Sometimes a wrong turn is the only way to find the right path by Andrea Schroeder

This week has been frustrating, all around. A special kind of frustration - the kind where you are doing exactly what you want to be doing and yet it feels off.

This is the thing about creative dreaming - in creating your dream as a real live thing you have to do things you have never done before. Which means you can't know how it's going to go ahead of time.

This is how it goes:

You're inspired -> You act on it -> You learn stuff -> That feeds the next inspiration

But this is how we all seem to want it to go:

You're inspired -> You act on it -> Everything is PERFECT BLISS - > Happily Ever After

Somewhere in leaping towards PERFECT BLISS and landing on YOU LEARN STUFF there is a world of pain.

It didn't go the way you'd hoped. Maybe your idea sucks. Maybe you suck. Maybe everything is impossible. Who cares about dreams anyway?

But it just feels like a world of pain.

It's actually a world of information.

Information about what does, and does not work. Information about how to try it differently next time. Real life information that helps you build your real life dream.

(Real life as opposed to DREAMS OF PERFECT BLISS.)

Your fantasy is not going to happen.

You'll never just be handed the key to your dream.

Or a map that shows you how to get there without messy, painful detours.

Dreams come true through this messy process of:

1. acting on inspiration
2. having things go way differently that you thought they would/should
3. being upset about that
4. getting over it
5. finding the gems in the experience
6. letting that inspire the next step.

And so on and so on.

The people who live their dreams engage with that messy process.

I just wrote all of that to remind myself.

This was one of those messy weeks where I was doing a bunch of PERFECT BLISS kind of things and what I got was a pile of life lessons.

That's me this morning (bedhead and all!) with one of my custom made Creative Soul Alchemy cards - a perfect bliss activity if there ever was one.

I learned A LOT.

And this morning I am remembering the magic of how letting go of how you thought it should be creates space for it be what it is. And life, what it is, is beautiful.

With a paintbrush in one hand & a glitter-gun in the other, Andrea lovingly mentors men & women who want to lead creatively abundant lives — and do ‘impossible’ things, with ease & joy.