“Um, let’s see if you can figure out how to work the scooter you got for Christmas first, honey.”

Seems logical, right? But in the moment of watching his mini-tirade about wanting to “go fast” and “sit up high” I was reminded of my own tirades against “paying my dues” in the various professions and industries I’ve served over the years.

With few exceptions (my husband being one of them – isn’t it funny how God seems to know just what He’s doing in moments like that?), people don’t like slow.

We love the results of slow – slow roasted barbecue, fine wine, beautiful artwork – but we don’t like the waiting around for it to become a masterpiece.

We just want the masterpiece right now, thankyouverymuch.

As I stood watching my son, I saw my thirty-something self reflected back. How I wanted to “have, do, be” things at breakneck speed so I could “arrive” at some destination that I thought was a foregone conclusion already.

In a flash, I thought about daVinci, and how he studied for years before he was seen as a true master of his craft. Then my brain flashes to the 10,000 hours concept from Malcom Gladwell. And it occurs to me that slow may suck, but it’s an important step in marinating the creative juices.

And even when I appear to be going fast to the onlooker, it feels painfully slow to me.

The learning, unlearning, and do-overs. The late nights of fixing something I thought was ready for public consumption.

I. Hate. Slow.

But there’s a beautiful power in slow, too.

Slow-Twitch Power

When I was working with a personal trainer back in the day, the one exercise I hated was designed to focus on my shoulders. My shoulders were so weak, I couldn’t lift a 5 pound dumbell up to shoulder height with my arm fully extended without complaining. After about three lifts, my shoulders were searing. I was calling him all kinds of names by the fifth lift. My form would start slipping, and I would go as fast as I could just to get the damn reps over with.

Finally, my personal Marquis de Sade would “congratulate” me for completing the reps. ”Just keep practicing.” he would say. “It gets easier as you keep lifting. Then, we’ll up the weight, and do this all over again.”

So when he wasn’t around, I would practice – without weights, flapping my arms like a bird – but in very slow motion. It’s easy to hold something out to your sides for a second or two, but try holding nothing for a minute. It’ll hurt like hell if you’ve never practiced it.

I started reading up on weight training, so I didn’t sound like a dolt whenI was working out. Apparently we have muscles designed for slow and fast movements (something my “trainer” never told me – which is why I fired him). Slow-twitch muscles are where your stamina is built. Slow-twitch is where your endurance is.

Slow-twitch is about power. Fast-twitch is about explosive movement.

Fast-twitch gets you running from the bear. Slow twitch keeps you running.

Fast-twitch muscles fatigue rapidly.

When I read that, I thought about the tortoise and the hare, and how the hare took a nap after sprinting away from the starting line.

Insert evil grin here.

So as I practiced very slowly, with virtually no weight, it became easier to lift my arms to shoulder height for ten or twelve repetitions.

Then, of course, my “trainer” wanted to add more weight, because to him, it looked like the workout was getting too easy.

And I guess, in a way, it was. I had learned the power of slow, and just like that tortoise, I could win the race if I stayed at it.

Slow and Steady

Flash back to my son, who is now done with his mini-tirade, and working on getting his balance on the scooter. He’s spending a lot more time pumping with his foot than I would, but I can’t do this for him. He’s spending maybe two seconds coasting, and 37 seconds with one foot on the ground, trying to create enough speed to coast in the first place.

And he’s loving it. Sure, he’d still rather be on the motorcycle, “up high” and “going fast”, but he has a clear goal to master. Pretty soon, he’s got both feet on the deck of the scooter, and he’s coasting around like a pro. Well, as much as a five year old can be a professional scooter-er.

Again, I’m reminded of my own struggle. Guys like Les McKeown talk about how it typically takes upwards of 3 years for a start-up to get out of what he calls “early struggle” - to get profitable and stay there – because they’re learning the mechanics of doing business in their industry. Sure, many companies get there sooner, and many take much longer (or never get there), but the average seems to be about 3 years, according to Les.

No one wants it to take three (or more) years, but if we normalized that, perhaps we wouldn’t be so cavalier about mortgaging our homes and maxing our credit cards to launch our businesses.

Lately, my path has crossed, Godly enough, with various articles on the topic of taking things slowly. Kelly Kingman offers a great post about slow blogging in conjunction with her latest project with Pace Smith for peaceful entrepreneurs. Mitch Joel writes at length about how we have misinterpreted the habits of successful people as sacrifices we have to make in order to see success. The reality, says Joel, is that they’ve been honing their craft for years, have a natural proclivity for it, and thus, it appears much more effortless for them. He says those folks consider their work part of their habits – who they are - and not so much a sacrifice they had to make in order to become the successful people they are today.

What are you practicing?

So what about you? What comes naturally to you? What comes naturally because you’ve been practicing it for years? This includes not only the stuff you enjoy, but perhaps the stuff you “had to get good at” in order to do your work effectively. Can you see how those hours of “practice” have led you to where you are today.

This includes the mindset stuff you’ve been “practicing” for years. When I work with clients on raising their threshold of belief, we have to get a clear baseline. We have to know what they already believe in their core before we can start moving them toward a new goal, because a new goal often requires a shift in thinking, otherwise, you’d be there by now.

Practice makes habit, and if you’ve been practicing “being broke” for fifteen years, it’s going to take more than a day or two of positive thinking to shift that habit. You’re going to need to take teeny tiny steps away from “being broke” to build the slow-twitch “muscle” of having plenty. It’s why affirmations don’t work for many many people – myself included. If I can’t see the truth in the statement, it doesn’t pass my BS filter (or if it does, there’s so much self-talk thwarting it, that it won’t do much good)!

Instead, we have to look at what we do believe to be true, and “flex” that muscle slowly, to build our stamina, and our power in a way that builds us up and gives us the power to keep adding more weight to the stack – until that “thing” we’ve been working on becomes effortless.

This year, I’ve made a commitment to eliminate white flour from my diet for the next 90 days. It’s not easy, but it’s a LOT easier for me than giving up dairy, white flour, sugar, and “all the other stuff I love” all at one time in an effort to “eat healthier” in the new year. One thing. Slow and steady. And we’ll see what happens.

What one thing  - something doable, believable, achievable (even a little bit easy at first) – can you do today to help you move closer to where you want to be?

What would inspire you to light up your fullest, brightest, biggest potential? What’s the real reason behind the things that you do?  What is your life for - what bigger, more resonant vision can you link this activity to? – Amy Oscar

That’s the question, isn’t it. Some people go on about the meaning of life, but really, it all boils down to this question: What?

I came from a direct sales background, where often, we were “coached” to elicit “the why” from our potential recruits. You know: “I want to put my kids through college, save for retirement, and be able to pay off the bills.”

That “why” is all well and good, but there’s a deeper motivation – one that Amy Oscar alludes to in that question above.

I call it “The What” or “The What Under The Why”.

Because there’s a deeper reason that you want your kids to go to college and not have to worry about loans or working to pay it off.

Maybe it’s because you toiled for years to pay off your own education. Maybe it’s because you never got one. Maybe it’s because you’d like the satisfaction of knowing you were able to give that gift to your kids because your parent’s couldn’t.

See? The “why” can come from any direction. The What Under The Why is a root issue. It stems from a belief – one that usually rocks you at your core. Sometimes, not in a good way, but usually, from our hopeful self.

When we can tap into that space, we find our true motivation. The motivation that gets us up every day at 3:30 in the morning – even if we only went to bed at 11pm – so we can slay the work dragon one more day in a job we hate.

The What Under The Why is the real reason we do what we do.

It takes some digging and some ruthless honesty to get there. Lying to yourself will only prolong the agony.

And the kicker? Almost no one else ever knows our real “what” – we only give them the “why”.

It’s one reason I’m effective at what I do. That surface why answer isn’t satisfactory for me. I want to know what’s motivating the why. I want the what under the why, so I can know that the work we’re doing will make positive impact on what matters most to you.

It’s hard work. Sometimes a client doesn’t want to “go there” and a lot of times there are bottled emotions that erupt: anger, frustration, tears, regrets. It happens.

And then, there’s this really cool thing that I get to witness: healing.

People recognize what they’ve been denying for years and years. They own what they really want, who they really are, and they can see themselves clearly – instead of the mucked up canvas they’ve been hiding under. They find their true voice, and start flexing the atrophied muscle of being themselves – in all their glory.

There’s a second really cool thing that happens – and sometimes I don’t get to see this: They bloom and grow and become themselves. I don’t always get to see it, because sometimes during the healing process, they make a decision to step out of the spotlight  - because it’s not truly what matters most to them. So it’s kind of bittersweet, but it’s groovy.

And these people become whole. They get clear on what they’re about in the world. They come to see their genius work, and how they can do what they love.

And at 6:30 this morning, as I was working out the foundations of this post, it occurred to me:

THAT is my What Under The Why

Sometimes, it’s my friends or family, other times, it’s a total stranger in an airport, but I get up each day and do what I do because I have the power to heal, and I want to use it any and every chance I get. God gifted me with healing abilities. Whether it’s energetic, through my writing, or through performance, every moment I have on this rock is a chance for me help people discover their own “what” and become more whole.

I can’t think of a better reason to get up in the morning. Can you?

We laypeople call it makeup.

You’ll probably notice that I, for the most part, don’t wear the stuff. Most of my videos are bare-faced – mostly because I want people to recognize me if they ever meet me in person, but also because I just feel stupid about makeup.

I have a love-hate relationship with makeup that probably stems from my childhood. Mom never wore the stuff (and seeing pictures of her in a dress still blow my mind), never pierced her ears, and impressed upon me (perhaps a bit too harshly) the importance of brains over beauty.

So when it’s time to doll myself up, I’m all kinds of awkward. Even for a performance, it’s an exercise in self-doubt for me to apply the creams, goos and colors – even though I’m pretty knowledgable after a few years of selling and demoing it as a home part consultant.

Heck, even this summer, when I was teaching @mrsfatass how to apply eyeliner, I was all kinds of insecure that she’d somehow recognize I have no clue when it comes to this make-up application thang. To her credit, she was uber helpful with the do’s and don’ts of glitter shadow and Zumba.

But I’ve read all kinds of books, and know all kinds of tips and tricks. I even got a personal tutorial from Celebrity Makeup Artist Chase Aston a few years ago. So I’m not stupid. I just feel completely un-confident when it comes to putting that stuff on my face.

As I was perusing the Writing Circle prompts from Amy Oscar for December, I was struck by a question she posed in her “Original Face” prompt:

Who are you, when you are not pretending to be you but are, rather, at rest inside of yourself?  What does your original face look like?

And it got me to thinking about all the celebrities that you don’t even recognize when they’re out of makeup. We’ve seen the horrifyingly icky tabloid photos of stars that we think couldn’t possibly be authentic – and then we find out otherwise.

There’s a let-down that comes with people seeing “the real you” when you’ve been made up, puffed up, and otherwise airbrushed into some sort of “perfection” – a perfection that only exists on paper and celluloid.

I understand the need for continuity. Say you’re filming a scene, and a paper cut between takes would destroy the continuity of the film. It makes sense to apply some cover-up to keep things coherent.

At the same time, if we’re applying cover-up by the truckload, how are we allowing the light of the performer to shine? Why use that actor at all, when an equally competent individual could be found in the scores of headshots that currently litter the desks of casting agents around the globe?

If it’s about name value, street cred, and brand recognition to put butts in the seats, I call B.S.

There are a lot of ugly actors (and entrepreneurs) that make big bank. Some of them are women. And I’m not just talking about their external appearance, to be clear.

So here we stand, on the fringe of this “shifting economy”, this “new economy” or whatever you want to call it, and there’s a call for more authenticity, integrity, and transparency.

Where is your real face?

I want to be recognizable to people that have “met” me in this virtual space. I want my face, my voice, my message to be familiar. I don’t want this stark contrast from on-screen to off-screen appearance.

When a tabloid get a picture of me, you’ll know it’s really me, because you’ve already seen me on my bad hair days or when I’m wearing the winter cap because I’m sick. And you’ll also know it’s me because I haven’t sugar coated my voice, or dolled up my videos with a bunch of snazzy editing.

What you see is (mostly) what you get: no-bs, ruthless honesty, transparency, and the most authentic “me” I know how to be.

And I throw that disclaimer in there, because I’m still learning what “being me” is really all about. I have a feeling that’s probably true for you as well.

What if we just rolled with that, instead of worrying about which “face” the world is seeing today? What if we gave each other enough grace to allow ourselves to admit that “this is who I am today, and that may change tomorrow, but I’m always going to be as me as I know how to be”?

Imagine the freedom we’d have to truly explore this sandbox called life (and business for that matter).

Well, here’s the thing: you already have that freedom. You just have to choose to live there.

“Land of the free, home of the brave?” I’m not talking about America. I’m talking about that place inside yourself where you can be truly you, and your authentic voice shines through the muck on the canvas that is your masterpiece.

Being yourself is all there is.  Joel Goldsmith says that being connected to God (insert your favorite nomenclature for the Divine Spark here) is like a gold ring. “The gold is the substance, the ring is the form.” If God is the substance, then YOU are the form.

So shine, dammit! Shine!