I am afraid of being a mediocre writer. Of wasting your time with my incoherent ramblings and half-baked thoughts. I want to be able to travel into the depths of myself and bring back something useful, but so often it feels like I just get lost along the way. And if I’m lost, what do I really have to offer?
Because my narrative is built around not being mediocre, my writing process focuses on weeding out the bad instead of fertilizing the good. Instead of building momentum and then editing out the pieces that fall flat, I focus on the pieces that fall flat until I walk away from my writing thinking that it’s too hard and just not worth the effort.
I no longer want to walk the path of beating myself up and expecting perfection from my work. That’s not how creation is meant to be. We weren't born into this world by two people working hard to create perfection. We were born through an act of love.
Love is the most harmonious avenue of creation. So instead of working hard and focusing on all the ways my writing may fall short of my inflated expectations, maybe I just need to love myself a little more along the way.
The Shift From Fear to Love
Everything you fear is something you misunderstand. Therefore the antidote to fear isn’t love, it’s understanding.
What if I’m not good enough?
People care more about being able to relate to you than how close you are to perfection.
What if I don’t have the courage to be real?
Being real doesn’t require courage, it requires acceptance. When you make peace with who you are you also give yourself permission to experiment with you want to become.
What if I need to be perfect in order to be lovable?
What if you’re already lovable and the only thing keeping you from loving yourself is the comparison to perfection?
So what about you? What story are you telling yourself that highlights what you don’t want as opposed to what you do want? And how can you understand it in a way that allows that fear to grow into love?
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