’s advice. I was not writing true words. And thus I was boring myself. And if there is one cardinal sin in writing, it is to be boring.

What happens is fact, not truth. Truth is what we think about what happens. ― Robert McKee

Almost everything else you could get away with. You can offend people (sorry!), you can be wrong (aren’t we all?), you can embarrass yourself (sorry, not sorry!), but you cannot be boring.

You don’t need to be entertaining or flashy or intellectual or even funny (though being funny will excuse a lot of other shortcomings). But you have to be interesting, which is to say you must make an honest attempt at telling a small ‘t’ truth about the human experience. You have to show yourself.

If you do that, there will always be at least one person interested in the work: you.

This is simple but not easy. “Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends,” Dostoevsky wrote. Even deeper, he explained, every man carries secrets he is “afraid to tell even to himself. … The more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his mind.” These truths, the ones we’d rather avoid, are the ones that need to be told.

I was writing at the intersection of money and the search for a meaningful life. How on earth did I manage to make that boring?

Easy. The way you make any subject boring: by stripping it of its soul. Take something complex and treat it naively. Take something deeply human and pretend it is rational. Take something potent and pretend not to be affected by it.

Instead of exploring contradictions, you flatten it into a formula.

Instead of sharing your inner conflict, you sell a shortcut.

Instead of admitting confusion, you feign mastery.

Instead of going deep, you stay shallow.

Any topic has the potential to reveal truths as long as you refuse to make yourself invisible, as long as you refuse to hide behind untrue words.

But the untrue words are easier to say. Untrue words can be catered precisely for applause and profit. Untrue words don’t force us to look into the mirror for too long. Untrue words allow us to live on the surface of comforting illusions. But the sparks of truth dwell in the depths. You make a living with untrue words and only years later realize that you “destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing,” as Dostoevsky would have said.

To write a true sentence, you first need to find a spark of truth.

Here’s one that took me forever to find and even longer to accept: finance bores me.

Finance organizes and channels one of the most important energies of our world, the energy of money. Finance offers an infinitely complex (and financially rewarding) puzzle — but it’s not my kind of puzzle. My mind works with words and sounds, not with oceans of data.

Finance, I finally accepted, bores me. Money on the other hand — money fascinates me.

Money is a funny thing. Money does funny things to us. Money makes us do funny things.

Money is also a very serious thing. Money can be the difference between freedom and servitude, even between life and death.

Philosopher Jacob Needleman called money the “chief representative” of “life on earth,” meaning the material realm. And in our secular society, that’s the realm we focus on. In our world, money touches everything, permeates every relationship, and has been woven into every layer of the fabric of life. That makes money a most intimate matter and one of the few remaining taboos. Money is a space holding some of the truths that Dostoevsky believed we hide from ourselves.

And money is where I slipped into untrue words.

Money's easy to make if it's money you want. But with few exceptions, people don't want money. They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration. ― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

I’ve spent much time trying to understand my past. My strengths and interests had been languages, music, and writing — not math. Yet I decided to get a business degree and spent a decade working in finance. A couple of years at a global bank followed by years catering to New York’s ultra-wealthy and advising institutional investors. Why did I end up there? Why did I stay?

The answer, of course, is money. But to find true words, we have to go a few layers deeper. Some of it, I blush, comes down to “daddy issues.”

When I was a child, my father was building a company selling computers and software to Germany’s Mittelstand companies. I didn’t see him much during those years and it took much inner work to understand the contradictory drives that came out of this.

First, there was an obvious desire for connection. Part of me wanted to be like Dad. He was interested in business and if I entered that world, we’d have plenty to talk about. Easy. This nebulous idea was enough for me to squash any desire to study something else. History, linguistics, literature, none of these could hold a candle to ‘being in business’ and therefore being more like Dad.

Another part of me hoped that quick financial success would give me more of his attention, admiration, and, dare I say, more expressions of his love. Dad had sacrificed much to pursue success at a young age but had lost his treasure in another venture. Could I restore a version of this dream for him?

To be clear, these were my inner processes. My father didn’t ask or encourage me to get into business. He wanted me to be happy. But our conversations revolved around success and business (and books, thankfully). That’s what made his eyes light up. So that’s where I wanted to go.

Finally, there was an entirely different motivation. Part of me carried a heavy weight of unexpressed anger. This part resented my father for pursuing his dreams at the expense of the family. And what better way to pay him back than making more money, at a younger age, and more elegantly?

If Dad had been breaking his back building a company, I would get rich wearing a custom-tailored suit, manipulating numbers in an office overlooking the nerve center of the financial world. Screw all the hard work, I thought. I would take a shortcut. I was going to use my mind and learn the magic of manipulating capital. I was going to be a master of the universe purely out of spite. Take that, Dad!

In retrospect, I can only smile at my naïveté. But these were very real unconscious processes that directed me. And until I shed some light on them, they kept me on my path, despite all misery and missteps.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. ― Carl Jung

I wanted money, yes. But what I really wanted was what money represented. I wanted to be released from the inner demons I didn’t dare to look at. I wanted to relinquish the emotional debt buried in my depths.

I couldn’t do any of that until I started the search for true words. That’s what I still hope to do here: Find a few true words and explore the mysteries of money and meaning, one true sentence at a time.

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As a writer, you drop into a deep conversation with your mind. Suddenly all talking stops. Things speed up. Words pour out of you. Your fingers try their best to keep up and transcribe what emerges. You turn into a vessel, an agent for a deep source of creative intelligence. When you edit the work, it feels like policing a precious stone. Every subtle chisel uncovers more magic. What you write feels natural and alive.

That collection of words carries the power to transport readers back to a moment of deep flow. It’s a portal for time travel, a shared hallucination. Straight magic.

But much of the time, something else happens when people write. They turn off the fountain of joy and disconnect from their source. The writing doesn’t sound like them at all. Instead of joining an intimate conversation between friends, readers find themselves in a colorless lecture hall. The divine spark has left the building. Instead of whirling through time with the writer, you close the tab.

How can we be so alive, yet our writing feel so dead?

It’s a case of people getting in their own way and avoiding themselves.

Identity crisis

What a vexing issue. After all, you have a voice already.

You’re committed to creating and sharing. You are exposing yourself. You decided to be different from the 90% of people who passively participate. And now you spend your time editing your writing only to make it sound like yourself again?

What the heck?

I’ve wrestled with this a lot (still do!) and I have a few practical tips. But I’ve also had my mind blown by a vocal workshop and now believe that the quest to ‘find your voice’ is misunderstood.

The search for our voice can be viewed as a struggle to transcend the influence of our creative idols. Literary critic Harold Bloom called it the ‘anxiety of influence’. This “burden of influence has to be borne,” he concluded in The Western Canon, “if significant originality is to be achieved.”

This anxiety “cripples the weaker talents but stimulates canonical genius,” Bloom argued. We fear unconsciously regurgitating what we admire. Somehow we need to consciously avoid this yet also find the relaxed flow that opens the portal.

The desire to write greatly is the desire to be elsewhere, in a time and place of one’s own, in an originality that must compound with inheritance, with the anxiety of influence. — Harold Bloom

Just do it

Another mistake is to label yourself. Once you call yourself ‘a writer’, all the beliefs about what a writer should be start bubbling up. You put another mask on your face, a layer filled with interference from your unconscious beliefs, another layer of separation between you and your audience. Beware the masks you wear. Drop the labels. Don’t be a writer. Write. Write a lot.

One way to find your voice is simply to write as much as you can. Write until you’ve spilled your mind on the page and your pen stops moving. Experiment with deadlines and commitments to a variety of writing assignments (‘say yes to everything’). Constraints, as my friend Alix likes to say, breed creativity.

Rotate through different topics and forms and observe how your voice changes. Reflect on who is speaking — which part of you is leading or which influence is surfacing. You may have to write your way through your reaction to someone else’s work until you find your own.

Another way to break the chains of influence may be to get closer to them. Try on your favorite writer like a glove through copy work: copy a page (or more) of their work by hand (see David Perell and Nathan Baugh). Get a feel for what it’s like to write something great. Find the rhythm of your influence, then leave it behind. (Honestly, I should make more time for this.)

It can take a while for all of your parts and influences to coalesce into a distinct voice. Keep writing.

Meet your voice, meet yourself

Most of us don’t aspire to expand the world’s literary canon with a great work (a writer’s Ozymandias). What we are looking for, in our lives and our work, is to uncover our shining individuality. We strive to be authentic and original. Finding your voice as a writer is just a specific case of the desire to find — and share — your voice as a unique human being.

Over the past few weeks, I spent my Saturdays with some thirty people doing vocal exercises in a space near Flatiron. I’d signed up for this vocal workshop to ‘fix’ things about my voice that I didn’t like. For example, I wanted it to be more open…

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