Down to the Wire
I typically write my newsletters close to the buzzer when it has to go out. The deadline is a great motivator for me to get it done. Yet this week, I can’t write it the morning it has to go out. I have to write it the night before, a time when I tell myself I’m not ready to write this newsletter.
And even worse, I don’t even have a lot of time to do it. I would rather take a few minutes to catch my breath than write, but my inner management team tells me that this isn’t going to work if I want to make my commitment to you, the reader.
And this is a golden moment. You can’t find a scene with more tension in any Hollywood movie than a creative person having to sit down and do their work.
So how do you get through these scenes? You tell yourself that you’re going to hang out with your fear for a few minutes. You’ll just hang out together and have a coffee. You’re not going to be wrestling your fear and your fear isn’t going to win by letting you sit on the couch and ruminate. The two of you have to hang out together.
So here I am, hanging out with my fear, we’re writing a little newsletter together and it’s working out great. But you might be ready to kick it up level 2 in this whole thing, and that’s by being willing to do a bad job.
See that’s part of the deal that you make when you hang out with your fear. It’s written in the contract that by sitting down for coffee with it, you have permission to do as bad a job as you want.
Because it just wouldn’t be fair that you have to sit down with the fear AND do your work perfectly. That’s just unrealistic. You would never sit down with it again because we’re never able to achieve perfection.
So just like that, I have this thing written and ready to go. And I just might record a video with the last few minutes that I have remaining here before I have to go out.
I have scheduled the Confident (Enough) on Camera workshop to happen in July. Find out more info here. It includes the video I mentioned above.
Thanks and enjoy the day ahead… remember to hang out with your fears a bit. That’s where all the growth is going to happen. This also applies to having difficult conversations and setting boundaries.
Love you…
Elliott