Saboteurs

Here I am again: sitting in front of my laptop with the intention to do some writing but coming up with all sorts of excuses and distractions that prevent me from writing. It’s always the same. When it gets 'serious', when I’m thinking of writing something that I will show to ‘important’ people, like for example an article that I need to pitch to an editor, I freeze. Nothing comes. It’s as if I'd never written anything and totally forgotten how to write.

Fear of criticism, rejection and failure are life’s great saboteurs. They sneak up on you from behind and make you feel scared of your own shadow. They cling on to your legs whenever you’re trying to take a step in a new direction. They whisper lies in your ears and make them sound like the truth. They camouflage themselves perfectly in seemingly rational considerations and it can be hard to dismantle them and see them for what they are: Fantasized Experiences Appearing Real. If only I'd use my imagination to fantasize experiences of success and happiness instead of worst-case-scenarios!

The reason why fear of criticism, rejection and failure are so difficult to deal with is that they are built on self-doubt. They can only get to me, if underneath I really believe that I am not good enough, not talented enough, not loveable enough etc.

The other problem is that my judgment about whether or not I am good enough, talented enough, loveable enough etc. rests mainly on other people. Like a flag in the wind, I tend to be blown all over the place by people’s approval or rejection. 

However, if I take a song I really like as an example, it's easy to see that although I may think it's a great song, there will definitely be people out there who don’t like it or even hate it. What does that say about the song? Not much, really, but I guess it implies that people as a whole as well as individually are not really able to make an objective judgment about anything. It will always be biased and it will differ from person to person.

So to rest my self-esteem on something as fickle as people’s diverse and ever-changing opinions and judgments seems crazy. At the end of the day, there’s only one opinion I should really be worried about and that's my own. If I don’t think I'm good enough, talented enough, loveable enough etc. it’s unlikely that I’ll convince someone else that I am. If I do, on the other hand, it doesn’t really matter what other people think anyway.

Aristotles says: “There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.”

Not really an option, is it?