One concept I hear from Abraham a lot is this idea of taking score. Basically, we human beings have a tricky and not-so-helpful habit of taking score too soon when it comes to what we want. Think about it this way: have you or anyone else you know ever had something not work out the way you/they want them to, and then you/they jumped to negative conclusions such as
“Oh, I must not be worthy of love!”
“I will never have money!
“I wasn’t meant to be successful!”
?
All the time, we humans do things we have never done before. We expand in ways we never have before. We learn new things, we grow, we change. Every single one of us has accomplished amazing things at one point or another. And yet, how often do we have some kind of “issue” that we “just can’t seem to get past”?
What is that about? Could it be that we’re jumping the gun, reacting prematurely, like getting upset that the plants haven’t grown out of the ground yet? Are we looking down at the ground, seeing that–yep–it’s still just dirt and deciding there will never be a plant there?
Today on a video I heard Abraham explain the analogy of the sculptor. The sculptor sees the vision in his mind of the sculpture he wants to create. He doesn’t look at the lump of clay before him and say, “Oh my god, it’s just a lump of clay. This will never become a piece of art!” He doesn’t give up because he hasn’t finished the work of art yet.
Duh! Are you kidding? We artists know that the fun is in the journey of molding the clay. 99% of the process of creating is working with something unfinished (actually, even “finishing” can sometimes seem an arbitrary or nebulous thing).
When I heard this analogy, it clicked for me. Just like the sculptor, there are tons of things I have done that required me to look beyond the “what is-ness” and believe in a new possibility of what could be. It’s how I ran my first marathon. It’s how I started my first 365 Day Blogging Project. It’s how I wrote the music for “The Passion of Joan of Art” project I completed recently.
If I had been too focused on what I already had, thinking that was the limit of what could be, would I have done any of these things? It seems kind of obvious when I put it this way, yet I do not think this concept is obvious. I’m still wrapping my head around it.
Now, how about you? Do you think you might sometimes take score too soon? How could you shift your focus to give your goals the time and space they need to manifest fully?