I recently had a friend, a brilliant writer, call me in a panic because she suddenly became frozen with fear over the subject matter of her book and could no longer bring herself to write it.
Her book is, among many other splendid things, very personal, dark, and twisted, and my friend was concerned that it was too much. That it was crossing the line.
That she was exposing herself as a giant pervert freak weirdo.
This brings up a concept that’s SO important to have a firm grasp on if you’re going to get anywhere near reaching your full potential in this life as a writer, an entrepreneur, an artist and actually, as a fully realized and evolved human being in general:
One of the greatest, most powerful ways you can spend your time is actively practicing not giving a flying crap what anybody else thinks about you.
Other people’s opinions motivate every decision we make in our teens and our twenties, and as we age, if we’re moving in the right direction, our obsession with how we look to others slowly trickles away, but most people spend their lifetimes under its pointless grasp.
Meanwhile, the only questions you ever need to really consider are:
Is this something I want to be, do or have?
Is this going to take me in direction of my goal or purpose?
Is it going to violate the rights of others?
Yes, it is part of our survival instinct to care – get booted from the tribe and you will freeze or starve to death or be eaten by bears. But because we have big brains and the ability to manifest anything we set our minds to, there is another version that’s equally as plausible: get booted from the tribe and be forced to start one of your own, and even though you suffer through struggles and failures and fears, you prove yourself and create something that’s unique and exciting and more in line with who you really are and suddenly there’s a coin with your face on it or a rest stop named after you or something equally as awesome.
We all long for the comfort and safety of fitting in, and if that’s where you’re truly happy and fully realized, then bravo, but nobody who ever accomplished anything big or new or worth raising a fist in the air and screaming “hell yeah!” about did it from the comfort zone.
They risked ridicule and failure and sometimes even death. Take the Wright Brothers for example. Can you imagine how that whole thing went down?
Beula: Did you hear about poor Susan?
Agnes: Susan Wright?
Hattie: Such a disgrace! Poor thing.
Agnes: What happened?
Beula: Well, her two boys…
Hattie: As if Susan hasn’t suffered enough. Tiny little thing birthing three boys as big as buffaloes, then croup, shingles and now this…
Beula: Seems her two sons…oh dear.
Agnes: Her two sons what?!
Hattie: I heard she has bunions too…
Agnes: Spit it out already Beula!
Beaula: Well, this is going to sound as crazy as it is but they….
Hattie: And now her sons think they can fly. Such a shame.
Beula: …they think they can fly.
Agnes: Think they can fly?
Beula: Yes, her sons think they can fly. They talk of nothing else.
Hattie: She just had the house painted too. They’ll probably have to move out of town now….
Once you step away from the herd and let yourself be seen, you put yourself in front of the opinion firing squad, which is why so many people run screaming from the lives they’d so love to live.
But here’s the thing that’s so critical to remember: It’s not about you anyway. What other people think about you has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.
I’ve gotten emails from people telling me everything from I can’t write to save my life to I’m an insensitive jerk to, and I quote, “your last name is interesting. Some people may see ‘sincere’ but all I see is the ‘sin’ part. Your life will be nothing but pain and heartache if you keep living it this way”.
I’ve also had people write in about the very same book gushing that I changed their life, that I’m their favorite writer, that they would like to get to know me in the biblical sense, etc.
So it couldn’t possibly be about the book because the book stays the same. It’s the reactions that differ.
The trick is not only not buying into the criticisms, but not buying into the hype either because neither of them are the truth. Once you do, you hand your power over to other people’s fears and insecurities and needs and stories and spend your life desperately chasing down something that isn’t even real.
All that matters is what’s true for you, and if you can tap into that and follow it without straying, you will be a mighty superhero. Everything else is just other people’s perception of reality, and that is none of your business.
