On Being Scared Sh*tless...

Last week I shared that I'm embarking on a new journey - writing a memoir about my healing process from a traumatic childhood. The response has been overwhelming, and I'm grateful for the support.

Prior to this, I wasn't a career writer. I was a Chief Marketing Officer, with a 20-year career and an MBA in the discipline. But one day, I decided it was time to do more, and so I made a massive pivot to not just writing, but to writing a book. And not just any book, but a memoir. Go big or go home, right?

Starting a writing career in my 40s means putting my voice out there, unscripted, on my own behalf. Being a little bit scared seems to be a recurring, albeit largely thrilling state in this new phase of my life. Fear threatens to become a constant companion. It's the voice in my head that tells me to be careful, to play it safe, and to avoid the unknown. It's the voice that warns me to stop writing when I don't get much engagement on a post or newsletter issue. But I've learned that the only way to grow and create is to push past that fear, to make mistakes, and to learn from them.

"Make new mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before." Neil Gaiman’s words have become my mantra as I navigate this new chapter. In them I feel the transformative potential of embracing fear. The call to make new mistakes is a call to courage - the courage to step outside of our comfort zones, to explore new ideas, and to take risks.

I'm no stranger to taking risks. I embrace change. I initiate it. As a result, I've been called brave many times in my career, more so in the past week. However, the truth is, I don't feel brave. I feel called to pursue a level of creativity and thinking beyond what I've done before, to let my work be a contribution of my life.

For me, making amazing mistakes is an act of rebellion - a refusal to be bound by the limitations of fear and a declaration of independence as a writer and thinker. It means challenging the status quo, questioning conventional wisdom, and pushing past what I think I know and have allowed myself to believe to discover new truths and new ways of expressing them.

But it’s not always easy. Fear can both inspire and limit us. It can be a powerful motivator, driving us to take action and exceed our limitations. It can also be a paralyzing force, holding us back from our true potential and limiting our ability to grow and create. Fear can keep us locked in patterns of thought and behavior that prevent us from exploring new ideas and trying new things.

The challenge is to find a balance between the two - to use fear as a catalyst for growth and creativity, while also recognizing its limitations and learning to surpass them. This requires a willingness to confront our fears head-on, to expand outside of what is comfortable and familiar, and to embrace the unknown with courage and curiosity.

For me, this has meant taking risks in my writing (this newsletter being one of them), daring to be vulnerable with no sense of who might read it. It has also meant recognizing when fear threatens to hold me back and learning to move through it with meditation, mindfulness, and other practices that help me stay grounded and centered.

I’ve also adopted an exercise that I want to share with you. In times where my fear has felt overwhelming, I write a letter to myself from my fear.

"Dear Daria, this is your fear and this is what I want to tell you..."

I give it five minutes of airtime to share whatever it needs me to know in that moment. This process allows me to detach from and bear witness to my feelings in a way that I can understand and integrate them, and has become something I turn to when the voices of intuition and enchantment are being drowned out.

Ultimately, the key to overcoming fear and making new mistakes is to stay open to the possibilities that lie ahead. It asks that your faith in what’s to come has to be stronger than what you believe to be true today. Our ability to reflect on and learn from past experiences is what makes us human, and is a mark of our intelligence: to maintain a sense of curiosity and wonder, to stay grounded in the present moment, and to trust in our own abilities and intuition. Evolution is the highest form of trial and error and no one who has ever had a brilliant idea fell victim to the culture’s deep-seated fear of being wrong. For it is in these moments of vulnerability and uncertainty that we find our greatest potential for growth and we discover the depths of our own creativity and imagination.

Would you write a letter to yourself from your fear? How do you approach living beyond fear?

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I'll see you in the comments,

Daria