A field of wildflowers. A handmade quilt. A homemade cookie.
Your personality.
What do these things have in common? They are all beautifully unique and wonderfully imperfect. Some of your greatest gifts are likely to be inextricable from your imperfections. The imperfections are part of what makes you beautiful, and wonderful, and lovable.
"Normal" is a myth. I am coming to believe that even "neurotypical" is a myth.
Your DNA and mine are nowhere near the same. Our life experiences are vastly different. We are nothing alike in the way we see the world and interact with it.
AND I LOVE IT.
How boring would the world be if everyone were the same?
Normal is fictional story our culture writes for us. A box we’re meant to fit. It’s what we’re told a happy, successful, life is meant to look like, what a ‘regular’ person’s life is meant to look like. -James Prescott
Messy Desk is all about finding how our unique brains can create a fulfilling life. Because messies aren't like "everyone else" we need to know exactly who we are.
The first step in figuring out how to make your life fit YOU and not some abstract "normal" person is to really know who you are. What are your strengths? What do you value? When do you feel the most calm? The most satisfied? The most accomplished? What do you love doing the most?
There are no right answers to these questions. If you work with me in a coaching session, these are some of the things we'd talk through. I might suggest that you take the Via Character Strengths Survey (it's free) and we would explore how those strengths might make your work or other activities more engaging.
I promise that I'll write more explicitly about strengths in the future.
But today, I only want you to appreciate the unique self that you are today. You have overcome obstacles and you have had some successes. You can do amazing things. You may not do those things the way "everyone else" does, but that might mean that you do them better, more creatively. You are a wildflower garden, not a vase of plastic flowers.
Give yourself a hug for me.