The Blank Page Can Be Your Beginning

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Last week, we talked about The Dot (affiliate link) and the magic of the first mark. This week, I want to back up a little.

Before Vashti helps the boy, before the wall full of art, before the framed picture, before she makes a dot, she is sitting in front of a blank piece of paper. She’s scowling at it. She’s decided she can’t draw. The life coach in me wants to pull up a chair. That blank page isn’t the problem. The problem is the story Vashti tells herself.

“I can’t draw.”

That thought creates a feeling. It might be embarrassment, frustration, or sadness. From that feeling Vashti does what most of us do when we believe an unhelpful thought. Nothing.

This children’s book makes the things I try to work on with my clients easy to see.

There’s a circumstance of a blank page.

There’s a thought around not being able to draw.

There’s a feeling of frustration.

There is action…even though it’s inaction…of not drawing.

Clarity Loop in art class! 🎨

We all have some sort of blank page. It might be an actual blank page or the blinking cursor of a document. It might be the first day of retirement or your youngest leaving for college. It could be a new business or creating a website. It may be creating a new wardrobe or decluttering your house or starting a new year of homeschooling.

We see a blank page and think it means we can’t and we believe it. Case closed.

It’s really the story we get tangled up in that keeps us from taking action. Whatever the blank page is in our life, it’s stopped us in our tracks, and now we have evidence that we can’t.

This is exactly why I wrote the book, We All Have a Thing. (affiliate link) We’ve all let this loop run out of control about something in our lives at some point. The blank page becomes more than a blank page when we don’t examine our thoughts about it. It feels like truth and proof. It traps us.

Life coaching tosses us a rope. If part of the problem is the thought we are practicing, we can change that. We can separate what’s happening from what we are making it mean.

Ultimately, a blank page is just a blank page. That’s all. It doesn’t have to mean anything about who we are and what we can do. That’s why we just have to begin. We need to let the dot help us change our thoughts.

I’ll be cheering you on,

If this resonated and you’d like to try life coaching, send me a message (paigekullmancoaching@gmail.com) and let’s set something up.