Do you ever question your self worth and let others opinions hurt you? I do. If you want to stop doing that, this post could help you as I share my experience and what I am doing to overcome it. At the moment, the biggest fear holding me back is being criticised. I hate it! When I post something publicly and someone attacks me, it hurts. I feel it inside. Even writing this, I am finding my heart beating fast as I risk that yet again. Being attacked, even just in print, creates a reaction like the person was standing 2 feet away and spitting in my face. It is not a nice feeling and I wish it could be easier. The thing is, why does it bother me so much? Why am I afraid? It has nothing to do with that person; often I have never met them and they have no impact on my life. It is really about my opinion about myself: my sense of self worth; my doubts about my ability to write, to share, to help someone; about who I am. When someone attacks me or questions what I have done, it triggers me to question myself; to take a good hard look at what I have said and what I think. I ask myself: “Is he/she right?” “Should I go back in my shell and leave this stuff to the real experts?” I often think “Who am I to say this?” “What will they think of me?” In the past, I would have let those thoughts stop me. I spent the largest part of my life frozen in fear, caring so much about what everyone else thought. I created a prison for myself; a prison of fear. Maybe you have experienced this too in some way? If you have then, I will tell you how to escape it. I must warn you though; you probably aren’t going to like it. There is no trick, no technique that will make it go away. You cannot just sit in silence imagining how good you feel when people are criticising you and then expect it to feel completely different the next times it happens. The only way to truly overcome it is through exposure. To start doing things and saying things that risk someone else’s disapproval. When you do that, it will hurt, if you only do it once it will hurt a lot, but if you keep doing it you will build up a resistance to that effect; you will grow and your world will start expanding. For me, it started about a year and half ago when I recorded my first video sharing an insight that had helped me and was the beginning of a movement I created called “Switched On” and was the first facebook page and meet up group I created (They both failed completely). I was nervous and unsure when recording it and to be honest it was a pretty crap video in my delivery (I wasn’t myself). I will share it here so you can see if you want. The ideas I am sharing are actually really useful and you might notice that about half way through I forget about myself and just start sharing and then towards the end get self conscious again. Interestingly, it actually fits in nicely with this post because the solution to how you overcome this fear is by doing what that guy suggests. The main point is, I was sharing things as I discovered them, as they helped me. I was taking a big risk, I mean who the hell was I to be doing that? I definitely was not ready. As I have continued to take risks and be questioned and challenged, the impact I am able to have increases. The criticism encourages me to think deeper, to find better ways of explaining something; and most importantly, it helps me grow as a person. You may have seen an article going around last year that listed the biggest regrets of the dying; the biggest one on that list was “Caring too much what people think and not being true to myself”. Every time you give someone permission to criticise you and you use it to grow, you are becoming more true to yourself, your beliefs, who you want to be. If you really do want to face your fear and live your passion, it starts here. So, what is one tiny thing you could do today that will risk someone criticising you? I invite you to post it in the comments here as a message to the universe that you are taking hold of your future.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 11:15:39 +0000