It’s Day 4 of My Daily Blogging Challenge, and this post is coming at ‘ya a little later than I would have liked. I’ve hemmed and hawed about what to write about all day (seriously, how it is 10pm?!), and every time I thought I might have had something interesting to say, this little voice popped in my head…
Who are you to talk about that subject?
Why would anyone want to hear your thoughts?
Seriously, how can you talk about that when you still struggle with it yourself?
If you’ve ever tried pursuing something, you’ve likely encountered these very obnoxious voices of self doubt. They’re loud. They’re persistent. And, oh, yes they’re quite persuasive.
Because, you see, most of the time, when I encounter them, I end up giving into whatever they’re telling me.
Maybe not right away, but sooner or later, those voices of self doubt transform into voices of reason.
Well, of course I shouldn’t talk about that. I know nothing about that.
Nobody wants to hear my ill-informed opinion on that subject.
And, no duh, I shouldn’t talk about something that I’m still going through myself!
But the louder those voices got, the more something became very clear to me: No subject was going to feel worthy right now. Everything was going to feel shit.
Why?
Because I was facing resistance.
If you’ve never read the War of Art by Stephen Pressfield, I highly recommend it. It talks all about the idea of resistance, and how all creative people struggle with succeeding in the creative space, because they can’t overcome the roadblocks that are set up by our mental resistance.
I won’t go too far into that right now, but bottom line: I recognized my resistance to write, and I told it to go take a hike.
Not because I came up with some major idea for what I was going to write about. And no, not because I thought that brilliant idea was going to come to me in some sort of epiphany later on (although I wouldn’t mind if it did…).
Thing is, I can’t expect that in a 30 day time span everything I write is going to be brilliant.
In fact, I probably shouldn’t expect that anything in this 30 day time span is going to be brilliant. Thirty days is really not that long in the grand scheme of things, and there’s a high probability that everything I write is just going to be a collection of my rambles.
I mean, of course I want to write the kinds of things that are valuable to people. Or, at the very least, enjoyable to read, but, at the end of the day, starting up this little writing challenge was less about driving traffic to my blog, and more about making a commitment to myself and following through on it.
My ultimate dream in life is to write the sorts of things that are helpful, inspiring, and most importantly for me, relatable.
For me, there’s nothing better than reading a piece of writing that makes me nod my head in agreement.
So yeah, sure, I would love to do that for someone else, but the very idea that I think I could ever do that by:
a) not writing at all
b) writing generic, fluff pieces
c) writing what I think people want to hear
or d) some combination of all of the above
Is, well just plain dumb.
And so, today I don’t leave you with any wise thoughts or grand ideas (not that I consider myself very wise to begin with), but I do leave you with this:
If you’ve ever wanted to do something, or you have some sort of dream that sits in the back of your head day in and day out, make sure you’re doing something about it!
Even if it’s just little things, those little things add up, and eventually, they start to show you the right path that ultimately will lead you to your ideal destination (or possibly even an even better destination than you ever dreamed of!).
And yeah, sure, I may not have life experience that makes me an expert in any of this.
And yeah, you better believe that after I wrote that last line, that obnoxious voice popped back in my head, telling me how ridiculous it is for me to talk about pursuing dreams, but screw it, resistance be damned!
Hey, what do ‘ya know: I actually did end up writing something that had an important message at the end! Go figure.
If you’re interested, feel free to read the other posts in my Daily Blogging Challenge:
Day 1 talks about why I started the challenge in the first place.
Day 2 is all about the importance of making commitments to yourself.
And Day 3 is about my struggle with anxiety and my first panic attack.
I hope there’s at least one or two people out there who are enjoying my Daily Blogging Challenge. I don’t expect anyone to read every single post, but if you’ve enjoyed even just one, leave me a little comment below. Trust me, it will make my day, and it might just make my resistance for tomorrow be a little less severe (here’s hoping!)
Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends out there!
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