One Thought That Will Help You Overcome The Fear Of Writing And Publishing Your Work
What if…
“What if I fall?”
“Oh but my darling, What if you fly?”
Erin Hanson
The Force Of Our Internal Voices
The other day I listened to an interview with Laura Seiler and John Strelecky and one topic that came up in their conversation was the destructive force of our internal voices.
Those voices that are telling us:
- to stop being so silly and to quit this project we have started
- that our ideas are ridiculous
- that it was stupid to even think that we could have written a book or made a movie or become a well-known blogger
I regularly experience this phenomenon with my writing and let me tell you: it is a pain!
I first have this really great idea and start hammering into my keyboard. Only to re-read my first draft and think:
What happened? This was such a promising idea!
Maybe you shouldn’t write about this after all. Maybe you are just not good enough.
And then I step away from my laptop and do something else and leave the dream to be a good writer to other people.
Do you recognise yourself?
Asking The What-If-Question
On that topic Laura Seiler said something to John Strelecky that completely changed my perspective:
“Wouldn’t it be crazy to believe that you had never written ‘The Why Café’? Think about how many people you have inspired with this book and now imagine for a second you had never written it!”
Wow! Think about that for a moment. Isn’t that powerful?
What if we imagine that all the amazing authors out there had never followed through with their ideas and never ended up publishing their books?
So let me ask you: How would you ever know if you will be one of them if you let your internal voices win and don’t write or publish your work?
Erin Hanson captured it beautifully by saying: “What if you fly?”
Yeah!
What if you succeed?
What if your work reaches people that you can inspire with your words?
Instead of ‘What if it goes wrong’ try and ask ‘What if it goes well?’.
And if it doesn’t… well then you can be damn proud of yourself for having believed in yourself and that is a success in itself!
