Moving Through Fear

What stops us from moving forward with our creative plans? Is it fear or lack of motivation?

For the last few weeks, I've been struggling with myself. I have lots of ideas and projects to make but all of sudden I started feeling stress. Worry, anxiety, and just a basic feeling of inadequacy showed up every time I went to write or record something. So what happened? Why do exciting ideas suddenly feel so hard and uncomfortable?

Normally when I start feeling lost, I will give in to my desire to eat an entire pan of lasagna and ultimately decide to give up. I accept that whatever I was trying to do just wasn't meant for me and go back to living my life. I give up before I ever truly get started. And weirdly, I usually catch some kind of cold.

Well, I'm sick and tired of giving up. I want to work through my resistance and move forward with my plans. I've been deep dive journaling lately and I know that my feelings are coming from fearful thoughts. It's the same fear that has stopped me over and over again from achieving my goals. I'm not sure how to stop thinking/feeling this, but I know that hiding and ignoring these thoughts are only making me believe them more. So today, I'm speaking them out loud.

A List of My Fears:

• being seen and judged by strangers.

• being laughed at because my writing style is cheesy or doesn't flow.

• being a beginner and royally sucking at everything I try.

• never finding my voice.

• having nothing of value to contribute to the creative community I love.

• choosing the wrong topic to post.

• not posting at all.

• having too many artistic interests.

• starting too late in life to live my dreams.

• being a failure.

• changing my life will ruin everything and I'll have to live in a box.

• don't trust myself to follow through.

So there they are. My scary fear filled thoughts. Out of my head and there for me to look at straight in the eye. For some reason, reading these thoughts make them much less REAL. They seem almost silly and probably (definitely?) not true. I'm going to work on these and try to replace them with better thoughts and beliefs.

I'll end this with a painting of mine that has a "glaring" line of sight/perspective error which I didn't see until someone pointed it out. But so what? I don't care anymore. I learned from this piece and I actually like it quite a bit. Not only did I practice new painting techniques while painting it, I also learned about composition afterwards. I think it's just the right piece of art to share today.

~ Anna B.