“When one yields to this deepest calling or authentic desire, often situations will organize to make it possible, but not free. It doesn’t come without a cost.” - Joseph Lee, Co-Host of This Jungian Life, “VOCATION: Answering the Call” (said around minute 15)
During what I later understood to be a pivotal conversation in my life, my brother said to me, “You have to decide what you’re willing to sacrifice.” We were, as we often do, talking about starting a business. He has started and successfully ran many businesses in his life, and I have thought about starting and successfully running many businesses in my life.
At the word “sacrifice,” I flinched. I am a single parent, I’m broke, I am not creating the art of my dreams. I haven’t had a working oven in years. I was and continue to be quite good at sacrificing comfort, self-compassion, convenience, and pleasure.
Still, I knew he was right. I was resistant to many opportunities in my life that brought in money. Why not cold pitch more potential copywriting clients? Why not invest in my ecommerce project? Why not build up a personal brand? I was holding onto fears and beliefs that mattered more to me than the things I said I wanted.
Figuring out what those exact fear and beliefs are, and how I came to have them, is hard work (my brother makes the argument that figuring out the "how" isn’t useful, to which I say: we all have our hobbies). “Going into the fear” seemed like a good first step. As Steven Pressfield famously writes, “Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance.”
More than anything, I am afraid of criticism. Failing is fine; I fail a lot and pride myself on being a good little failure. But criticism is different. It’s not a vague known error but an exact error articulated by another. “Please don’t hurt my feelings with an accurate assessment of my behavior!” should be tattooed on my forehead.
This obviously holds me back from big lofty goals like starting a podcast (a desire I’ve had since 2010 that now seems incredibly low stakes and almost easy? What was I waiting for!?) or publishing blog posts (again, who cares? who reads ‘em?). Or the even loftier: publish a novel, build a profitable ecomm brand, become a great interviewer, grow a podcast into a financial asset.
Because duh - sharing things is hard when you’re scared of mean comments.
But it has also held me back in smaller ways. As an employee, I was often too afraid to tell my boss about errors I made and too embarrassed to ask questions that would have prevented those errors in the first place.
As a freelancer, I often agonize over my work well past what is reasonable, wasting literal hours editing what is already effective, quality work, thus lowering my hourly rate and ruining my mental well being.
Even my creative projects suffer. A few years ago, when I decided I had to engage in a selfish yet fulfilling creative act in order to feel like a human being again, I chose to finally honor my lifelong desire to write. Well, kind of. In my youth and early adulthood, I imagined myself as a novelist and interviewer. However, when I finally proclaimed my creative independence, I chose to start with poetry - the least read and most ambiguous of all writing.
This is not a knock against poetry; please read more poems! And truthfully, my poems are hardly abstract lyrical masterpieces. But I do personally feel less exposed publishing poetry than publishing long-form writing. It just so happens that being emotionally vulnerable in a poem is easier for me than being intellectually rigorous in an essay. (And really, how vulnerable am I being if I’m most sensitive about my ideas?)
All of that said, this post isn’t about coping with criticism because I don’t know - I’m still figuring it out. Send me your advice!
This post is about reframing cost.
A good friend of mine says she hates to suffer; she’ll do anything to not emotionally suffer. But she endures difficult emotional situations all the time - incredible burdens she carries for herself and others. She has done this her whole life. Which is what I told her: You’re always emotionally suffering. I think what you hate more is the unfamiliar, which in your case, might be ease.
My friend is real, but also, I’m just like my friend. I was speaking to both of us.
**
There are obvious costs to creative projects:
How much time are you willing to invest?
How much money are you willing to put in?
How much less Netflix will you watch?
Those questions are the first questions every career guru asks their audience to ask themselves. They are not bad questions, but they are not the only ones either.
Maybe, “How foolish are you willing to look?” is obvious to you. But it wasn’t obvious to me until my life was so unbearable and boring I had to admit I was zero percent willing to look foolish.
The thing about cost is that it can be tricky to identify, as it can be positive to some and negative to others.
How much jealousy are you willing to endure? Is the negative to someone’s positive, “I can’t wait for people to see my new car!” Jealousy can be really terrifying to some people and really covetable to others.
“How much responsibility are you willing to take on?” is not a cost for the person who wants to lead but it’s a huge cost to the person who wants to remain untethered.
The other thing about costs is that admitting them can be ugly. What kind of person stunts their career growth for fear of being responsible?
The last thing I’ll say about cost, is that I’ve found it to be an easy thing to lie about.
For instance, maybe I’m not afraid of being responsible at all - maybe I’m just lazy and not talented. The fear isn’t “Oh no, if I become successful and wealthy, I’ll just have so many important things to do and so many people to help!” The fear is, “I’m going to have to work harder than I want to work.”
How can I even know what I’m truly afraid of sacrificing?
Probably, it doesn’t matter.
I should do anything that isn’t continuing to wallow in fear. (Send the cold pitch, publish the blog post, announce the podcast!) When I find myself stuck again, I can determine a new cost and then take new action.
If I had to guess, future costs will be, “How much more insecurity are you willing to sacrifice?” “How much confidence are you willing to own?”
Yes, we need to risk. Well-said. Thank you for subscribing. I do check back and read all who read and comment on mine. So, looking forward ... ~ Mary