Gavin Whyte's Blog, page 25

300 Words a Day - #34: A Barnacle's Tale - Part 1 of 3

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Yesterday, I mentioned the importance of flowing with life, and finished off using the analogy of a barnacle. (A barnacle being an arthropod that clings to rocks, resisting the tide.) 
I remember reading a tale about a barnacle, but I can’t remember whereabouts I read it. 
I will try and write one here. (If you know of such a tale, please let me know).

***


So the story goes that a group of barnacles were clinging to a rock.
All the barnacles were conditioned from a young age to resist the tide. No matter how hard life got, one was never to let go and be swept away.
“Those that get swept away are never seen again!” said a melodramatic barnacle. 
Let’s call him Barry.
“But there has to be more to life than clinging to this rock,” said another barnacle. We’ll call her Bev. Her thinking set her apart from the rest. “Day in, day out, all we do is cling. What if there’s more?”
“More?” said Barry. “What do you mean more?”
“Well, suppose all those who have let go and trusted where the tide took them-”
“Now stop that talk about the tide! If the elders hear you they’ll-“
“I wasn’t saying anything bad... I was just going to say, what if those who have let go are not only okay but are actually having an amazing time? What if they’ve found other rocks?”
“You talk daft!”
“What if they’re doing what every barnacle dreams of?”
“And what exactly might that be?”
“Well… don’t you want to be free?”
“I am free… free to roam on our rock!”
“No, I mean free with the tide; for all the stress and the pressure to vanish.”
“You just need to learn how to cope better.”
Bev stared at Barry, angrily. 


To be continued tomorrow...



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300 Words a Day - #33: Don't be a Barnacle

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Our family and friends think they know what’s best for us, just as we think we know what’s best for them.
We willingly advise those of whom we care for, with the hope of steering them to safety.
But what happens when they shock us by doing something that alters our perception of them?
Do we get offended because our preconceived expectations and assumptions of who we thought they were, now prove to be useless? Do we feel foolish, now?
When they decide to live a life they want to live, as apposed to the life we expect and want them to live, do we feel offended because we thought we had them down to a tee? 
And now all of a sudden they’ve changed, and it is us that are left feeling confused and uncertain about life. Furthermore, where we stand in relation to this person - who we thought we knew so well - is now unclear.
Many of us don’t like change. It’s the unknown that bothers us. Whereas certainty can make us feel comfortable and cozy.
It can be a shock to the system when others don’t like change in your life because of how it makes them feel.
True colors can begin to seep through.
Or maybe they say they’re worried about you because they think you’re making a wrong move.
What to do?
Are you going to change your mind and deny yourself the chance to truly live the life you want to live? 
Guilt can be overbearing.
Or are you going to stick to what your deeper self is telling you; that you need to make this move because this is the way life is taking you?  
We put ourselves under enormous amounts of pressure when we resist the flow of life.
Ask any barnacle.



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300 Words a Day - #32: The Path of Least Resistance

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My family and friends thought I was crazy.
They really did.
Breaking the news to them was harder than I thought it would be.
The majority of them reacted in a way that was the very antithesis of supportive.
They couldn’t understand why I had suddenly decided to turn my back on the very thing I had been working towards, for nearly a decade.
You don’t do that. 
But if it feels right, then you have to.
You really do.
Because if you don’t you are ignoring the roadsigns that you are on the wrong route.
And the longer you leave it, the harder it will be to turn the wheel.
I’ve always been one for trusting my feelings, and I advise others to practice doing the same thing.
Our feelings are like an inner sat-nav, one that we were born with in our gut; telling us to turn left, go straight ahead, stop here a while and then carry on at a reasonable pace.
They seem to know what’s best for us.
Don’t ask me how… 
Perhaps it’s nudges from something that’s greater than us. Some might say the divine, God, the universe… I’m not going to surmise. All I can go on is my own experience, and what I’ve found is that when I follow and trust my feelings, they guide me, like water, along the path of least resistance.
For when I resist, I suffer.
So my feelings guide me along the path that contains more of the things I’m less likely to resist, thereby manifesting more positive feelings, such as gratitude and a sense that I’m on the right track and “in tune” with what is.
Sometimes, though, following our feelings goes against the advice from those who think they know what’s best for us.


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300 Words a Day - #31: Be Honest with Yourself

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I’m aware I’m repeating myself here, but it was only when my dream came true did I realize I no longer wanted it.
Nobody could’ve changed my mind when I was on my quest. 
Getting a recording contract was my mission.
If somebody had’ve said, “What if you don’t actually want it?” I sincerely wouldn’t have been able to compute what they were saying.
The thought of not wanting it didn’t enter the equation. 
Why would it?
The thought of failing entered my mind loads of times, but that was through fear.
A thought that doubted why I wanted the dream to become a reality would’ve doubted everything I lived for, would’ve doubted the complete identity I had conjured up.
Talk about fear!
No, I never doubted my goal because I enjoyed making music too much.
So when the dream came true and we started gigging around the UK, and I found myself slipping further and further into a dark place, I knew something wasn’t right.
That question I had never asked needed to be asked.
One day, whilst sitting in my car, I asked myself, “What would it feel like, right now, if I stopped making music?”
I shut my eyes and pretended for about ten seconds how that would feel. 
It was as if an elephant had been lifted off of my chest and shoulders.
I took a deep breath and laughed. 
How light I felt!
I couldn’t believe it.
For nine years I had been allowing that elephant to grow, and when you’re feeding something every day, just like in Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot, you don’t see (or in my case, feel) the difference. 
Such a deep pit I had dug for myself.
Now I had to climb out, but nobody was willing to lend a ladder.



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300 Words a Day - #30: You Can Do This!

Following on from the previous post…
So there it is, a nine-year quest condensed into a few 300-word posts. 
The chase was over. The fox had caught the rabbit.
It took patience, self-confidence, persistence, perseverance, determination, drive, stubbornness, hope, faith, imagination, creativity, self-belief, passion, joy, trust - all of that stuff, and more.
With all of that thrown into the mix I knew I could achieve what I had set out to achieve.
What a lesson that was.
Here’s what it taught me: 


We can do anything we put our mind to

Nothing new, right? But now I had evidence.
And that’s priceless.
It doesn’t take super powers to turn a dream into a reality. 
You really can do anything you put your mind to. If you stay focused and determined and believe in yourself, I’m telling you, you can do what you set out to do.
You will get mocked and people will try and shoot you down, as I have already forewarned. But use their remarks, their strikes - their weakness - and turn it into your strength.
That’s all that it is, their weakness. You remind them of what they’re afraid to do.
If you believe in yourself and I don’t believe in myself, then I’m either going to model you, envy you, or try and bring you down a notch, so we see eye to eye.
With people like that, it’s far easier for them to chip away at what you’ve built, so you end up at their level, rather than them finding the strength within themselves to reach your height.
It’s far easier for many of us to attempt to shrink someone who’s growing, rather than to grow ourselves.
Growth requires strength and courage.
As they say, life begins where our comfort zone ends.

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300 Words a Day - #29: That moment when the dream becomes a reality

I have mentioned before, in a previous post, how, when I signed along the dotted line of a recording contract, the dotted line I had envisioned for nine years, I was overcome by an unexpected numbness.
I had caught up with my dream; it had caught up with me. We were intertwined, dancing together, and yet all I wanted was for the waltzing to stop.
However, I’m getting ahead of myself. I just want to briefly backtrack to how I came about signing on that line.
It all started with my friend’s dad getting a new shower fitted. 
The special thing about this shower was that it was fitted with an inbuilt radio and speakers.
My friend was in this swanky new shower, listening to the radio, when he realized something.
My phone rang.
“Gav, one of your tracks has just been played on the radio!”
“Huh? What?”
I had no idea what he was talking about.
“I’ve just been having a shower and one of your tracks just got played!”
When you’re wanting to break into the music industry and suddenly one of your tracks gets airplay, it’s a pretty big deal.
We (because at that point I had teamed up with a pal from Stratford-upon-Avon) got in touch with the DJ who played our track. 
It turned out that the DJ wasn’t just a DJ but was a recording artist, too. He had a recording contract with a label in London.
(Alarm bells were going off at this point. “This is it,” I thought.) 
He liked our track that much that he passed it onto his record label.
We got an email, then a phone call, and then arranged a meeting in Manchester. 
That’s when the contract was signed and the dream had finally come true. 

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300 Words a Day - #28: Others Can't Provide You with Self-Belief

I’ve already gone into some detail about what I did to finally get a recording contract.
Like, for example, how I envisioned the end result, as if it had already come to pass, and how I shared my passion with the world. When people asked, “What do you want to do?” I would proudly answer, “Be a recording artist.” 
I was scoffed at by a lot of people, but I was never discouraged.
“It’s foolish to dream,” was basically what they were wanting to say.
As I got older, people would ask, “Got that recording contract yet?”
“I’m getting there,” I would say, smiling knowingly.
I really did believe I would one day sign along the dotted line of a recording contract. If I didn’t believe it then there wouldn’t have been any point in embarking on the quest in the first place.
My self-belief was paramount. I learned early on how I couldn’t expect others to provide that kind of stuff for me. It had to come from within.
If our closest friends don’t support us, then they don’t support us.
If our family don’t support us, then they don’t support us.
If our partners don’t support us…
You get the picture.
We need to support ourselves.
Of course, it’s super helpful and nice of them if they find it within themselves to offer support, but not everyone can, especially if they don’t know what it feels like to go for a creative endeavor. 
Anybody that mocks me for having a dream only spurs me on. Without knowing it they give me strength, and I thank them for it.

Expecting the whole world and our entire circle of friends and relatives to support us is expecting too much.
Try it and see what happens. 
But you’ve been forewarned.

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300 Words a Day - #27: Your Very Own Show

Being stubborn might not be an attractive character trait, but it can prove invaluable to dreamers.
I was often told, “If everything got handed to you on a plate, it would lose its value.”
Being in hot pursuit of what we want, thinking about it on a regular basis, being unbelievably stubborn that we refuse to quit, even when it seems like the odds are stacked against us, often gives our lives added meaning, purpose and drive.
(We need to be aware, that if our dreams lose their meaning and attraction - which they might - that our lives maintain theirs. There is a very serious danger of that happening when we put all of our meaningful eggs in our dream basket.)
There’s something to be said for stubborn persistence.
It ignites a fire in the belly, and can get us through difficult legs of the journey we’ve embarked upon.
If we’re on our death bed and our persistence hasn’t paid off, then at least we know we tried. We still didn’t fail. It might become clear at that point, anyhow, that it was all about the process, the journey, not the destination.
I was told that the snail reached the arc through persistence. I would often remind myself of that when I felt like I was on a treadmill, putting all my effort into accomplishing my dream, but seemingly getting nowhere.  
Like a play, all the preparation gets done behind the scenes. Yet the audience knows the show will start sometime because that’s exactly why they bought a ticket. 
We find ourselves on stage and in the audience simultaneously. Getting our money back isn’t an option.
And why would you want to? You’ve got a VIP ticket to the best show on earth, and it’s got your name all over it.
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300 Words a Day - #26: Allow Your Dream to Leave the Nest

When we find the courage, the motivation and the inspiration to go for something, we need to protect these attributes from outer and inner influences.
It’s so easy to let them slip through our fingers, and when that happens there’s a danger of us turning our backs on our dreams and aspirations for good. 
When I was a postman, I delivered to a lady who knew I had just published my first book, due to an article that appeared in the local newspaper. 
She confessed to me she had written a book of her own. A novel. 
I was surprised. By this time I knew her pretty well, as I did most of my customers, and never once had she told me she was writing a book.
“Have you tried to get it published?” I asked.
She shook her head, almost with a childlike innocence.
“I daren’t,” she said. “It’s finished, but it’s just in the drawer, next to my bed.”
This whole wanting to keep our creative expression to ourself was new to me. When I was making music, I would send off demo CD after demo CD, hoping that a record label, one day, would bite the bait. 
“What worries you the most?” I asked her.
“Them not liking it. And if they tell me it’s a load of rubbish then… well… it’s just safer in my drawer.” She laughed uncomfortably.
By them she meant literary agents. 
I admit, it can be daunting sending off a manuscript.
Our piece of work, whatever it may be, is like our baby. We want to protect it.
But like an overprotective parent we can end up not allowing our children to experience the world, to have a life of their own.
Send them on their way with a smile and wave.
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300 Words a Day - #25: Don't Ever Be Discouraged

For as long as I can remember I shared with the world my desire to be a recording artist.
Was it scary?
At times, yes.
Did I get ridiculed?
You bet I did! 
I still do!
You think I don’t get laughed at, scoffed at, for writing this blog?
You don’t think people who know me, secretly (sometimes not so secretly) laugh at my attempts to be a writer?
You didn’t think when I showed people my music, back when I was a teenager, that everybody supported me, did you?
I was laughed at from day one - even by my closest friends.
Even teachers said I was wasting my time.
Did I continue to share my dream with anybody who was willing to listen?
Too right I did, because it was too important.
And guess what I noticed… most of those who didn’t support me were the ones who didn’t have a dream of their own to go for.
Interesting, right?
Share your dream.
You’ve got nothing to be afraid of. 
If you have something to go for you have to be willing to take hits for it - and you will get hit.
It just proves you’re in the ring, fighting for what you believe in.
Kudos to you. 
You’re gaining strength.
To quote Happiness & Honey , “A dream has the power to put the fear of God in an idle heart.”
When you share with the world your dreams, you remind the non-dreamers of what they’re afraid of. But by bravely stepping forward and saying, “Think what you like, I’m doing this,” you light a torch and attract to you people and circumstances that will help you move forward.

Don’t ever be discouraged by the words or actions of those who don’t have the courage to live a dream.

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