The fear I anticipated is here (Copy)
My new book will be released in two weeks. Over the weekend, I felt an intense wave of a feeling that I’d been expecting: fear.
My fear is complicated.
Without a doubt, this book is the most vulnerable piece of work I’ve ever created. I bare it all: The truth of how I felt at my lowest of lows as a leader; the crutches I leaned on to escape from those feelings (including alcohol); the difficult realization that I was no longer in love with the company I’d built; the jealousy and resentment that I sometimes felt for my team because they had a level of freedom that I didn’t; the emotional impact of carrying nearly half-a-million dollars in debt; and the realization that I was building a path for my team to grow financially but hadn’t considered my own.
Before I wrote a single word of this book, I made a commitment to be completely honest and transparent about all of this. Every last bit of it. I promised myself that I wouldn't sugarcoat it, skip over the hard parts, or allow shame or fear to keep me from sharing it with you.
Believe me, there were many moments when I thought about going back on that promise. I lost count of how many times I wrote sentences that made me think, Gee, do I really want people to know that?
Sometimes, I’d send my team a draft, and then I’d go back in and make edits after I’d slept on it, suddenly terrified of the thought of anyone reading the original version.
But every time I did that (or tried to), I kept coming back to my promise. The whole point of this book, I’d remind myself, is to make others feel less alone and give people more permission to be human. The only way to do that, I think, is to be completely real about what my journey has looked like. And it’s not just me: My team committed to this, too. When they saw me holding back or noticed my fear driving me to make cuts and edits, they reminded me of my commitment and helped me come back to myself.
The fear I felt this past weekend is a feeling I’d anticipated. And I know that because I feel that fear, it means that I wrote the right book. There’s an author I love, Steven Pressfield, who says fear is a compass that points to what matters most. He encourages authors to write about what scares them because he says that it’s only when something scares you that you know it’s real and that you care.
Right now, my fear sounds like, What will people think? Will they look at me differently? Will they judge me? My work? What if they don’t like the book? Did I get it all right? What if I left something out? And on and on.
It’s quite the contrast to how I felt two weeks before Permission to Screw Up came out. I love that book, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t compare to this new book I’ve written. Now that I can look back with self-awareness, I can see that I protected myself while I wrote Permission to Screw Up. I didn't push the envelope in the fear department. Sure, I was vulnerable. I wrote about things that were real and hard. But I did it in a way that still felt safe. I did the best I could at the time with where I was in my life and my growth, but I can’t say that I put it all out on the table.
My friend and I were having a conversation on her podcast recently about the book, and we talked about the difference between this one and my last. We talked about how this book wrote me. It really did. It’s hard to explain, but I knew that I only had one mission, which was to write the realest and most vulnerable leadership book I’d ever read. My soul knew what I needed to write. The words poured out of me, and my role was to let them and not allow my fear to get in the way.
So am I terrified that the book is coming out in two weeks? Absolutely. Am I scared for you to read it? You bet. Do I worry that you might see me differently once you do? I do.
During one of my battles with fear in my writing process, Monique on my team said something that had a huge impact on me. It was something like, “Imagine how freeing it will feel to have it all out there.”
She’s right. Stronger than my fear is a feeling of excitement. I do feel free. I get to put my head on my pillow at night knowing that I didn’t hold back on anything. I wrote about every single bit of it. And the journey of writing this book has taught me that if you aren’t scared to put something out there, you probably haven’t created the truest and highest version of your work.
I’m so grateful to feel this fear. And I’m so proud of myself for creating something that has caused me to shake in my boots. May I—and you—always have that kind of courage.
Big hugs,
