Follow your inner guide

We all have this sort of internal compass. It tells us what kind of dinner we want, if it's time to go to bed, if we think watching Dancing With The Stars will be more entertaining than sports highlights. But for some reason, when it comes to following our passion, finding what we want to do with our careers and life, we forget to listen to that inner guidance. My theory is that, not to blame our parents, but most of them that wanted us to have a safe path in life. So perhaps they told us to become accountants instead of writers. Or didn't encourage us as children when we showed an aptitude for being an artist. There were also many parents, even in this day, that don't really know how to encourage a child to trust their own inner guidance. Most likely they weren't taught that either, so they just continue the pattern. But when you grow up not trusting your own inner voice, then how in the world are you supposed to recognize when it's there? But your inner voice is what tells you that you want to be an artist, when you're busy making a career out of banking. And maybe it's a soft nagging voice. But you ignore that nagging voice. Because your whole life your parents and society might have told you, that nagging voice didn't matter. And then eventually, you just get used to ignoring that nagging voice. But guess what? That nagging voice speaks really loudly when you get older. It's called "Midlife Crises"!!! It's the people that look at their lives, see the wife, the kids, the nice house and go wait...! This wasn't what I meant to do! And it doesn't mean the kids and wife need to be tossed out, even though unfortunately that happens sometimes. But if you had just followed that inner voice you never would be in that darn place at all. Even just this week my 8-year old son told me and my husband that he wanted to stop playing club soccer. He's really good, is on the top team for his age group of a really well known club soccer league. And at first we were kind of like, what?! But you love soccer. You love playing it! You never want to leave practice when it's over! So I spent a week asking him every single question to get to the bottom of what he was feeling. I wanted him to understand his feelings, understand his inner voice, really know who he is and what he was feeling about the situation. And you know what? He really doesn't like it any more, at least not the competitive aspect of it. It seems he just wants to enjoy the fun of it and play around on the soccer field. Not such strong competition. But imagine what that would have done to him as an adult if I just let him ignore that inner voice. He would have subconsciously told himself that it doesn't matter if it felt wrong for him. And that's how he would have lived his life. And then he'd turn into an adult that ignores their inner voice. It's just one wrong step of many. But instead, we want him to honor that inner voice. And as writers, we need that inner voice. It's what guides us to know what project to write. To hear the inspiration in the first place. To know who to trust in this crazy business called "show". I find for me, as I am getting closer and closer to success, the inner voice is almost electric. I feel this intense excitement right before I get a phone call or run into someone who's going to turn into an amazing opportunity. But if I hadn't learned to recognize that inner voice, I'd probably write it off to something I couldn't quite put a finger on. It's really intense too. Maybe it's why so many people are on xanax and other relaxation pills. Maybe they're all drowning out their inner voices! But I recognize it and then when it turns out to be correct, that the intense feeling really does come before a phone call from the producer I expected, then it just validates I am in touch with my inner voice. The more practice we get at being correct, the more our inner voice can guide us in life and writing in general. And we writers need all the guidance we can get, right?