How to communicate & connect without fear (BKI 37)

December is about celebration, communicating, connecting. It feels so great to do these, doesn’t it? Warm, happy, joyful. Yet communicating and connecting can also feel scary. We might fear being judged on what and how we communicate. I suffered this fear so much that I gave up music for 4 years solid. How I got back on track is a long story, but as you can see, I did! And so can you. We’re in one of our most “public” months: today I offer you a quick way to share with confidence. How I learned to turn fear into joy (yes, you can do it! If I did, so can you).

Hi, this is Diana. Bright Knowledge instants give you one thing you can do today to move your creativity ahead. And as we are in the month of December, although this would work for any month, we're very much in the mode of connection, community, and communication. One of the things people come to me most for is letting their creativity come out. And oftentimes there's a great deal of fear around this.

And I certainly sympathize because I actually gave up music for four long years due to severe performance anxiety, and now I managed to get through it. So if I can, anybody can. But I digress. So a lot of people come to me because of this fear, and a lot of this fear comes from fear of being judged. And there's a bright knowledge instant I made a while ago talking about the difference between discernment and judgment.

So I recommend you go back and watch that. And I want to go a little deeper right now into this. When we talk about discernment versus judgment, we take out the value words of good and bad. We lay those aside, and we stop applying them to our art. Is our art good or bad? That's not very helpful. Instead, what we go for is, is this working or not?

I want to take this a step further now. When we say, is this working or not? I would like you to think, what am I really communicating with this? Is this communicating what I want to say? Is it connecting with people the way I would like it to connect? Go to this next level of discernment and see what it does for your art. So right now, as you sit with your art today, no matter what it is, if it's writing, if it's gardening, if it's painting, if it's cooking, see, is this what I want to communicate with my work?

And if it is, great, carry on. If it's not, look a little deeper. What is it that you want to communicate? And how can you bring this out more in your work? And then when you go to share it, is it connecting with people the way that you would like it to connect? Take it from there. If it's not connecting, find out why. Don't use good and bad judgments.

You don't need to use those. They're not going to be helpful. Instead, you're going to inquire, ah, I wonder, maybe my repertoire choices were not quite right for the situation. What would be better? This can take your art to a whole new level. So try this out today, looking at your discernment through the lenses of, is this communicating what I want? And is this. Connecting with my community the way I would like it to try that today.