June 23, 2026 • 31 mins
One of the primary reasons creatives stay stuck is that we are trying hard to make something “good”
I tell aspiring authors I coach that the fastest way to write something terrible is to sit down hoping to write something amazing. Something profound. Something worth reading.
Instead, if you sit down intending to tell the truth, the truth will take you exactly where you need to go.
It might be messy. It might be painful. It might not inspire millions or make you famous. (Or to your great horror, it might).
But it might become something more than you could have even dreamed about — because it was beyond your consciousness.
Let go of trying to be good / make it good.
Instead follow the inspiration, tell the truth, and trust what unfolds.
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, and welcome to you to Write your Story podcast.
Good job.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Really pick up the pieces of your life, pull them
back together with the word you write. All the beauty
and peace and the magic that you'll start too fun
when you write your story.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
You got the.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Words and said, don't you think it's time to let
them out and write them down and cold.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
It's all about.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
And write, write your story. Write you write your story.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast.
I'm Ali Fallon. I'm your host, and on today's episode,
I want to talk about how the obsession with needing
to make something good, or make something great, or make
something amazing that people are going to be excited about
is actually blocking you and your creativity in every single
area of your life. This is something I've experienced firsthand.
(00:56):
It's something I'm working through right now. It's something I
feel like I'm in active transition from a person who
is obsessed with making something good to a person who
is like willingly letting go of my own perfectionism, my
own need for control, my own obsession with getting it right.
I feel that in my life I am an active
(01:18):
transition from one person to another person. It's almost like
I'm shifting into this whole new identity. It is a
very bizarre and disorienting feeling to be in this transition,
because both versions of you still exist. The version of
you that knows what it looks like to get something
just right, who knows what it feels like to have
(01:39):
your duck cent a row, to be organized, to have
your plan, to have your strategy in place. That part
of you still exists in the same space that this
other part of you exists, that is saying, what would
happen if we let that go? What would happen if
we didn't get it perfect? What would happen if right now,
even though you think you could say this in a
(02:00):
way you didn't start the episode over and start back
from the beginning. What would happen if you just kept going,
if you just kept putting one foot in front of
the other, if you didn't get stuck on this obsession
with making it perfect? It really is, at the end
of the day, perfectionism. But I think a lot of
us who are perfectionists actually struggle with that term perfectionism.
(02:20):
I don't know if this resonates with you at all,
but I personally do not think of myself as a perfectionist,
even though objectively, if I zoom out for myself, I
can say, obviously, of course I do struggle with perfectionism.
The reason I don't think of myself as a perfectionist
is because of that word perfect. I am so in
tune with what it means to get something perfect, to
(02:41):
get something great, that I can't even allow myself to
own the identity of perfectionist, because in my view, nothing
I make is perfect. There's still such a another level
of achievement or another level of excellence to get to
that the place that I I've gotten is not perfect.
(03:01):
And so of course I'm not a perfectionist because I
let things go that aren't perfect all the time. And yet,
what that term is trying to get at is this
obsession we have around perfecting something, making it great, making
it better, making it excellent, making it the best that
there ever has been. That obsession is keeping you stuck.
(03:22):
It's keeping you stuck in your creativity. It's keeping you
from getting started. It's keeping you from really hearing clearly
the messages that are trying to come to you and
through you. It is blocking the channel that is you.
It is blocking your joy. It's blocking your piece, it's
blocking your powers of manifestation. It is just all around
(03:43):
blocking you. It's blocking me. I can feel this for
the first time in my life. I've heard people say
this before, but because I'm in this transition, I can
energetically feel the block. It's like I can witness myself
spin around the block of needing to get something perfect
or not willing to even try until I feel like
I'm going to be great at it. And I also
(04:04):
can witness this other part of myself that says, what
if we just just put it out there? What if
we just went for it. What if we just didn't
start the episode over because it's not perfect. What if
we just let it be imperfect? What if we just
allowed ourselves to be in process? What could become possible
if we allowed ourselves to be in process and didn't
(04:26):
need to perfect every little thing. So I said before
that this is really perfectionism, even though that term, I
think doesn't resonate with a lot of people who would
technically be perfectionists. The term perfectionism has never really resonated
with me. But the way that I started thinking about
it a couple months ago, when I feel like I started.
This transition was more about unraveling from the need to
(04:49):
be good. So I don't think about myself or anything
that I do as perfect or perfectionistic. But I do
really resonate with this obsession needing it to be good,
needing it to be great, in fact, needing it to
be excellent, always wanting it to be better than it
was before. Let me take a minute to lay out
how I think this energy blocks us at every turn.
(05:12):
I don't know if you've had this experience before where
you had a creative insight, you had an inspiration to
try something or do something that maybe was either new
for you or just felt exciting, like maybe you wanted
to learn to play the piano, or you wanted to
start writing a book, or you wanted to do a
challenge on Instagram like I've been doing, showing up every
day for thirty days on Instagram and just showing your
(05:33):
face on the camera. Whatever it was, you had this
kind of spark of inspiration where you were like, that
sounds exciting, that sounds fun, that sounds interesting. I feel
pulled in this direction. I feel curious about what could
happen if I tried that, and then almost immediately you
talk yourself out of it because of what you are. Like,
I'd love to learn to play the piano, but you know,
(05:54):
I'm probably never going to get that good at it.
I'm an adult. Most people start playing the piano when
they're a kid. I'm never going to make any money
from playing the piano. I'm never going to become a
concert pianist. I'm never even going to really be able
to play in front of anybody. I'm not going to
be able to play any popular songs. It's going to
be you talk yourself out of it because you're never
going to be that good at playing the piano. I
know this happens with aspiring authors because I've witnessed it
(06:16):
over and over again. Where someone has an inspired book
idea that is coming to them that is maybe quite
literally waking them up in the middle of the night,
it's speaking to them during their workday, and they're, you know,
so excited about it, and it's pulling them in the direction.
But the thing that's keeping them from getting started is
they tell themselves, well, I'm not really a writer. I'm
(06:37):
not that good at writing. I have terrible grammar. I
got a bad grade on a paper once when I
was in high school. I don't know how to write
a five paragraph essay. I have no training as a writer.
What if I write it and it's not that good?
What if no one ever buys it? Do you see
how the obsession with needing to make something good, make
something great, make something excellent, makes something perfect is getting
(06:59):
in the way of your creativity. You have the insight,
you have the inspiration, you have the pull, but then
you think, gosh, I'm not that good at it. This
could happen for you if you tried to do a
thirty day challenge like what I've been doing on Instagram.
So if you're new here, I did this thirty day
challenge on Instagram. I just completed it where I showed
up for thirty days on Instagram, put my face on
(07:21):
the camera, and just talked about what was ever on
my mind. I have had people reach out to me
and say, I would love to do something like this,
but you're so much better on camera than I am.
I stutter when I'm on camera, I really have trouble,
and I'm like, I'm no different than you are. I
had these same objections when this inspiration came to me.
When this idea came to me. And do you notice
(07:43):
how your obsession with needing the finished product to be
good keeps you from creating at all. Our obsession with
needing the finished product to be anything at all, needing
it to be good, needing it to be great, needing
it to be excellent, needing it to be perfect, is
keeping us from ever getting started. This is one of
the reasons why morning pages, one of the main tenets
(08:05):
of Julie Cameron's The Artist's Way, is such a powerful
way for you to reconnect to your creativity because morning pages,
in their essence, morning pages as a rule, require that
you write in a stream of consciousness style, So it
requires that there's no structure to the writing. There's no beginning,
middle end, there's no narrative arc, there's no rhyme or reason.
(08:28):
Like I will jump around from thought to thought, idea
to idea, in my morning pages, I will stop a
sentence mid sentence and start a new sentence. My morning
pages have no grammatical structure to them. They have no
rhyme or reason, they have no citations, they have no notes.
It's just letting my brain do what my brain wants
to do. When it wants to do it. Having that
(08:49):
open ended container for your creativity is such a powerful
way for you to reconnect to your creative power because
it shows you that it doesn't have to be perfect
in order for something really amazing to come through. It
doesn't even have to be good. It doesn't even have
to be mediocre. It can actually be terrible. It can
(09:10):
be terribly written, terribly composed, terribly structured, terribly organized, terrible grammar.
It can be just all around terrible, and still what
will happen for me is one tiny insight will come
through in my morning pages that will be my guiding
thought or idea for the rest of the day or
the rest of the week, or will open up conversations
that I have with my husband, or I have with
(09:32):
my family members, or I have with my friends that
will guide me and direct me in this really amazing way.
That I wouldn't have gotten to that insight if I
hadn't let myself do it terribly to me. This is
one of the reasons why it's so important for us
to peel back the layers of this conversation about perfectionism,
because I don't even think it really is perfectionism. For
(09:54):
most of us, it's actually goodism. I think it's more
like an obsession with being good. And one of the
ways that this comes through for me, and I don't
know if this resonates with you, but one of the
ways that this shows up for me is an obsession
with being a good person, as in morally good. And
I recorded an episode a couple of weeks ago that
(10:14):
talked about the genuine tension and frustration that I feel
in witnessing people who are morally bankrupt be more financially
successful than I am, more politically powerful than I am,
have more access than I have, have more say so
than I have, have a you know, a bigger seat
(10:36):
at the table than I have. I think many of
us who have this same obsession with being morally good
feel this tension because we in our lives have set
our sights on being morally good. We've set our sites
on only making choices that are in the best interest
of everyone around us, and because of that, we really
(11:00):
feel trapped and blocked from making decisions that maybe would
benefit us, or maybe would be good for us, or
maybe would open up new possibility or would create new
creative possibility. And we feel blocked from making those choices
because it isn't technically morally the best possible decision to make.
So one thing that I've been practicing recently is asking myself,
(11:23):
if none of these decisions were morally better than the other,
if every decision was morally neutral, which decision would I make?
If all of these choices in front of me were
morally neutral, which decision would I make? And sometimes that
can help reconnect me to a truer part of me,
a more honest part of me, and allow me to
make a decision that I probably wouldn't have allowed myself
to make otherwise. I recorded an episode a couple of
(11:54):
weeks ago where I talked about how frustrating it can
be to watch some of the worst people in the
world be the most confident. You could go back and
listen to that episode. It's a little bit of a
ranty episode, but I was just feeling so frustrated that
some of the most morally bankrupt people in the whole
world are some of the wealthiest, some of the most powerful,
(12:15):
some of the most confident, some of the most self assured,
and that those of us who really have set our
sights on moral goodness really struggle with self confidence, we
struggle to put ourselves out there. There is a correlation
here that I want to point out. One correlation is
just that it doesn't require moral goodness to have strategic
(12:36):
power in the world. I'm not saying that we should
become money and power hungry people who are morally bankrupt.
That is not the aspiration. But it doesn't require moral
goodness to achieve the things that you want, or to
have creative possibility. Another thing that I will say is
it is possible, I see this as a possibility that
my obsession, your obsession, our obsession with moral goodness is
(12:59):
actually keeping us stuck, is actually preventing us from accessing
our creative possibility. So, in other words, part of what
I was saying in that episode is maybe those of
us who really do have this moral compass need to
focus on strengthening our confidence muscle, Like we need to
actually be the ones who are putting ourselves out there
(13:22):
and getting too big for our birches, and you know,
having businesses and having money and having power and sitting
at the table and making political decisions, and like we
need to be the ones who have that confidence. That's
part of it. Yes, and also what I'm saying in
today's episode at the same time, I think we need
to unravel, unwind, untwist from this idea that the more
(13:47):
morally good we are, the better people that we are.
I know that seems kind of redundant, but go with
me here. This is essentially what I'm saying. Mary Oliver
has this beautiful poem called wild Geese, and the first
couple of lines of the poem just say you've probably
heard this. The first couple of lines say, you do
not have to be good. You do not have to
(14:08):
walk for one hundred miles on your knees through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your
body love what it loves. And I think this is
the dichotomy that I'm trying to get at in this episode,
is that you do not have to be good. All
you have to do is let the soft animal of
your body love what it loves. In other words, be
(14:31):
loving over good, walk toward love over goodness. And I
want to unpack this a little further because I don't
think it's totally clear yet. But if you are obsessed
with being good, with being perfect, with being great, with
being excellent. If you are obsessed with making something good,
making something excellent, making something that's going to make a
(14:53):
positive impact in the world. I think there's only so
much you can create, There's only so far you go
and stay with me. I'm not saying to sacrifice your
morality for your creativity, or to go farther, or to
get more money or to get more power. I'm not
saying that at all. I'm saying, our obsession with goodness
is keeping us from love. Our obsession with being morally
(15:17):
good is keeping us from love. One thing I have
been practicing with myself lately is asking myself the question
if all of the choices were morally neutral, because in
most cases they are. If all choices were morally neutral,
which choice would I make? So In other words, here's
a great example, this Instagram thirty day challenge. I was
(15:38):
in an inner conflict forever about doing this challenge, even
though I felt really pulled toward it, because there is
part of me that feels like there is a morality
to Instagram. There is part of me if I'm being
honest and I'm just revealing my own inner judgment right now,
but there is part of me if I'm honest, that
feels like the morally superior choice would be to get
off of Instagram. I'm just being honest. This is me
(15:59):
being vulnerable. There is a part of me that is
obsessed with being good. The version of Allley who is dying,
she's on her way out. The version of Valley, who
is on her way out, thinks that getting off Instagram
would be the morally superior choice because Instagram is a cesspool.
No one needs to be on Instagram. It's very addictive.
None of us should be scrolling. And yet if that's true,
(16:23):
if it's true that leaving Instagram would be the more
morally superior choice, then how come I experience so much
creative vitality by doing this thirty day Instagram challenge? Then
how come even when I'm doom scrolling on Instagram, even
when I quote unquote should get off Instagram and go
meditate or go get outside, or go be with my kids,
or go you know, meet up with a friend, or
(16:45):
go get a cup of coffee or go for a
walk or whatever, even when I quote unquote should do that,
how come I can have an experience with a person
on Instagram that feels so just divinely timed, so perfect.
An insight from an utter stranger can drop into my
life and into my world out of literal nowhere. That
(17:06):
can wake me up, that can change my entire direction,
that can awaken my creativity, That can change who I
am from the inside out. How come I can have
those experiences on Instagram too, Well? It has to be
that there's no such thing as moral good when it
comes to Instagram. It has to be there has to
be a moral neutrality there. And when I allow myself
(17:27):
to see the choices as neutral, listen. You can either
doom scroll on Instagram, or you can go for a walk.
It's morally neutral. You can either do this thirty day
challenge on Instagram or you can delete your account. It's
morally neutral, which do you pick. You can either write
your book or not write your book. It's morally neutral.
You can either sell your product or not sell your product.
It's morally neutral. You can start a business or not
start a business, morally neutral. Have more kids or don't
(17:49):
have more kids, morally neutral. When I can allow myself
to see these choices as morally neutral, it opens up
new possibility for me. It gives me more choice. And
more choice gives me more creative possibility. So my obsession
with needing to do something morally right, morally correct, morally
(18:09):
superior is actually preventing me from my own creative possibility.
I've watched this happen over and over and over again
in my career with authors too. Aspiring authors will come
to me and they will have an amazing book idea,
something that they a book that they should write. And
you know what's funny is one of the main questions
that people ask me when they come to me is
(18:31):
this any good? Is my book idea any good? Do
you think I should write it? Is it worth it?
And they'll say to me, do you say this to everyone?
When I'm like, no, this is a good idea, you
should write this book, They'll say, I bet you say
that to everyone. Do you ever get people who you
tell them they shouldn't write their books? And my answer
to them is no, I don't ever get a person
(18:52):
who I say to them, you shouldn't write this book.
But here's the reason for that. It's not what you think.
It's not because I'm trying to stroke their egos. It's
not because I'm just taking their money and run into
the bank. It's not that. It's because if you feel
the creative inspiration to write this book, I know, deep
in my bones there is a reason. I don't know
(19:13):
what the reason is yet. Is the reason that you're
going to inspire millions with your New York Times bestselling book?
I don't know. Is the reason that there's a story
inside of you that hasn't been told yet, that's trying
to be resolved through the act of writing it down.
I don't know yet. Is the reason that this is
going to initiate or inspire a conversation with a loved
(19:35):
one that's going to bring healing to a relationship that's
been broken for a long time. I don't know yet.
Is the reason because one of your friends is going
to read this book and it's going to save them
from some kind of painful situation that you share in
common with them. I don't know yet. We don't know
(19:55):
the reason yet, why this creative inspiration has come. You
make the decision to follow the creative path without knowing
what the outcome is going to be. Once you've moralized
the outcome, once you've decided I'm only going to do
this if good things are going to come from it
quote unquote good things. You've already blocked yourself. You've already
stopped yourself. You do not have to be good. You
(20:16):
do not have to walk on your knees for one
hundred miles with the desert repenting. You only have to
let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
I'll share one other example that I've shared before, but
it's been many years. When I was going through my divorce,
I really had a hard time with dealing with the
(20:38):
morality of how I was supposed to date post divorce
because I had grown up in this very square, evangelical,
strict kind of modesty culture, purity culture world of evangelicalism,
and my first husband and I had waited until we
were married to have sex. That was just something that
we did, something that felt important to us. After that
(21:01):
marriage ended and after I was deconstructing, I was just
so confused about how I was supposed to move forward
on that front. It's like, Okay, I'm not sixteen anymore.
I'm not even eighteen, I'm not even twenty. I'm a
thirty three year old woman I'm dating in the world.
I don't even really know what I believe about God
and the Church and my theology, that's all kind of
(21:23):
falling apart. So how am I supposed to make decisions
about who to date, how long to date them, how
I'm supposed to be with this person physically. And one
of the things that I did that felt so controversial
to me at the time but also so right, was
to take the morality out of the decisions that I
(21:43):
was making. So, in other words, if it was neither
morally right or wrong, what choice would you make if
we weren't making a choice based on morality, if we
didn't have this obsession with being a good person, what
choice would we make here? And when you take the
morality out of it, you really get to listen to
your own body. Your body will tell you yes or no.
(22:05):
Your body will say no, this isn't for me. I
want to go home. Or your body will say yes,
there's something that's here for me. There's some reason that
I want to be close to this person. There's something
that I'm trying to learn here, there's something that's trying
to unfold in me. It's about saying yes to love.
And in order to say yes to love, I think
(22:26):
we have to take the morality out of it. I'm
not saying. Don't hear me saying that there's no such
thing as morality. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying
many of the things that we have labeled moral or
immoral are actually amoral, and very few things in life
need to be labeled as immoral. The things that are
(22:46):
labeled as immoral are when we're hurting someone else or
when we're hurting ourselves. So let me ask you this,
What would be possible for you if you could neutralize
the decisions that you're making on any given day. Let's
start with just your art, Like, what would become available
to you if you could neutralize your art. If it
(23:09):
wasn't like, oh, it would be better if I did
my job first and made my money, and then if
there's any spaceleft, I can do my art. What if
it didn't have to be that organized. What if you
could actually put your art first? What if it wasn't
moral or immoral to put your art first. What if
it was a moral for you to put your art first.
What if you put your art before your family? What
(23:30):
if it was a moral to put your art before
your family. I'm not saying you should do that. I'm
not saying you need to do that. I'm just saying,
what if it was allowed for you to do that?
What if it was neither good or bad or indifferent
for you to put your art first. What if the
idea that you have to write a book, or what
(23:51):
if the idea you have to do a challenge on Instagram?
What if the idea you have to learn the piano.
What if the idea you have to start to cookie business.
I don't know. What if these ideas were morally neutral?
What if there was no morality to the choices at all.
Either learn it or don't. Learn the piano or don't.
Either write the book or don't. Either bake the cookies
(24:15):
or don't. Either sell the pies or don't sell them
for one hundred dollars, sell them for fifty dollars, sell
them for ten dollars. What if there was no morality
to this choice at all? What would you choose? I
think those of us who have spent our entire lives
(24:37):
trying to be good, trying to have our ducks in
a row, trying to stay organized, trying to stay on
top of things, trying to stay out in front of
the day, trying to you know, yeah, like have our
life in order trying to avoid the messiness. Those of
us who have done that, we have been more. We've
touched moral goodness, even if we feel we haven't. Because
(24:59):
to us that perfectionism is so unattainable, we would aspire
our whole lives to that perfectionism without ever really reaching it.
It's the gold at the end of the rainbow. And
yet I'll tell you what isn't the gold at the
end of the rainbow is love is really allowing yourself
to come home to love, is really allowing yourself to
(25:19):
be in this human life, in this human experience, in
this human body. To really love means to make decisions
from a place of embodiment, a place of trust, self trust,
a place of love. I don't know how else to
say it. It's like I'm making the choice to show
(25:41):
up on Instagram every day out of love, out of
deep love for myself for what i have to say,
for who I am in the world, for who I'm becoming,
for this period of change that I'm in right now.
I'm showing up for myself every day out of love,
not out of morality, but out of love. It's not
because I'm trying to do a good thing. It's not
because I'm trying to do the best thing. It's not
because I'm trying to be a good person. That's not
(26:03):
why I'm showing up on Instagram every day. I'm doing
it because I love me, I love myself. I love
this person I'm becoming. I'm nourishing her. I'm pouring into her.
I'm so excited to see who she becomes in the world.
It's like I am loving her and who she's becoming
by recording this podcast, by showing up on Instagram, by
(26:24):
writing my next book, not because I think I have
something amazing to share, not because I think you know
I'm going to change the world, not because of any
of that, just because of love. Because I can let
the soft animal of my body love what it loves.
You do not have to be good. You do not
have to walk for one hundred miles on your knees
through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the
(26:46):
soft animal of your body love what it loves. What
would it look like for you to let the soft
animal of your body love what it loves. What would
it look like for you to really get excited about something.
I'll share a few examples from my own life. One
thing I noticed is my mother in law offer to
take our whole family to Europe in the fall. And
I noticed that when we started planning this trip. We're
(27:07):
going for almost the whole month of October. When we
started planning this trip, I was like, oh, like my body,
my heart, my belly, like I just get so genuinely
excited when I think about planning this trip to Europe,
something in me just lit up. And I have had
(27:27):
a bit of a guilt complex at certain points because
I'm like, Wow, what a privilege it is to be
able to take our young kids to We're going to
Switzerland and then Italy. What a privilege it is to
get to take our kids to Switzerland and Italy. I
never got to experience anything like this when I was
their age, and most kids, I think, don't. And we're
going to go to these amazing places and see these
amazing things, and my mother in law spending all this
(27:49):
money and we're spending money, and I'm like, can I
take this in? Is this too good? Am I allowed
to receive this? And I have noticed how my entire
body lights up. My entire self comes alive when I
think about taking this trip. This is what it looks
like to let the soft animal of your body love
what it loves. But it doesn't have to be so
(28:10):
extravagant either. The soft animal of your body might come
alive when it picks a fresh tomato from your garden.
Maybe you don't even have a garden, and you think
to yourself, like, oh, I would love to plant a garden.
That sounds so fun, it sounds so exciting to me.
Or I would love to swing by the plant store
and get a new plant on my way home that
really lights me up, that gets me excited. You can
(28:32):
let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
It doesn't have to be part of some elaborate plan.
It doesn't have to be some strategy. It could actually
be outside of the strategy. It could be kind of
killing your budget, or you know, it can be outside
of this strategy. Maybe the strategy needs to adjust to
allow for more love. Maybe the structure needs to adjust
(28:54):
to allow for more love. There's part of me that
says this episode needs more structure. Did I really get
my point across? Did I really say everything I wanted
to say. This is the voice of the perfectionist speaking up.
This is the voice that says, we should start over
from the beginning, we should say it in a better way,
we should be more clear. This is the voice of
the goodness, the perfectionist speaking up, trying to convince you
(29:17):
that the way that the message came through wasn't good enough.
Could I go back and do it again and start
over and say it in a better way. Probably, And
I'm not even saying that. If I did that, there's
no morality to it. I could go back and start
the episode over and there would be no morality to it.
And Yet, one of the things that I'm trying to
demonstrate to myself is to let your creations be messy,
(29:43):
to let them be in process, To let yourself your
own life, the life that you are creating from scratch,
to let it be messy, to let it be in process,
to let it be okay that it is not perfect,
it may not even be good quite yet, but it
is loving. It is loving. There is love. There is
love here in this episode. There's love in my words,
(30:03):
there's love in the way that I'm saying this to myself.
There's love in the way that I'm saying it to you.
I hope you can feel the love in my tone,
in my words. In the topic of this episode, let
go of the need to be good so that you
can become more, so that you can become bigger, so
that you can become all that you are put here
to be. You do not have to be good. You
(30:25):
do not have to walk for one hundred miles on
your knees through the desert repenting. You only have to
let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile,
the world goes on. Meanwhile, the sun and the clear
pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over
the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile,
(30:48):
the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, heading
home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the
world offers itself to your imagination. The world offers its
to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese,
harsh and exciting, over and over, announcing in place in
the family and podcast, thanks for listening. I'll see you
(31:11):
back next week on the Write Your Story Podcast,
Hi, and welcome to you to Write your Story podcast.
Good job.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Really pick up the pieces of your life, pull them
back together with the word you write. All the beauty
and peace and the magic that you'll start too fun
when you write your story.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
You got the.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Words and said, don't you think it's time to let
them out and write them down and cold.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
It's all about.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
And write, write your story. Write you write your story.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast.
I'm Ali Fallon. I'm your host, and on today's episode,
I want to talk about how the obsession with needing
to make something good, or make something great, or make
something amazing that people are going to be excited about
is actually blocking you and your creativity in every single
area of your life. This is something I've experienced firsthand.
(00:56):
It's something I'm working through right now. It's something I
feel like I'm in active transition from a person who
is obsessed with making something good to a person who
is like willingly letting go of my own perfectionism, my
own need for control, my own obsession with getting it right.
I feel that in my life I am an active
(01:18):
transition from one person to another person. It's almost like
I'm shifting into this whole new identity. It is a
very bizarre and disorienting feeling to be in this transition,
because both versions of you still exist. The version of
you that knows what it looks like to get something
just right, who knows what it feels like to have
(01:39):
your duck cent a row, to be organized, to have
your plan, to have your strategy in place. That part
of you still exists in the same space that this
other part of you exists, that is saying, what would
happen if we let that go? What would happen if
we didn't get it perfect? What would happen if right now,
even though you think you could say this in a
(02:00):
way you didn't start the episode over and start back
from the beginning. What would happen if you just kept going,
if you just kept putting one foot in front of
the other, if you didn't get stuck on this obsession
with making it perfect? It really is, at the end
of the day, perfectionism. But I think a lot of
us who are perfectionists actually struggle with that term perfectionism.
(02:20):
I don't know if this resonates with you at all,
but I personally do not think of myself as a perfectionist,
even though objectively, if I zoom out for myself, I
can say, obviously, of course I do struggle with perfectionism.
The reason I don't think of myself as a perfectionist
is because of that word perfect. I am so in
tune with what it means to get something perfect, to
(02:41):
get something great, that I can't even allow myself to
own the identity of perfectionist, because in my view, nothing
I make is perfect. There's still such a another level
of achievement or another level of excellence to get to
that the place that I I've gotten is not perfect.
(03:01):
And so of course I'm not a perfectionist because I
let things go that aren't perfect all the time. And yet,
what that term is trying to get at is this
obsession we have around perfecting something, making it great, making
it better, making it excellent, making it the best that
there ever has been. That obsession is keeping you stuck.
(03:22):
It's keeping you stuck in your creativity. It's keeping you
from getting started. It's keeping you from really hearing clearly
the messages that are trying to come to you and
through you. It is blocking the channel that is you.
It is blocking your joy. It's blocking your piece, it's
blocking your powers of manifestation. It is just all around
(03:43):
blocking you. It's blocking me. I can feel this for
the first time in my life. I've heard people say
this before, but because I'm in this transition, I can
energetically feel the block. It's like I can witness myself
spin around the block of needing to get something perfect
or not willing to even try until I feel like
I'm going to be great at it. And I also
(04:04):
can witness this other part of myself that says, what
if we just just put it out there? What if
we just went for it. What if we just didn't
start the episode over because it's not perfect. What if
we just let it be imperfect? What if we just
allowed ourselves to be in process? What could become possible
if we allowed ourselves to be in process and didn't
(04:26):
need to perfect every little thing. So I said before
that this is really perfectionism, even though that term, I
think doesn't resonate with a lot of people who would
technically be perfectionists. The term perfectionism has never really resonated
with me. But the way that I started thinking about
it a couple months ago, when I feel like I started.
This transition was more about unraveling from the need to
(04:49):
be good. So I don't think about myself or anything
that I do as perfect or perfectionistic. But I do
really resonate with this obsession needing it to be good,
needing it to be great, in fact, needing it to
be excellent, always wanting it to be better than it
was before. Let me take a minute to lay out
how I think this energy blocks us at every turn.
(05:12):
I don't know if you've had this experience before where
you had a creative insight, you had an inspiration to
try something or do something that maybe was either new
for you or just felt exciting, like maybe you wanted
to learn to play the piano, or you wanted to
start writing a book, or you wanted to do a
challenge on Instagram like I've been doing, showing up every
day for thirty days on Instagram and just showing your
(05:33):
face on the camera. Whatever it was, you had this
kind of spark of inspiration where you were like, that
sounds exciting, that sounds fun, that sounds interesting. I feel
pulled in this direction. I feel curious about what could
happen if I tried that, and then almost immediately you
talk yourself out of it because of what you are. Like,
I'd love to learn to play the piano, but you know,
(05:54):
I'm probably never going to get that good at it.
I'm an adult. Most people start playing the piano when
they're a kid. I'm never going to make any money
from playing the piano. I'm never going to become a
concert pianist. I'm never even going to really be able
to play in front of anybody. I'm not going to
be able to play any popular songs. It's going to
be you talk yourself out of it because you're never
going to be that good at playing the piano. I
know this happens with aspiring authors because I've witnessed it
(06:16):
over and over again. Where someone has an inspired book
idea that is coming to them that is maybe quite
literally waking them up in the middle of the night,
it's speaking to them during their workday, and they're, you know,
so excited about it, and it's pulling them in the direction.
But the thing that's keeping them from getting started is
they tell themselves, well, I'm not really a writer. I'm
(06:37):
not that good at writing. I have terrible grammar. I
got a bad grade on a paper once when I
was in high school. I don't know how to write
a five paragraph essay. I have no training as a writer.
What if I write it and it's not that good?
What if no one ever buys it? Do you see
how the obsession with needing to make something good, make
something great, make something excellent, makes something perfect is getting
(06:59):
in the way of your creativity. You have the insight,
you have the inspiration, you have the pull, but then
you think, gosh, I'm not that good at it. This
could happen for you if you tried to do a
thirty day challenge like what I've been doing on Instagram.
So if you're new here, I did this thirty day
challenge on Instagram. I just completed it where I showed
up for thirty days on Instagram, put my face on
(07:21):
the camera, and just talked about what was ever on
my mind. I have had people reach out to me
and say, I would love to do something like this,
but you're so much better on camera than I am.
I stutter when I'm on camera, I really have trouble,
and I'm like, I'm no different than you are. I
had these same objections when this inspiration came to me.
When this idea came to me. And do you notice
(07:43):
how your obsession with needing the finished product to be
good keeps you from creating at all. Our obsession with
needing the finished product to be anything at all, needing
it to be good, needing it to be great, needing
it to be excellent, needing it to be perfect, is
keeping us from ever getting started. This is one of
the reasons why morning pages, one of the main tenets
(08:05):
of Julie Cameron's The Artist's Way, is such a powerful
way for you to reconnect to your creativity because morning pages,
in their essence, morning pages as a rule, require that
you write in a stream of consciousness style, So it
requires that there's no structure to the writing. There's no beginning,
middle end, there's no narrative arc, there's no rhyme or reason.
(08:28):
Like I will jump around from thought to thought, idea
to idea, in my morning pages, I will stop a
sentence mid sentence and start a new sentence. My morning
pages have no grammatical structure to them. They have no
rhyme or reason, they have no citations, they have no notes.
It's just letting my brain do what my brain wants
to do. When it wants to do it. Having that
(08:49):
open ended container for your creativity is such a powerful
way for you to reconnect to your creative power because
it shows you that it doesn't have to be perfect
in order for something really amazing to come through. It
doesn't even have to be good. It doesn't even have
to be mediocre. It can actually be terrible. It can
(09:10):
be terribly written, terribly composed, terribly structured, terribly organized, terrible grammar.
It can be just all around terrible, and still what
will happen for me is one tiny insight will come
through in my morning pages that will be my guiding
thought or idea for the rest of the day or
the rest of the week, or will open up conversations
that I have with my husband, or I have with
(09:32):
my family members, or I have with my friends that
will guide me and direct me in this really amazing way.
That I wouldn't have gotten to that insight if I
hadn't let myself do it terribly to me. This is
one of the reasons why it's so important for us
to peel back the layers of this conversation about perfectionism,
because I don't even think it really is perfectionism. For
(09:54):
most of us, it's actually goodism. I think it's more
like an obsession with being good. And one of the
ways that this comes through for me, and I don't
know if this resonates with you, but one of the
ways that this shows up for me is an obsession
with being a good person, as in morally good. And
I recorded an episode a couple of weeks ago that
(10:14):
talked about the genuine tension and frustration that I feel
in witnessing people who are morally bankrupt be more financially
successful than I am, more politically powerful than I am,
have more access than I have, have more say so
than I have, have a you know, a bigger seat
(10:36):
at the table than I have. I think many of
us who have this same obsession with being morally good
feel this tension because we in our lives have set
our sights on being morally good. We've set our sites
on only making choices that are in the best interest
of everyone around us, and because of that, we really
(11:00):
feel trapped and blocked from making decisions that maybe would
benefit us, or maybe would be good for us, or
maybe would open up new possibility or would create new
creative possibility. And we feel blocked from making those choices
because it isn't technically morally the best possible decision to make.
So one thing that I've been practicing recently is asking myself,
(11:23):
if none of these decisions were morally better than the other,
if every decision was morally neutral, which decision would I make?
If all of these choices in front of me were
morally neutral, which decision would I make? And sometimes that
can help reconnect me to a truer part of me,
a more honest part of me, and allow me to
make a decision that I probably wouldn't have allowed myself
to make otherwise. I recorded an episode a couple of
(11:54):
weeks ago where I talked about how frustrating it can
be to watch some of the worst people in the
world be the most confident. You could go back and
listen to that episode. It's a little bit of a
ranty episode, but I was just feeling so frustrated that
some of the most morally bankrupt people in the whole
world are some of the wealthiest, some of the most powerful,
(12:15):
some of the most confident, some of the most self assured,
and that those of us who really have set our
sights on moral goodness really struggle with self confidence, we
struggle to put ourselves out there. There is a correlation
here that I want to point out. One correlation is
just that it doesn't require moral goodness to have strategic
(12:36):
power in the world. I'm not saying that we should
become money and power hungry people who are morally bankrupt.
That is not the aspiration. But it doesn't require moral
goodness to achieve the things that you want, or to
have creative possibility. Another thing that I will say is
it is possible, I see this as a possibility that
my obsession, your obsession, our obsession with moral goodness is
(12:59):
actually keeping us stuck, is actually preventing us from accessing
our creative possibility. So, in other words, part of what
I was saying in that episode is maybe those of
us who really do have this moral compass need to
focus on strengthening our confidence muscle, Like we need to
actually be the ones who are putting ourselves out there
(13:22):
and getting too big for our birches, and you know,
having businesses and having money and having power and sitting
at the table and making political decisions, and like we
need to be the ones who have that confidence. That's
part of it. Yes, and also what I'm saying in
today's episode at the same time, I think we need
to unravel, unwind, untwist from this idea that the more
(13:47):
morally good we are, the better people that we are.
I know that seems kind of redundant, but go with
me here. This is essentially what I'm saying. Mary Oliver
has this beautiful poem called wild Geese, and the first
couple of lines of the poem just say you've probably
heard this. The first couple of lines say, you do
not have to be good. You do not have to
(14:08):
walk for one hundred miles on your knees through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your
body love what it loves. And I think this is
the dichotomy that I'm trying to get at in this episode,
is that you do not have to be good. All
you have to do is let the soft animal of
your body love what it loves. In other words, be
(14:31):
loving over good, walk toward love over goodness. And I
want to unpack this a little further because I don't
think it's totally clear yet. But if you are obsessed
with being good, with being perfect, with being great, with
being excellent. If you are obsessed with making something good,
making something excellent, making something that's going to make a
(14:53):
positive impact in the world. I think there's only so
much you can create, There's only so far you go
and stay with me. I'm not saying to sacrifice your
morality for your creativity, or to go farther, or to
get more money or to get more power. I'm not
saying that at all. I'm saying, our obsession with goodness
is keeping us from love. Our obsession with being morally
(15:17):
good is keeping us from love. One thing I have
been practicing with myself lately is asking myself the question
if all of the choices were morally neutral, because in
most cases they are. If all choices were morally neutral,
which choice would I make? So In other words, here's
a great example, this Instagram thirty day challenge. I was
(15:38):
in an inner conflict forever about doing this challenge, even
though I felt really pulled toward it, because there is
part of me that feels like there is a morality
to Instagram. There is part of me if I'm being
honest and I'm just revealing my own inner judgment right now,
but there is part of me if I'm honest, that
feels like the morally superior choice would be to get
off of Instagram. I'm just being honest. This is me
(15:59):
being vulnerable. There is a part of me that is
obsessed with being good. The version of Allley who is dying,
she's on her way out. The version of Valley, who
is on her way out, thinks that getting off Instagram
would be the morally superior choice because Instagram is a cesspool.
No one needs to be on Instagram. It's very addictive.
None of us should be scrolling. And yet if that's true,
(16:23):
if it's true that leaving Instagram would be the more
morally superior choice, then how come I experience so much
creative vitality by doing this thirty day Instagram challenge? Then
how come even when I'm doom scrolling on Instagram, even
when I quote unquote should get off Instagram and go
meditate or go get outside, or go be with my kids,
or go you know, meet up with a friend, or
(16:45):
go get a cup of coffee or go for a
walk or whatever, even when I quote unquote should do that,
how come I can have an experience with a person
on Instagram that feels so just divinely timed, so perfect.
An insight from an utter stranger can drop into my
life and into my world out of literal nowhere. That
(17:06):
can wake me up, that can change my entire direction,
that can awaken my creativity, That can change who I
am from the inside out. How come I can have
those experiences on Instagram too, Well? It has to be
that there's no such thing as moral good when it
comes to Instagram. It has to be there has to
be a moral neutrality there. And when I allow myself
(17:27):
to see the choices as neutral, listen. You can either
doom scroll on Instagram, or you can go for a walk.
It's morally neutral. You can either do this thirty day
challenge on Instagram or you can delete your account. It's
morally neutral, which do you pick. You can either write
your book or not write your book. It's morally neutral.
You can either sell your product or not sell your product.
It's morally neutral. You can start a business or not
start a business, morally neutral. Have more kids or don't
(17:49):
have more kids, morally neutral. When I can allow myself
to see these choices as morally neutral, it opens up
new possibility for me. It gives me more choice. And
more choice gives me more creative possibility. So my obsession
with needing to do something morally right, morally correct, morally
(18:09):
superior is actually preventing me from my own creative possibility.
I've watched this happen over and over and over again
in my career with authors too. Aspiring authors will come
to me and they will have an amazing book idea,
something that they a book that they should write. And
you know what's funny is one of the main questions
that people ask me when they come to me is
(18:31):
this any good? Is my book idea any good? Do
you think I should write it? Is it worth it?
And they'll say to me, do you say this to everyone?
When I'm like, no, this is a good idea, you
should write this book, They'll say, I bet you say
that to everyone. Do you ever get people who you
tell them they shouldn't write their books? And my answer
to them is no, I don't ever get a person
(18:52):
who I say to them, you shouldn't write this book.
But here's the reason for that. It's not what you think.
It's not because I'm trying to stroke their egos. It's
not because I'm just taking their money and run into
the bank. It's not that. It's because if you feel
the creative inspiration to write this book, I know, deep
in my bones there is a reason. I don't know
(19:13):
what the reason is yet. Is the reason that you're
going to inspire millions with your New York Times bestselling book?
I don't know. Is the reason that there's a story
inside of you that hasn't been told yet, that's trying
to be resolved through the act of writing it down.
I don't know yet. Is the reason that this is
going to initiate or inspire a conversation with a loved
(19:35):
one that's going to bring healing to a relationship that's
been broken for a long time. I don't know yet.
Is the reason because one of your friends is going
to read this book and it's going to save them
from some kind of painful situation that you share in
common with them. I don't know yet. We don't know
(19:55):
the reason yet, why this creative inspiration has come. You
make the decision to follow the creative path without knowing
what the outcome is going to be. Once you've moralized
the outcome, once you've decided I'm only going to do
this if good things are going to come from it
quote unquote good things. You've already blocked yourself. You've already
stopped yourself. You do not have to be good. You
(20:16):
do not have to walk on your knees for one
hundred miles with the desert repenting. You only have to
let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
I'll share one other example that I've shared before, but
it's been many years. When I was going through my divorce,
I really had a hard time with dealing with the
(20:38):
morality of how I was supposed to date post divorce
because I had grown up in this very square, evangelical,
strict kind of modesty culture, purity culture world of evangelicalism,
and my first husband and I had waited until we
were married to have sex. That was just something that
we did, something that felt important to us. After that
(21:01):
marriage ended and after I was deconstructing, I was just
so confused about how I was supposed to move forward
on that front. It's like, Okay, I'm not sixteen anymore.
I'm not even eighteen, I'm not even twenty. I'm a
thirty three year old woman I'm dating in the world.
I don't even really know what I believe about God
and the Church and my theology, that's all kind of
(21:23):
falling apart. So how am I supposed to make decisions
about who to date, how long to date them, how
I'm supposed to be with this person physically. And one
of the things that I did that felt so controversial
to me at the time but also so right, was
to take the morality out of the decisions that I
(21:43):
was making. So, in other words, if it was neither
morally right or wrong, what choice would you make if
we weren't making a choice based on morality, if we
didn't have this obsession with being a good person, what
choice would we make here? And when you take the
morality out of it, you really get to listen to
your own body. Your body will tell you yes or no.
(22:05):
Your body will say no, this isn't for me. I
want to go home. Or your body will say yes,
there's something that's here for me. There's some reason that
I want to be close to this person. There's something
that I'm trying to learn here, there's something that's trying
to unfold in me. It's about saying yes to love.
And in order to say yes to love, I think
(22:26):
we have to take the morality out of it. I'm
not saying. Don't hear me saying that there's no such
thing as morality. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying
many of the things that we have labeled moral or
immoral are actually amoral, and very few things in life
need to be labeled as immoral. The things that are
(22:46):
labeled as immoral are when we're hurting someone else or
when we're hurting ourselves. So let me ask you this,
What would be possible for you if you could neutralize
the decisions that you're making on any given day. Let's
start with just your art, Like, what would become available
to you if you could neutralize your art. If it
(23:09):
wasn't like, oh, it would be better if I did
my job first and made my money, and then if
there's any spaceleft, I can do my art. What if
it didn't have to be that organized. What if you
could actually put your art first? What if it wasn't
moral or immoral to put your art first. What if
it was a moral for you to put your art first.
What if you put your art before your family? What
(23:30):
if it was a moral to put your art before
your family. I'm not saying you should do that. I'm
not saying you need to do that. I'm just saying,
what if it was allowed for you to do that?
What if it was neither good or bad or indifferent
for you to put your art first. What if the
idea that you have to write a book, or what
(23:51):
if the idea you have to do a challenge on Instagram?
What if the idea you have to learn the piano.
What if the idea you have to start to cookie business.
I don't know. What if these ideas were morally neutral?
What if there was no morality to the choices at all.
Either learn it or don't. Learn the piano or don't.
Either write the book or don't. Either bake the cookies
(24:15):
or don't. Either sell the pies or don't sell them
for one hundred dollars, sell them for fifty dollars, sell
them for ten dollars. What if there was no morality
to this choice at all? What would you choose? I
think those of us who have spent our entire lives
(24:37):
trying to be good, trying to have our ducks in
a row, trying to stay organized, trying to stay on
top of things, trying to stay out in front of
the day, trying to you know, yeah, like have our
life in order trying to avoid the messiness. Those of
us who have done that, we have been more. We've
touched moral goodness, even if we feel we haven't. Because
(24:59):
to us that perfectionism is so unattainable, we would aspire
our whole lives to that perfectionism without ever really reaching it.
It's the gold at the end of the rainbow. And
yet I'll tell you what isn't the gold at the
end of the rainbow is love is really allowing yourself
to come home to love, is really allowing yourself to
(25:19):
be in this human life, in this human experience, in
this human body. To really love means to make decisions
from a place of embodiment, a place of trust, self trust,
a place of love. I don't know how else to
say it. It's like I'm making the choice to show
(25:41):
up on Instagram every day out of love, out of
deep love for myself for what i have to say,
for who I am in the world, for who I'm becoming,
for this period of change that I'm in right now.
I'm showing up for myself every day out of love,
not out of morality, but out of love. It's not
because I'm trying to do a good thing. It's not
because I'm trying to do the best thing. It's not
because I'm trying to be a good person. That's not
(26:03):
why I'm showing up on Instagram every day. I'm doing
it because I love me, I love myself. I love
this person I'm becoming. I'm nourishing her. I'm pouring into her.
I'm so excited to see who she becomes in the world.
It's like I am loving her and who she's becoming
by recording this podcast, by showing up on Instagram, by
(26:24):
writing my next book, not because I think I have
something amazing to share, not because I think you know
I'm going to change the world, not because of any
of that, just because of love. Because I can let
the soft animal of my body love what it loves.
You do not have to be good. You do not
have to walk for one hundred miles on your knees
through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the
(26:46):
soft animal of your body love what it loves. What
would it look like for you to let the soft
animal of your body love what it loves. What would
it look like for you to really get excited about something.
I'll share a few examples from my own life. One
thing I noticed is my mother in law offer to
take our whole family to Europe in the fall. And
I noticed that when we started planning this trip. We're
(27:07):
going for almost the whole month of October. When we
started planning this trip, I was like, oh, like my body,
my heart, my belly, like I just get so genuinely
excited when I think about planning this trip to Europe,
something in me just lit up. And I have had
(27:27):
a bit of a guilt complex at certain points because
I'm like, Wow, what a privilege it is to be
able to take our young kids to We're going to
Switzerland and then Italy. What a privilege it is to
get to take our kids to Switzerland and Italy. I
never got to experience anything like this when I was
their age, and most kids, I think, don't. And we're
going to go to these amazing places and see these
amazing things, and my mother in law spending all this
(27:49):
money and we're spending money, and I'm like, can I
take this in? Is this too good? Am I allowed
to receive this? And I have noticed how my entire
body lights up. My entire self comes alive when I
think about taking this trip. This is what it looks
like to let the soft animal of your body love
what it loves. But it doesn't have to be so
(28:10):
extravagant either. The soft animal of your body might come
alive when it picks a fresh tomato from your garden.
Maybe you don't even have a garden, and you think
to yourself, like, oh, I would love to plant a garden.
That sounds so fun, it sounds so exciting to me.
Or I would love to swing by the plant store
and get a new plant on my way home that
really lights me up, that gets me excited. You can
(28:32):
let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
It doesn't have to be part of some elaborate plan.
It doesn't have to be some strategy. It could actually
be outside of the strategy. It could be kind of
killing your budget, or you know, it can be outside
of this strategy. Maybe the strategy needs to adjust to
allow for more love. Maybe the structure needs to adjust
(28:54):
to allow for more love. There's part of me that
says this episode needs more structure. Did I really get
my point across? Did I really say everything I wanted
to say. This is the voice of the perfectionist speaking up.
This is the voice that says, we should start over
from the beginning, we should say it in a better way,
we should be more clear. This is the voice of
the goodness, the perfectionist speaking up, trying to convince you
(29:17):
that the way that the message came through wasn't good enough.
Could I go back and do it again and start
over and say it in a better way. Probably, And
I'm not even saying that. If I did that, there's
no morality to it. I could go back and start
the episode over and there would be no morality to it.
And Yet, one of the things that I'm trying to
demonstrate to myself is to let your creations be messy,
(29:43):
to let them be in process, To let yourself your
own life, the life that you are creating from scratch,
to let it be messy, to let it be in process,
to let it be okay that it is not perfect,
it may not even be good quite yet, but it
is loving. It is loving. There is love. There is
love here in this episode. There's love in my words,
(30:03):
there's love in the way that I'm saying this to myself.
There's love in the way that I'm saying it to you.
I hope you can feel the love in my tone,
in my words. In the topic of this episode, let
go of the need to be good so that you
can become more, so that you can become bigger, so
that you can become all that you are put here
to be. You do not have to be good. You
(30:25):
do not have to walk for one hundred miles on
your knees through the desert repenting. You only have to
let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile,
the world goes on. Meanwhile, the sun and the clear
pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over
the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile,
(30:48):
the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, heading
home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the
world offers itself to your imagination. The world offers its
to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese,
harsh and exciting, over and over, announcing in place in
the family and podcast, thanks for listening. I'll see you
(31:11):
back next week on the Write Your Story Podcast,
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