One morning, I received a Facebook message from a friend. It read, “My book has shipped — I can’t wait to read it!” Apparently, Amazon decided to start shipping my book, The Anxious Lawyer, before the release date and didn’t let me know! If I’m being honest about it, I was both extremely excited and nervous. This mixture of excitement, nervousness, and fear is a familiar cocktail.
When I stumbled into mindfulness, I didn’t know where the journey would lead. All I knew at the time was that I was chronically anxious and I needed a solution. Much of the anxiety was rooted in fear and self-doubt. I spent so much of my life fixated on doing everything perfectly, so stepping out of my comfort zone and saying “yes” when the ABA asked me to write a book felt terrifying.
Saying “yes,” despite the fear, despite the self-doubt, is really difficult. Especially when faced with naysayers who will, at every opportunity, tell you how stupid you are, how you’ll fail, and how you don’t deserve to have a voice.
I certainly won’t claim to have conquered that inner critic who insists on listening to the naysayers. Even in situations where there is no one telling me that I can’t do this, the inner critic will insist on it because I’m not smart enough, don’t have the right degree, the right pedigree, or know enough (or insert the other 1,001 reasons).
Perhaps you can relate to this. And I’ll let you in on a secret – you are not alone. This, I realize, is the first step to overcoming it. Recognizing that all of that inner chatter, the feeling of inadequacy, this is normal. You are not a faulty human, you are not broken. You are okay.
One of my favorite authors, Elizabeth Gilbert, writes beautifully on this topic of overcoming naysayers and your own inner critic in her book, Big Magic.
She writes:
“Let people have their opinions. More than that—let people be in love with their opinions, just as you and I are in love with ours. But never delude yourself into believing that you require someone else’s blessing (or even their comprehension) in order to make your own creative work. And always remember that people’s judgments about you are not of your business.”
For the first six months after I signed the book contract, I was overcome with writer’s block. Each day, I would sit in front of the computer and just stare at a blank Word document. The cursor, blinking, silently mocking me. The inner critic would shout, “You can’t do this!!!” The blank page was evidence of this.
Writing despite the writer’s block felt very painful, and each word that made it onto the page felt terrible. Yet, I wrote. Initially, just a few words, then those words became paragraphs, then pages, then chapters, and before I knew it, grew to over 80,000 words.
During that time, I learned to embrace the fear, self-doubt, and the inner critic. Instead of listening to it, arguing with it, or trying to reason with it, I just let the chatter be there. It was like the construction going on outside of my office building. The noise would be there, there is nothing I can do about it, yet, it was my job to write.
Another one of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott, wrote this in her book, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life:
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.”
The surprising thing was, once I started to do the thing I was terrified of, it became easier. The noise wasn’t as loud, the thoughts were less persistent and negative.
As Gilbert shares:
“Fear and creativity share a womb, they were born at the same time, and they still share some vital organs. This is why we have to be careful of how we handle our fear—because I’ve noticed that when people try to kill off their fear, they often end up inadvertently murdering their creativity in the process.”
This probably isn’t what you wanted to hear — that the answer to overcoming fear and self-doubt is to actually make space for it. However, just because you make space for it, does not mean it gets to sit in the driver’s seat!
I love how Gilbert deals with her self-doubt. In her book, she writes a letter to her fear and says:
“I recognize and respect that you are part of this family, and so I will never exclude you from our activities, but still—your suggestions will never be followed. You’re allowed to have a seat, and you’re allowed to have a voice, but you’re are not allowed to have a vote. You are not allowed to touch the road maps; you’re not allowed to suggest detours; you’re not allowed to fiddle with the temperature. Dude, you’re not even allowed to touch the radio. But above all else, my dear old familiar friend, you are absolutely forbidden to drive.”
So, my dear readers, how are fear and self-doubt holding you back? And can you make space for them? What would that look like? Drop me an email at [email protected] and let me know.
This article previously appeared on Above the Law.