Hi everyone,
This month I wanna talk about the idea of doing more by doing less, but first I'm going to share with you a bunch of stuff I have been doing. I know there is a contradiction in there! I'm gonna talk about it, I didn't say that I've figured it out yet! ;)
Okay, so all the stuff I've been up to:
First, I have been doing these weekly video blogs, and they are SO fun! I'm taking song requests from your emails and FB messages, and I also would be happy to answer any questions you have, too. You can watch the videoblog by visiting my youtube channel here.
Second, I am happy and honored to report that the judges selected my song as the Midwest finalist for the New Song Mountain Stage Song Contest. However, the "People's Choice" vote is still on until Oct 1, so please visit the link and you can vote for a songwriter from EACH of the regions. Whomever gets the most online votes will be going to the finals in New York City too. There are some really talented songwriters on there, I hope you check it out. You can visit the site here.
Finally, I've got a whole lotta shows coming up the second half of September and all of October. I'm looking forward to the shows because I love performing and visiting y'all around the country, but wow am I gonna miss my partner and little girl. Thank goodness for Skype! Speaking of my little one, her voice and a tiny glimpse of her both make a cameo appearance on this week's video blog. :)
Alright... so back to the less is more thing:
It is an idea that has been intriguing me for the last couple of years. The idea that "by doing less, we can do more". I've also heard it as "by doing nothing we accomplish more".
I have always been interested in living my life with more ease and that’s how I interpret this tidbit of wisdom. However, I have this pesky belief that if I don't drive myself like a drill sergeant, then I will become a couch potato.
I suspect this "less is more" idea is pointing me towards ease and trust in the natural unfolding of life. To trust that naturally we are oriented towards growth and even hard work. It’s a great idea, but I tend to wrestle with this concept of trust, hard work, and ease all being friendly co-workers in life.
Of course, the drill sergeant approach doesn't even help me get things done. Instead, the truth is that I work best when I am full of encouragement. And I have noticed that the more I “try to accomplish” often the less I actually do.
For example, I've noticed that my mind is always full of to dos. I'm very busy in my mind, but often I find myself thinking about all the stuff I need to do more than I actually do them. I will often think about responding to a person's email and then kinda think I already did it! Then, I get to my emails and realize I still have it to do. Then I feel terrible. And worse, it creates this sense that I’m behind myself, that I’m not on top of things.
So, how do I set up my life for this kind of ease, trust, and joyful creativity? Can I let go of the drill sergeant and trust? How do I “do” without “doing”? What does that actually mean in action?
I think I'm starting to figure it out. I’m realizing as I type this that the word “doing” is what has been tripping me up.
But I have this new idea: Is it possible that “doing less, we can do more” really means by thinking less about all we have to do and instead just doing what we’re doing when we’re doing it, we get more done and have more ease and more clarity in the process?
So, with that example of the emails, I think I would be more on top of things if I could trust in the times I set up for email and not do them ahead of time in my mind. Doing less thinking and less doing in my mind leads to getting more done.
What if there is a way of "doing" that is as natural and as effortless as my heart beating, as my breath rising and falling when I'm sleeping? And what if I could trust it's already in my nature to do what needs to be done, so that I don’t have to do it over and over again, in my mind, all day long?
Can I commit to doing an activity only when I'm doing it (and not in my mind in advance)? Yes! I am going to give it a try!
Wanna join me? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. And don’t forget to send me emails with song requests or questions for the “Tuesdays with Ellis” video blog!
I hope to hear from you soon!
much peace love and music,
ellis
Doing more by doing less... Or something like that!
Roller Coasters and Unicorns
I'm excited that it's May! I think that means that spring is here for real now! This is a two-part journal entry. First, I'm sharing a few thoughts on roller coasters, and then I want to tell you about an exciting new idea that I'm calling "The Everyday Unicorn Project".
Roller Coasters
I have to admit that I don't like roller coasters. I've never been a fan of putting myself in situations where I felt like I was going to die for a few very long minutes just to feel the rush of surviving after all.
I remember the first time I experienced a roller coaster. I was at an amusement park in Texas called Hannah Barbara Land. I was in middle school and I remember the pressure to ride was super intense. At the time, I really wanted to impress my friends and be cool. So I got on the old rickety wooden and very large beast of a coaster.
As we started to climb, I remember experiencing a few moments of panic realizing that I couldn't get off even if I wanted to, which I absolutely did. I had made the decision to seat belt myself in and now I was trapped until the ride ended. It felt like a really long time to consider what a bad decision this was as we were creeping uphill to the top of the first and slowest climb. I knew that soon we were all going to start racing to the ground.
I also knew I was supposed to be excited about this. As all my friends were screaming, I noticed that I could not get any sound to come out of my mouth. Perhaps this was because the tightness in my throat had grown to the size of my whole body, or that I just couldn't hear my screaming voice because my pounding heart had become so loud. I remember it felt like my heart was literally trying to escape out of my ears.
I bet you think I'm going to end this story by saying that once the ride was over it really was ok and I was glad that I did it. Well, guess what?! The only thing I was glad about was that the ride was over, and now I had more information solidifying the fact that I never wanted to ride a roller coaster ever again!
However, I have ridden one since, just to check and see if I still didn't like them. And yup, I still don't like them!
As I type this, I'm realizing that even thought I don't get on actual roller coasters anymore, I do experience them almost daily in my mind! My mind can swing from hopeful to despairing, from sunshine to rain all seemingly in the blink of an eye.
An example of this that I won't ever forget was a show I played years ago at a coffeehouse somewhere in Indiana. Wherever it was, I had been driving all day to get there. I arrived, set up my gear, sound checked, and no one showed up when it was time to start the show. Well, the show must go on as they say, so I decided to play anyway.
While I was playing for the disinterested barista, my mind was taking me on a roller coaster ride. My thoughts bounced back and forth between taking it personally that not one person was there to see the show to telling myself I shouldn't take it personal back to feeling sorry for myself for having driven so far to play to a nearly empty room. I felt in one moment like I was being a professional for still playing and then in the next moment I felt foolish for doing it and thought that I should call it a night.
I'm glad I didn't because about 40 minutes after I started playing a whole bunch of people started showing up! During the break, several people came up and asked me why I had started the show so early. After a few confusing moments, we all figured out that in my traveling, there was a time change that I didn't know about! So it turned out that the roller coaster ride was all my own creation! I had started the show a full hour before the official start time!
I am interested in quitting this roller coaster too, but its a trickier thing to do. Sometimes circumstances can make me think things are a certain way, when really I'm just missing information!
The Everyday Unicorn Project
I have been planning this idea for awhile now and I think it's time to get it started. Ever since I wrote the Do Unicorns Exist? journal entry, I received a huge amount of email in response to it. Since then, I've been thinking about all the unicorns who are out there living under the radar and invisible to most people, yet working in their own way to make the world a better place.
Do you know someone who fits the description of an everyday unicorn?
Someone who is quietly doing amazing things in this world, creating beautiful art or other acts of service, without fame and fortune (under the radar)?
With your help, I want to meet and interview them! If you have someone in mind, please email me a few paragraphs about who they are and what they are doing, and why you think I should feature them and their work on my website.
I am so excited to get your emails about this!
That's all for now! I hope your day is filled with joy and wonder. Peace love and music,
ellis
Roller Coasters
I have to admit that I don't like roller coasters. I've never been a fan of putting myself in situations where I felt like I was going to die for a few very long minutes just to feel the rush of surviving after all.
I remember the first time I experienced a roller coaster. I was at an amusement park in Texas called Hannah Barbara Land. I was in middle school and I remember the pressure to ride was super intense. At the time, I really wanted to impress my friends and be cool. So I got on the old rickety wooden and very large beast of a coaster.
As we started to climb, I remember experiencing a few moments of panic realizing that I couldn't get off even if I wanted to, which I absolutely did. I had made the decision to seat belt myself in and now I was trapped until the ride ended. It felt like a really long time to consider what a bad decision this was as we were creeping uphill to the top of the first and slowest climb. I knew that soon we were all going to start racing to the ground.
I also knew I was supposed to be excited about this. As all my friends were screaming, I noticed that I could not get any sound to come out of my mouth. Perhaps this was because the tightness in my throat had grown to the size of my whole body, or that I just couldn't hear my screaming voice because my pounding heart had become so loud. I remember it felt like my heart was literally trying to escape out of my ears.
I bet you think I'm going to end this story by saying that once the ride was over it really was ok and I was glad that I did it. Well, guess what?! The only thing I was glad about was that the ride was over, and now I had more information solidifying the fact that I never wanted to ride a roller coaster ever again!
However, I have ridden one since, just to check and see if I still didn't like them. And yup, I still don't like them!
As I type this, I'm realizing that even thought I don't get on actual roller coasters anymore, I do experience them almost daily in my mind! My mind can swing from hopeful to despairing, from sunshine to rain all seemingly in the blink of an eye.
An example of this that I won't ever forget was a show I played years ago at a coffeehouse somewhere in Indiana. Wherever it was, I had been driving all day to get there. I arrived, set up my gear, sound checked, and no one showed up when it was time to start the show. Well, the show must go on as they say, so I decided to play anyway.
While I was playing for the disinterested barista, my mind was taking me on a roller coaster ride. My thoughts bounced back and forth between taking it personally that not one person was there to see the show to telling myself I shouldn't take it personal back to feeling sorry for myself for having driven so far to play to a nearly empty room. I felt in one moment like I was being a professional for still playing and then in the next moment I felt foolish for doing it and thought that I should call it a night.
I'm glad I didn't because about 40 minutes after I started playing a whole bunch of people started showing up! During the break, several people came up and asked me why I had started the show so early. After a few confusing moments, we all figured out that in my traveling, there was a time change that I didn't know about! So it turned out that the roller coaster ride was all my own creation! I had started the show a full hour before the official start time!
I am interested in quitting this roller coaster too, but its a trickier thing to do. Sometimes circumstances can make me think things are a certain way, when really I'm just missing information!
The Everyday Unicorn Project
I have been planning this idea for awhile now and I think it's time to get it started. Ever since I wrote the Do Unicorns Exist? journal entry, I received a huge amount of email in response to it. Since then, I've been thinking about all the unicorns who are out there living under the radar and invisible to most people, yet working in their own way to make the world a better place.
Do you know someone who fits the description of an everyday unicorn?
Someone who is quietly doing amazing things in this world, creating beautiful art or other acts of service, without fame and fortune (under the radar)?
With your help, I want to meet and interview them! If you have someone in mind, please email me a few paragraphs about who they are and what they are doing, and why you think I should feature them and their work on my website.
I am so excited to get your emails about this!
That's all for now! I hope your day is filled with joy and wonder. Peace love and music,
ellis
So Much Gratitude
I hope the holidays treated you so well! I can’t believe it’s almost February. I’ve been enjoying the crunch of the snow under my shoes and the crisp cold air outside. I’ve been home some and traveling some, striking a nice balance between both I think.
I was just in Utah, and in the taxi on the way home from the airport, I had a chatty taxi cab driver. He mentioned that he’s originally from Ethiopia and talked about the violence and struggle between the government and the people there. He said, that life was not easy and you don’t always get what you want. He tried to flee the country, and spent many years in a refugee camp that was cramped and full of uncertainty. It took five years before he was accepted into the US.
Every day since that cab ride, I keep thinking about my life and how fortunate I've been without even realizing it. It reminded me of a practice I used to do involving being grateful right when I get up in the morning. Wow does the day feel brighter when I start off that way!
When I look around with the intent of seeing the positive aspects of my life, there is an abundance of things to
feel gratitude about - even the snow!
Just yesterday evening I was walking outside with my daughter. Well, I was doing the walking while she was sleeping in the Ergo carrier :) and I kept thinking how much the snow looked like powdered sugar against the setting sun. Such a sweet picture that brightened my whole evening!
Coming Soon: Fan Favorites Tab book
I have a confession to make: I’ve had what I call a monkey on my back! I have received countless emails for many years requesting song tabs for my songs. I have been dragging my feet on getting these to you, mostly because I’m not very good at doing them.
I’m a much more intuitive player and writer and thinking in terms of chord progressions isn’t something I naturally do with my brain.
I think my right brain, the creative side, is always looking for what feels right and natural. So I avoid doing it. I'd rather write a new song than spend time studying the chords of existing songs! Plus, I have a little fear about getting my own songs wrong!
However, I’ve decided to face this fear!
So, I’m going to make a tab book of fan favorite songs. And I need your help to do it!
Please let me know which songs do you want the most? Just email me at ellis.delaney@gmail.com and let me know. Put "Songbook requests" in the subject line.
Also, for any of you left-brained geniuses out there to whom tabbing songs comes so easily, I would love your help. If you have already tabbed out some of my songs for your own use, I would be so grateful if you would share them with me. Also, once I get a draft of a tab book done, I would love a few "beta testers" to give them a spin and see if they work! Let me know if you are interested!
My plan is that by spring I’ll have a handful of your favorite songs tabbed out and available so you can play them too!
I hope that you find a little sunshine this February and find much to be grateful for!
I was just in Utah, and in the taxi on the way home from the airport, I had a chatty taxi cab driver. He mentioned that he’s originally from Ethiopia and talked about the violence and struggle between the government and the people there. He said, that life was not easy and you don’t always get what you want. He tried to flee the country, and spent many years in a refugee camp that was cramped and full of uncertainty. It took five years before he was accepted into the US.
Every day since that cab ride, I keep thinking about my life and how fortunate I've been without even realizing it. It reminded me of a practice I used to do involving being grateful right when I get up in the morning. Wow does the day feel brighter when I start off that way!
When I look around with the intent of seeing the positive aspects of my life, there is an abundance of things to
feel gratitude about - even the snow!
Just yesterday evening I was walking outside with my daughter. Well, I was doing the walking while she was sleeping in the Ergo carrier :) and I kept thinking how much the snow looked like powdered sugar against the setting sun. Such a sweet picture that brightened my whole evening!
Coming Soon: Fan Favorites Tab book
I have a confession to make: I’ve had what I call a monkey on my back! I have received countless emails for many years requesting song tabs for my songs. I have been dragging my feet on getting these to you, mostly because I’m not very good at doing them.
I’m a much more intuitive player and writer and thinking in terms of chord progressions isn’t something I naturally do with my brain.
I think my right brain, the creative side, is always looking for what feels right and natural. So I avoid doing it. I'd rather write a new song than spend time studying the chords of existing songs! Plus, I have a little fear about getting my own songs wrong!
However, I’ve decided to face this fear!
So, I’m going to make a tab book of fan favorite songs. And I need your help to do it!
Please let me know which songs do you want the most? Just email me at ellis.delaney@gmail.com and let me know. Put "Songbook requests" in the subject line.
Also, for any of you left-brained geniuses out there to whom tabbing songs comes so easily, I would love your help. If you have already tabbed out some of my songs for your own use, I would be so grateful if you would share them with me. Also, once I get a draft of a tab book done, I would love a few "beta testers" to give them a spin and see if they work! Let me know if you are interested!
My plan is that by spring I’ll have a handful of your favorite songs tabbed out and available so you can play them too!
I hope that you find a little sunshine this February and find much to be grateful for!
Sleep deprivation and our amazing minds!
I've been thinking about a quote lately that is really inspiring to me. I think it's by Wayne Dyer: "When I change the way I look at things, the things I look at change".
That quote is so true for me. For example, with sleeping.
Maybe it's being a new parent, but I find that I spend a lot of time thinking about sleep! Before I go to bed, I usually count up the hours Ill get to sleep that night as a way to figure out how I'm going to feel the next day.
If I'm not going to get much sleep (which is the norm now), I generally think: "Shoot, I'm going to be sooooo tired tomorrow!" and then I feel tired in advance!
And if I can't go to sleep right away, I get more and more anxious about the sleep I'm losing and I become even more tired tomorrow before tomorrow is even here!
But the truth is that I've had days where Ive felt great even though I've slept only a little, and had other days where I've felt tired even when Ive gotten lots of sleep.
I do believe that our minds are so awesomely powerful that if we look at something differently it can literally become something different.. just because of how we are relating to it. I think thats why that quote resonates so much with me.
So now that I've realized this, Ive been running an experiment in the middle of the night.
When I am feeling really tired (usually around 3am trying to put the baby back to sleep) I sometimes think, "Wow, I'm really tired!" At those times, I look at my situation and see someone who is so tired and usually the effect of this thought is that I do feel completely exhausted!
However, when I say to myself, "Wow, I can do this, I'm not so tired, I'm feeling good!" suddenly I feel more energetic!
I think it is because I'm choosing to see the energy I have rather than focus on the lack of it. I can even run those two phrases in my head minutes apart knowing its an experiment and still have the two different physical responses based on the thoughts.
How I think and see my my experience can completely change how Im relating to waking up in the middle of the night.
So last night, I deliberately thought a new thought when I went to bed: "I'm going to feel refreshed when I wake up no matter how many times I need to get up to care for the baby. I'm getting the exact amount of sleep I need."
Wow, did this make a difference in how I rested I feel today!
It is amazing to me to realize how powerful the mind can be. It makes me think that anything is possible!
That quote is so true for me. For example, with sleeping.
Maybe it's being a new parent, but I find that I spend a lot of time thinking about sleep! Before I go to bed, I usually count up the hours Ill get to sleep that night as a way to figure out how I'm going to feel the next day.
If I'm not going to get much sleep (which is the norm now), I generally think: "Shoot, I'm going to be sooooo tired tomorrow!" and then I feel tired in advance!
And if I can't go to sleep right away, I get more and more anxious about the sleep I'm losing and I become even more tired tomorrow before tomorrow is even here!
But the truth is that I've had days where Ive felt great even though I've slept only a little, and had other days where I've felt tired even when Ive gotten lots of sleep.
I do believe that our minds are so awesomely powerful that if we look at something differently it can literally become something different.. just because of how we are relating to it. I think thats why that quote resonates so much with me.
So now that I've realized this, Ive been running an experiment in the middle of the night.
When I am feeling really tired (usually around 3am trying to put the baby back to sleep) I sometimes think, "Wow, I'm really tired!" At those times, I look at my situation and see someone who is so tired and usually the effect of this thought is that I do feel completely exhausted!
However, when I say to myself, "Wow, I can do this, I'm not so tired, I'm feeling good!" suddenly I feel more energetic!
I think it is because I'm choosing to see the energy I have rather than focus on the lack of it. I can even run those two phrases in my head minutes apart knowing its an experiment and still have the two different physical responses based on the thoughts.
How I think and see my my experience can completely change how Im relating to waking up in the middle of the night.
So last night, I deliberately thought a new thought when I went to bed: "I'm going to feel refreshed when I wake up no matter how many times I need to get up to care for the baby. I'm getting the exact amount of sleep I need."
Wow, did this make a difference in how I rested I feel today!
It is amazing to me to realize how powerful the mind can be. It makes me think that anything is possible!
Expert Thinking
These last few months have been busy and rewarding getting to know my brand new baby daughter. She is now almost six months old and my partner Terri and I are beside ourselves with joy!
While the baby has been napping, I've been reading a book about songwriting. I bought it with the intention and hope that it would help to make my songwriting better.
Something strange happened that I want to share with you.. Just a few pages into it, I started questioning my own credentials. I began to wonder: Was I even qualified to write songs? Suddenly I felt like a beginner, like I urgently needed to go back to school, read dozens of books about songwriting, listen to a ton of records by well regarded songwriters, study poets and classical composers. All before I could sit down and write another song!
So I talked with Terri about these thoughts, and she was surprised by my reaction. She reminded me: "You have written hundreds of songs all without this book. You are definitely not a beginner."
So why did I feel like one?
Terri reminded me of the concept of "expert thinking", and how it can minimize or erase the value of personal or "local" knowledge.
What's so bad about "expert thinking"?
Well, technically, nothing, especially in an area where I prefer expert knowledge over my own personal knowledge (such as the expert knowledge of a brain surgeon).
However, I do have my own "local knowledge" about songwriting...And this songwriting book was definitely written in an “expert” voice. This writer was sharing his opinions of what you must do before you can write a song... but he presented them as facts, not just things that work for him.
The effect on me was that I started questioning what I thought I knew. I’m definitely not as “credentialed” as this writer and so I was inclined to believe that maybe I'm missing something.
After our discussion, I am realizing that the “expert voice" can be harmful to my creativity. The idea that there is one "best" way to write songs shuts down options… and for me it invites in judgment and negativity.
And judgment and negativity have no place in my songwriting process... when they appear they try their best to keep me from starting or finishing a song.
How I write songs is I stumble down different paths and try on all sorts of things in the process. The more open-minded and
light-hearted I am, the less of an "expert" I am about the song too, the more the songwriting session flows.
So, I'm curious: am I the only one who is so impacted by "expert thinking"? Do any of you relate?
If so, how do we undermine “expert” thinking in our lives when it's not helpful (note: again, not if I'm having brain surgery.... then give me the expert! :)
For my part, I’m going to try to notice whenever I start to feel that panic I need to be more or know more... and I'll remind myself that it’s probably a just little expert foolery getting me down!
I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences!
much peace love and music,
ellis
While the baby has been napping, I've been reading a book about songwriting. I bought it with the intention and hope that it would help to make my songwriting better.
Something strange happened that I want to share with you.. Just a few pages into it, I started questioning my own credentials. I began to wonder: Was I even qualified to write songs? Suddenly I felt like a beginner, like I urgently needed to go back to school, read dozens of books about songwriting, listen to a ton of records by well regarded songwriters, study poets and classical composers. All before I could sit down and write another song!
So I talked with Terri about these thoughts, and she was surprised by my reaction. She reminded me: "You have written hundreds of songs all without this book. You are definitely not a beginner."
So why did I feel like one?
Terri reminded me of the concept of "expert thinking", and how it can minimize or erase the value of personal or "local" knowledge.
What's so bad about "expert thinking"?
Well, technically, nothing, especially in an area where I prefer expert knowledge over my own personal knowledge (such as the expert knowledge of a brain surgeon).
However, I do have my own "local knowledge" about songwriting...And this songwriting book was definitely written in an “expert” voice. This writer was sharing his opinions of what you must do before you can write a song... but he presented them as facts, not just things that work for him.
The effect on me was that I started questioning what I thought I knew. I’m definitely not as “credentialed” as this writer and so I was inclined to believe that maybe I'm missing something.
After our discussion, I am realizing that the “expert voice" can be harmful to my creativity. The idea that there is one "best" way to write songs shuts down options… and for me it invites in judgment and negativity.
And judgment and negativity have no place in my songwriting process... when they appear they try their best to keep me from starting or finishing a song.
How I write songs is I stumble down different paths and try on all sorts of things in the process. The more open-minded and
light-hearted I am, the less of an "expert" I am about the song too, the more the songwriting session flows.
So, I'm curious: am I the only one who is so impacted by "expert thinking"? Do any of you relate?
If so, how do we undermine “expert” thinking in our lives when it's not helpful (note: again, not if I'm having brain surgery.... then give me the expert! :)
For my part, I’m going to try to notice whenever I start to feel that panic I need to be more or know more... and I'll remind myself that it’s probably a just little expert foolery getting me down!
I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences!
much peace love and music,
ellis
