Push and pull

In my last blog I wrote, “Something’s coming, something good” – and guess what? It’s true!

I have to date been a bit hesitant in embracing the Law of Attraction, the basic premise of which is if you think positive thoughts, positive things will come to you and equally, if you think negative thoughts, negative things will come. But this week, having sent my positive missive out there, celebrating this period of my life as a fertile void (thanks @katenorthrup) and genuinely believing that my inspiration and period of creativity and industry will arrive when the time is right, several really exciting things have landed at my feet: the most amazing one of which is that I have got my first paid writing job! Not just that but it’s writing about issues faced by women of my age and which I find fascinating.

As you can imagine, I have been giddy with excitement, overjoyed to be given such an opportunity and encouraged by the validation: I can write well enough that someone with a strong brand and international success is willing to pay me to write for them. It very much feels like the Universe has sent me a sign of the positive things to come and that this has arrived because I relaxed into my here and now and because I believed.

The role is a small one but it feels like the start….Something is coming and it is something good. I feel alive with possibility.

But then those pesky doubts come creeping in, casting shadows on the light I have been feeling the last few days. Having received the brief for the first article I am to write, I start to question who am I to write about such issues, I feel like a fake. What if they don’t like what I write? What if it’s not good enough?

Then I start to make excuses. First, the timing is all wrong; it’s the school holidays – it’s going disrupt my focus on the girls over the summer and I promised that this school holidays would be dedicated completely to them. Then, it’s ghost writing and it’s my own voice I want out there. I want to grow my own brand not hide behind someone else’s.

I push back: it’s one article a month and you have a week to complete the first 1000 word article, easily done once the girls are in bed….Yes it’s ghost-writing but it’s still creating, still writing, crafting with words and that sets your soul on fire; plus it’s all experience, all practice, honing your skill and it might lead to other things.

But still I feel the pull of self-doubt: once those thoughts start to cloud your confidence they are hard to blow away.

I have hit my upper limit. I have had my first small writing success and the energy I have felt from that has been immense. But I find it hard to stay in this positivity for too long: I am leaving my comfort zone and so my negative responses kick-in, pulling me back to the place I am familiar with. Equally, I know that I am scared. Stepping forward, calling myself a writer, means I must own my successes and failures and so my ego (we all have one) seeks to hold me back. But not this time.

@Gay Hendricks in ‘The Big Leap’ writes in detail about this pattern of behaviour and has written a manual to help overcome our hidden fears and to take that jump into what he calls our Zone of Genius. I read this book some time ago on a trip back to Cambridge and I sobbed as I wandered through the colleges, tears shed as I identified a pattern of behaviour which has littered much of my professional life.

I drove home that day daring to hope the advice in ‘The Big Leap’ would propel me in my new business and yet a few months later I took several steps back from my new legal career. But timing is everything. Today at least I can identify my doubts and my excuses and I am going to push them aside. Writing is a dream come true and I feel called to live a more creative life. Even as my insides scream that I cannot possible do this well, I am going to fight back. I will write a great article, I will be confident in my voice: I am one of the successful women I am writing for: my here and now does not detract from my past achievements and it does not preclude future ones; I am entitled to have and share my opinions; I need not hide behind self-created and self-fulfilling gloom and doubt. I will enjoy the thrill of new experiences and trust that I deserve them and that I can and will have more. As I have quoted before, “Fear is excitement without the breath”.

So, here I am, taking a deep breath and grasping this opportunity. I can and I will do this. No more excuses.

Kerry

x

Thank you to Pinterest for the image.