Succeed With Calm

To begin the first session of the Mid-Level Training Program last September, I led over 100 writers in a mindfulness exercise to clear our collective headspace. Here’s why. In the hour before I turned on my microphone, people had been grabbing coffee and having energetic conversations to compare thoughts on the industry contraction and other current events. By the time everyone sat down for the morning’s discussions about how to keep careers moving, the energy in the room was fueled by silent, anxious questions like: Will the world ever get back to normal? Is anyone else struggling the way I am? Were my parents right?

Melinda Hsu. Photo: Harv Greenberg.

With empathy for our nervous participants, I knew they wouldn’t be able to concentrate on our curriculum and panelists if those questions kept chattering away in the corners of their minds. So, standing next to a little table, I put down a clear plastic lavender envelope. Then I held up a thick fistful of mechanical pencils (any bundle of small objects would have served the purpose, but pencils were what I had handy). I told everyone that we were going to start the day by acknowledging the elephants in the room, a.k.a. everything going on in the world, all the worries weighing on us and draining us. With my encouragement, people started calling out topics and concerns: scarce jobs, wildfire losses, studio mergers, political divides, AI, health insurance, human rights, aging parents, unresponsive reps. For every problem that was named out loud, I added a pencil to a growing pile. The list went on until we ran out of pencils.

Then I held up all the pencils and said, “Here are all the issues we just named. These things are real. You’re not imagining them. And yet.” I put all the pencils into the lavender envelope. “We don’t have to fix these things right now. For the next three hours, I’m going to keep all our problems in this envelope, over here.”

I sealed the envelope’s Velcro flap, and held it up to show the pencils inside. “Because these things are outside of us. They do not define us. These problems are separate from who we are as people.” I put the envelope down on the table to my left. “And now we’re going to bring our focus over here,” I pointed to my right, at a line of empty chairs, ready for the morning’s panelists, “because in this present moment, we’re safe, and we’re together, and we’re in a community of writers who have something to say in the world.” Then we took a deep breath and got started.

Melinda Hsu's bag of pencils.

You can use this pencil exercise as a career skill to clear your headspace for creative flow—the kind of flow that produces better results when you sit down to write, while you’re prepping for a meeting, when you’re in the middle of a pitch, while you collaborate with others, and everything in between. Give yourself time—and pencils—to name all the challenges that are competing for your emotional and mental energy. Put a pencil for each problem inside a literal envelope to remind yourself: those issues exist outside of you, they do not define you as a person, and it’s okay to set them aside for a period of time while you focus on your work. Or, you can just create a mental picture of pencils safely contained inside a clear lavender envelope (or whatever image works for you) and bring it to mind to center yourself whenever you get distracted by circumstances.

The goal is to create and sustain internal calm. Because the world needs your calm heart. When your heart is calm, you can clearly see what needs to be done, and you can make the choices in front of you, and you can do some writing while you’re at it.

Bonus: When you are intentionally calm, it’s easier to be kind to the people around you, and easier to be kind to yourself as well, and all of that helps make you a businessperson who others want to engage with. Actively maintaining internal calm will increase your capacity for emotional self-regulation, which will pay off in career focus and your sense of well-being. I promise you’re not alone; I’ll be using these strategies too. Be well!

Melinda Hsu (@MelindaHsu) is a WGAW Board member.