If you are controlled by your fears and emotions, you have sacrificed your personal power.
—Baron Baptiste (from his book, Journey Into Power, page 18)
I read through most of Baron Baptiste’s book on New Year’s Eve. I’d been wanting to read it for a while, as I’ve been slowly getting back into yoga, and wanted to learn more about Power Yoga (of which Baron Baptiste is one of the foremost teachers.) I expected it to be useful.
It is. I like it. It not only provides the yoga info I was looking for, but a great deal more. I feel like I’ve been mentally working my way toward certain ideas for the last year or so, and this book took many of those, touched on them and then expanded on them – and then linked them to yoga as a means of solidifying them into daily living. Really interesting.
Anyway, I quoted the line above because it puts into words better than I’ve been able something I’ve been feeling increasingly since the summer: and that’s that I’ve been doing exactly what this line cautions against. My fears and insecurities, and the emotions they drive, have been leading me to sacrifice my personal power. This has been an ongoing problem for me for the last several months – and it’s affecting not only how I feel about myself and my life, it’s affecting my writing.
Someone commented on my last post to the effect that I’ve been writing too tentatively…enough that, as she read me, she was led to wonder if I’d had bad experiences opening up to others about my feelings in the past.
That was an extremely insightful comment (and one I’m very grateful for!) It surprised me that she would say that – that she would have to. And that made me take a hard look at myself and my writing.
The truth is, I HAVE encountered judgment and criticism in the past, when trying to explain meaningful things to people I trusted. But the thing is, that kind of judgment/etc is actually what, in the past, spurred me to write – to write with clarity and strength. It didn’t make me tentative; it made me stronger. What’s happened to me as a writer since then?
The need to speak, with authenticity and and a clear voice, to put my thoughts out there (wherever “there” might turn out to be) is the primary reason why I started this blog. I felt very strongly that discourse was hugely important – vitally so. For myself, I needed as well as wanted the outlet of such discourse. But it occurred to me also that there might be a wider purpose in it – that other people might be experiencing similar emotions or having similar questions. I know how much it meant/means to me to feel that sense of solidarity. I wanted to be a part of that in some way.
So, what happened? I think it was three things.
The first had to do with my fiction writing. In January 2012, I was realizing that the stories I’d self-published (to see if I could make any money off of the things that were sitting idly in my laptop folders) were actually getting read – and this pretty much freaked me out. I realized belatedly that I hadn’t really expected that to happen. And I realized that I really, really didn’t want to be known as the writer of such frivolous, superficial stuff. There’s something of a responsibility to putting your words forth for public perusal. You don’t always have to be serious; I don’t think there’s anything wrong with writing for entertainment. But you should always be YOU. And what I had published wasn’t really me – and I was really uncomfortable with that. So I pulled it all down in March (and launched into something of a writing crisis – chronicled in part in this post.)
The self-consciousness I felt (and continue to feel, honestly) that that stuff was out there with my name on it, and that I told everybody I knew about it, and tried to get strangers to read it, IS good in a way. I know myself better as a writer now. I have a vastly more fleshed-out definition of what “success” means to me now. These are things that you sometimes have to figure out as you go along, I think – and I’m grateful to have progressed.
But I haven’t shown a soul my subsequent fiction-writing attempts since then. The thought of doing so is hugely intimidating to me – and I’m starting to realize that I’m limiting myself. How can I grow if I don’t have enough faith in myself to at least join a critique group or something??
So…fears and emotions are driving me to sacrifice my personal power here. I’m sacrificing the writerly growth and just the FUN of engaging wholeheartedly in the process of writing and learning. I’m starting to realize that.
I created a new page on this blog a few days ago: Writing Projects. I’m going to try to put at least snippets of things I’m working on, to try to get over this self-consciousness a little bit.
So, that was the first thing to shake my confidence. The second is that last spring I started doing pretty regular contract work ghostwriting blogs (and a few other things) for a PR company. For me, this was INSANE. That somebody actually was willing to pay me, pay me regularly and decently, to write…AMAZING! I realized then that, though I’d spouted that I “wanted to try freelancing,” I didn’t have much confidence that I could really make it happen – and I was totally unprepared, mentally, for actually achieving something of what I wanted. I took every single assignment they threw at me with great and heartfelt gratitude.
This, as you may imagine, resulted first in my totally over-extending myself (for one harrowing month, at least.) The greater problem though was that I was more grateful in my approach to the whole relationship than I was professional in it – meaning, I didn’t advocate for myself as clearly as I should have. This caused a buildup of issues that eventually led, in November, to my feeling I had no other choice but to stop working for them altogether – a situation that I think could have been avoided if I’d been less “nice” about certain things along the way.
The “high” of finding the validation for myself as a professional writer that I felt from this PR company was pretty heady. But it was a hard lesson for me to feel that I’d backed myself into a corner with them, through my own naivete. It, quite honestly, kicked me into a bit of a depression. I’m coming out of that now (thanks to yoga and that “clean slate” of the new year.) But I definitely, in the last six weeks, have been feeling badly enough about how I handled everything there to have “sacrificed my personal power.” I’ve been feeling a real crisis in confidence – and why? I did the best I could (especially considering that I know NOBODY else who does this sort of work, so was navigating really blindly.) It might be a shame that it worked out as it did, but I learned so much through the whole process; that’s worth something.
I know this – but still, this feeling of being naive or shortsighted or ignorant, of needing to second-guess everything, has even leaked into my blogging. I don’t like that I’ve let that happen.
And my third issue: A post I’d written in July about why I find the “LIKE” button problematic was Freshly Pressed here on WordPress in early August.
For anybody reading this who isn’t a WordPress person, Freshly Pressed is a big deal. It means WordPress is giving your post exposure that it would never have had otherwise – and this results usually in lots and lots of readers, as well as a sizable bump in blog followers.
So this was pretty awesome. You blog hoping somebody will read your stuff after all, right? It’s pretty fun to sit there and watch your stats numbers soar!
But there’s a downside – at least, there was for me: it’s one thing to write for the handful of people who are slowly finding your blog and reading your stuff. It’s another to suddenly have that number quadrupled. It’s like standing on a stage and speaking, and realizing that probably only the people in the first few rows are going to be able to hear you, really. You know that the others COULD, and you think that’d be pretty cool if they did…but it’s unlikely.
And then somebody unexpectedly comes out on stage and hands you a microphone! And you’re suddenly VERY aware of the number of people in your audience, and of the fact that they’re all going to hear you.
For me, this sudden exposure made me second-guess myself in ways that have been very self-defeating. I mean, I barely blog anymore! And when I do, I over-think (and come out sounding weak or tentative.) I’ve allowed fear and its accompanying emotions to hurt my ability to blog. And it’s really ridiculous: I’ve been fortunate to have had almost uniformly wonderful experiences blogging – with supportive, interesting, warm, lovely people that I’ve been able to connect with through doing this. And I’ve cut myself off from that because of some self-perpetuated insecurity/self-consciousness. How dumb is that?
The truth is, I’m a better writer than I was in August 2011 when I started this blog…I know I am. I still have a lot of room to grow; I know I do. But I’m cognizant of the ways in which I HAVE grown, and I’m proud of those. The fact that I’ve been having so much trouble with my writer’s voice, and with tackling subjects I want to write and/or blog about (because I really, really have been having trouble) is totally emotionally-based.
It’s what Baron Baptiste said above: I’ve let fears/insecurities/emotions/etc take control; I’ve abdicated my personal power to them.
Whatever I do this year, one thing I’m focused on overcoming is not allowing my emotions to keep me from doing what I want to do. There are plenty of people ready and willing to stop you from doing things…to take away your power. Why throw it away yourself??
I want to test my capabilities this year, to see what I can do and how much I can accomplish. I really think the only thing stopping me is MYSELF.
That’s something I’m going to be working on.
If you are controlled by your fears and emotions, you have sacrificed your personal power.
—Baron Baptiste (from his book, Journey Into Power, page 18)
I read through most of Baron Baptiste’s book on New Year’s Eve. I’d been wanting to read it for a while, as I’ve been slowly getting back into yoga, and wanted to learn more about Power Yoga (of which Baron Baptiste is one of the foremost teachers.) I expected it to be useful.
It is. I like it. It not only provides the yoga info I was looking for, but a great deal more. I feel like I’ve been mentally working my way toward certain ideas for the last year or so, and this book took many of those, touched on them and then expanded on them – and then linked them to yoga as a means of solidifying them into daily living. Really interesting.
Anyway, I quoted the line above because it puts into words better than I’ve been able something I’ve been feeling increasingly since the summer: and that’s that I’ve been doing exactly what this line cautions against. My fears and insecurities, and the emotions they drive, have been leading me to sacrifice my personal power. This has been an ongoing problem for me for the last several months – and it’s affecting not only how I feel about myself and my life, it’s affecting my writing.
Someone commented on my last post to the effect that I’ve been writing too tentatively…enough that, as she read me, she was led to wonder if I’d had bad experiences opening up to others about my feelings in the past.
That was an extremely insightful comment (and one I’m very grateful for!) It surprised me that she would say that – that she would have to. And that made me take a hard look at myself and my writing.
The truth is, I HAVE encountered judgment and criticism in the past, when trying to explain meaningful things to people I trusted. But the thing is, that kind of judgment/etc is actually what, in the past, spurred me to write – to write with clarity and strength. It didn’t make me tentative; it made me stronger. What’s happened to me as a writer since then?
The need to speak, with authenticity and and a clear voice, to put my thoughts out there (wherever “there” might turn out to be) is the primary reason why I started this blog. I felt very strongly that discourse was hugely important – vitally so. For myself, I needed as well as wanted the outlet of such discourse. But it occurred to me also that there might be a wider purpose in it – that other people might be experiencing similar emotions or having similar questions. I know how much it meant/means to me to feel that sense of solidarity. I wanted to be a part of that in some way.
So, what happened? I think it was three things.
The first had to do with my fiction writing. In January 2012, I was realizing that the stories I’d self-published (to see if I could make any money off of the things that were sitting idly in my laptop folders) were actually getting read – and this pretty much freaked me out. I realized belatedly that I hadn’t really expected that to happen. And I realized that I really, really didn’t want to be known as the writer of such frivolous, superficial stuff. There’s something of a responsibility to putting your words forth for public perusal. You don’t always have to be serious; I don’t think there’s anything wrong with writing for entertainment. But you should always be YOU. And what I had published wasn’t really me – and I was really uncomfortable with that. So I pulled it all down in March (and launched into something of a writing crisis – chronicled in part in this post.)
The self-consciousness I felt (and continue to feel, honestly) that that stuff was out there with my name on it, and that I told everybody I knew about it, and tried to get strangers to read it, IS good in a way. I know myself better as a writer now. I have a vastly more fleshed-out definition of what “success” means to me now. These are things that you sometimes have to figure out as you go along, I think – and I’m grateful to have progressed.
But I haven’t shown a soul my subsequent fiction-writing attempts since then. The thought of doing so is hugely intimidating to me – and I’m starting to realize that I’m limiting myself. How can I grow if I don’t have enough faith in myself to at least join a critique group or something??
So…fears and emotions are driving me to sacrifice my personal power here. I’m sacrificing the writerly growth and just the FUN of engaging wholeheartedly in the process of writing and learning. I’m starting to realize that.
I created a new page on this blog a few days ago: Writing Projects. I’m going to try to put at least snippets of things I’m working on, to try to get over this self-consciousness a little bit.
So, that was the first thing to shake my confidence. The second is that last spring I started doing pretty regular contract work ghostwriting blogs (and a few other things) for a PR company. For me, this was INSANE. That somebody actually was willing to pay me, pay me regularly and decently, to write…AMAZING! I realized then that, though I’d spouted that I “wanted to try freelancing,” I didn’t have much confidence that I could really make it happen – and I was totally unprepared, mentally, for actually achieving something of what I wanted. I took every single assignment they threw at me with great and heartfelt gratitude.
This, as you may imagine, resulted first in my totally over-extending myself (for one harrowing month, at least.) The greater problem though was that I was more grateful in my approach to the whole relationship than I was professional in it – meaning, I didn’t advocate for myself as clearly as I should have. This caused a buildup of issues that eventually led, in November, to my feeling I had no other choice but to stop working for them altogether – a situation that I think could have been avoided if I’d been less “nice” about certain things along the way.
The “high” of finding the validation for myself as a professional writer that I felt from this PR company was pretty heady. But it was a hard lesson for me to feel that I’d backed myself into a corner with them, through my own naivete. It, quite honestly, kicked me into a bit of a depression. I’m coming out of that now (thanks to yoga and that “clean slate” of the new year.) But I definitely, in the last six weeks, have been feeling badly enough about how I handled everything there to have “sacrificed my personal power.” I’ve been feeling a real crisis in confidence – and why? I did the best I could (especially considering that I know NOBODY else who does this sort of work, so was navigating really blindly.) It might be a shame that it worked out as it did, but I learned so much through the whole process; that’s worth something.
I know this – but still, this feeling of being naive or shortsighted or ignorant, of needing to second-guess everything, has even leaked into my blogging. I don’t like that I’ve let that happen.
And my third issue: A post I’d written in July about why I find the “LIKE” button problematic was Freshly Pressed here on WordPress in early August.
For anybody reading this who isn’t a WordPress person, Freshly Pressed is a big deal. It means WordPress is giving your post exposure that it would never have had otherwise – and this results usually in lots and lots of readers, as well as a sizable bump in blog followers.
So this was pretty awesome. You blog hoping somebody will read your stuff after all, right? It’s pretty fun to sit there and watch your stats numbers soar!
But there’s a downside – at least, there was for me: it’s one thing to write for the handful of people who are slowly finding your blog and reading your stuff. It’s another to suddenly have that number quadrupled. It’s like standing on a stage and speaking, and realizing that probably only the people in the first few rows are going to be able to hear you, really. You know that the others COULD, and you think that’d be pretty cool if they did…but it’s unlikely.
And then somebody unexpectedly comes out on stage and hands you a microphone! And you’re suddenly VERY aware of the number of people in your audience, and of the fact that they’re all going to hear you.
For me, this sudden exposure made me second-guess myself in ways that have been very self-defeating. I mean, I barely blog anymore! And when I do, I over-think (and come out sounding weak or tentative.) I’ve allowed fear and its accompanying emotions to hurt my ability to blog. And it’s really ridiculous: I’ve been fortunate to have had almost uniformly wonderful experiences blogging – with supportive, interesting, warm, lovely people that I’ve been able to connect with through doing this. And I’ve cut myself off from that because of some self-perpetuated insecurity/self-consciousness. How dumb is that?
The truth is, I’m a better writer than I was in August 2011 when I started this blog…I know I am. I still have a lot of room to grow; I know I do. But I’m cognizant of the ways in which I HAVE grown, and I’m proud of those. The fact that I’ve been having so much trouble with my writer’s voice, and with tackling subjects I want to write and/or blog about (because I really, really have been having trouble) is totally emotionally-based.
It’s what Baron Baptiste said above: I’ve let fears/insecurities/emotions/etc take control; I’ve abdicated my personal power to them.
Whatever I do this year, one thing I’m focused on overcoming is not allowing my emotions to keep me from doing what I want to do. There are plenty of people ready and willing to stop you from doing things…to take away your power. Why throw it away yourself??
I want to test my capabilities this year, to see what I can do and how much I can accomplish. I really think the only thing stopping me is MYSELF.
That’s something I’m going to be working on.
