I’m so thrilled to have the opportunity to partner with Tarcher Perigee to help promote Tyler Knott Gregson‘s latest book Miracle In The Mundane. I have loved Tyler’s work since I first stumbled across his iconic typewriter series and was incredibly excited for the release of his latest work.

Miracle In The Mundane offers something a little bit different. Still filled with Tyler’s signature style of poetry, in this volume each poem is accompanied by a challenge: a way to take the message of the poem out of the pages and into your life. I love it! As this isn’t a book to read all the way through and write up a review of, I’ve decided to do something a little bit different. I’m going to write up some of my responses to the challenges and share them her in my own #mundanemiracle mini series before doing a review. This is the first post in the series and is based on the ‘chapter’ entitled try. try. try. try. – I hope you like it.

Repeat this mantra

over, and again,

until it sings when you’re silent,

it breathes when you

are breathless:

I can do anything

I can do anything

I can do anything

I

can do

anything.

Tyler Knott Gregson – Miracle In The Mundane

So often, the world tells us we can’t. And we believe it. We forget our own power. We forget that we have the capacity to try.

I have had a dream for a long time that one day I would write a book and see it published. I think it’s probably a dream that many others have as well. I even had the seed of my story waiting to be told. For a long time, though, I was too scared to tell it. Despite my love of writing and this idea that just wouldn’t let go, I worried that I wasn’t good enough. Not a good enough writer. Not disciplined enough to do the hard task of writing. Not worthy enough to seek publication. And so my story sat in the back of my brain for six long years. I’d bring it out every now and again to look at it and maybe even add a little detail here and there to my imagined tale. But actually writing it seemed impossible.

Until I just decided to try.

I reached a point where I had to acknowledge that my fear of failure was misplaced: the true failure would be in not pursuing this thing that sparked such passion and joy in me. So I made a commitment to myself to write. I told myself it didn’t matter if the writing was bad as long as it got written. Bad writing can be improved but a blank page will just be a blank page. No one had to see it. It might not ever get anywhere. But to try and engage with this process of creation; to try and put my fears to one side and write not for anyone or anything but simply because I had the will and the desire to write; to try and realise even some part of my dream: this was what I chose to focus on.

And here’s what people don’t often tell you about trying: the trying itself can feel like a success. The sheer fact of having made that attempt, facing those fears, committing to that thing is a success.

It was an incredibly freeing realisation.

I still dreamed of publication and hoped it would turn out that I was actually a fabulous writer, whose words people would treasure, but those dreams no longer hampered my ability or willingness to try because they were no longer the driving force behind my trying.

I tried because this was a thing that brought me joy, regardless of what future it may or may not bring.

The trying paid off. I wrote a novel. A complete first draft of a story I so often doubted so had the ability to complete. The sense of achievement was huge. I’m still the only person to ever have read it – I may be the only person ever to read it – and that’s ok. Because I tried. And the trying, in the end, was the most important thing. Because now I know I can.

Trying continues to bring me to new places. To the precipice of my fears and the pinnacle of my dreams (so often one and the same) and to many, many waypoints in between.

I plan to continue to try and see my writing published. I commit to continuing to try and create the life I wish to lead.

I leave you with a quote from the pages of Miracle In The Mundane:

You can do all things, ALL things, if only you let yourself believe it. Please, stop believing you are incapable.

What do you want to try at this moment in time?