When I was in middle school, I was OBSESSED with magazines and with taking quizzes in magazines (all the teen mags had ’em!). Around that same time, I had also uncovered that I was a writer. A real one.
Writing wasn’t just an interest or even a hobby. In my mind, it was the thing I was gonna do with my life.
Since I had been writing short stories and poems at that point, I thought it would be fun to make my own quiz, just like the ones in the magazines. I was SO excited!!
I sat down at my computer (it was 1996, but I was one of the few people who actually had a computer at home) and wrote that quiz. It was called: How Much Do You Care What People Think? and each question gave a scenario with three possible choices for response.
It was good. It was funny and witty and it sounded exactly like the ones in the magazines.
I printed it out, stapled the pages together and put it into my backpack. The next morning at school, I decided to show it to my best friend.
We were waiting outside the school building for the doors to be open for the day. I asked her if she wanted to take the quiz I made. She said yes.
I pulled it out of my backpack and proudly handed it to her. I was so excited for her to go through the scenarios and find out her score.
She stood there reading through it. I waited, holding my breath, to hear what she thought.
When she finished reading it, she said, “Wow! This is awesome!” And then she added, “But did you really write it? Because it sounds like something you’d see in Cosmo.”
And then she gave me a look that said she didn’t believe me. She thought I was lying.
It’s funny that the quiz was about how much you care about what other people think, because at 12 years old, THAT comment coming from THAT person could have destroyed me. It could have shut me down and stopped me from writing anything for the rest of my life.
That happens to a lot of creatives. Many never recover from the wounds of their childhood. And they go on to live their life not doing their soulwork or living their purpose.
Thankfully, her comment didn’t break me. I knew the truth–I had written the quiz and I was damn proud of it.
Where in your life and/or business are you not doing your art, your soulwork, or living your purpose, because of what someone else has told you or said to you? Where are you holding yourself back because of ridiculous things that don’t matter anymore?
I just had a call with a woman who told me my free “Kick Your Excuses to the Curb” challenge CHANGED HER LIFE. She’s working on her writing again, she’s been consistent with her fitness again and she even stopped making excuses in a relationship that was no longer serving her and she’s in the process of leaving.
I still have chills from hearing this on our call!!!
Now imagine when the idea for that challenge had come to me if I had said, “I shouldn’t create that. No one will care or sign up for it. No one’s gonna do the prompts. I’m just wasting my time. And who would want help from me anyhow?” And on-and-on with the nonsense things we say and think to ourselves.
Thankfully, I put it out there anyhow. I’m committed to acting on Divine Downloads when I get them.
THIS is why you must show up every day, do your soulwork and put your art and message into the world. THIS is why you need to get-the-fuck-over yourself and do it in spite of the fear, the doubt, the insecurities, the BS, the uncertainty, the NONSENSE THINGS that people have said to you. THIS is why you must UNLEASH what’s inside you—even if you think it’s not that interesting and no one will care and no one is paying attention.
You never freaking know who it will touch and how it will change everything for them.
Dream life or bust,
jen
