Living with Fear & Overcoming Perfectionism: Lessons from Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic
Publishing personal blog posts and newsletters is taking me as long as passing federal legislation.
Without the constraints of deadlines or opinionated team members, I’ve added on my own heavy weights of fear and perfectionism slowing me down. I recently read the book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert, which helped me reframe my approach to starting to write, dancing, and painting. Below are my takeaways from the book that I am putting into action.
Getting Started and Living with Fear
Any creative project is followed by fear. Fear is your barometer letting you know that you are challenging yourself. Creativity triggers fear, because there is an uncertain outcome. I’ve written dozens of blog articles for work, but starting to blog personally feels like jumping off the high-dive. I have a story that I’m not a good writer; I’ll come off as a fraud-narcissist; I have nothing valuable to say; I will put in hours of work for something nobody will read. Like a simmer over low heat, the sinister thoughts continuously bubble to the surface.
Take a moment to think about a creative project you have been wanting to start. What is stopping you? What are you afraid of?
Instead of fighting your fear, learn to live with it. Once you relax, so does your fear. Since it’s impossible to overcome your fear, Gilbert suggests letting it come along for the ride. Imagine you are going on a road trip with your friends, fear and creativity. Fear is allowed to join, but she’s definitely not allowed to drive.
When I write, I revise, revise, revise, and think of all the ways people will judge what I’m writing. I think of how one blog post will lead to the demise of my career and credibility like I’m in a Final Destination horror film.
But my abusive, fearful inner-critic is not in control.
The inner voice is always there like the loud stomping of my upstairs neighbors that I have to tune out. The fear slows me down, but I don’t let it stop me. Instead I’ve made writing a habitual routine, like how I go to weekday 7:30am dance class no matter how I feel. When I’m stuck I pencil in an hour daily of writing. I meditate to reduce the inner voice. I show my work to people I trust who can cross-examine and prosecute the guilty inner-voice.
Fear is boring; it’s your attachment to safety. It’s like your mom stopping you from doing anything interesting. I was terrified when I went canyoning in Switzerland, terrified to start my online course, terrified to quit my job and move to Mexico, but my curiosity and desire was greater than my fear.
In opposition to fear, I love what Gilbert calls Creative entitlement, acknowledging that you have a human right to create, regardless of the outcome. It’s your self-absorption, judging what everyone thinks that is actually stopping you. Your fear has nothing to do with the personal glory of creating something just to create it for yourself.
The idea of Creative Entitlement makes me feel like the Genie when Aladdin sets him free.
I started writing to clarify my own thinking, build a weak muscle, and create a personal archive of things I am learning. If nobody ever reads what I write, it doesn’t matter. I am writing for me.
Perfectionism & Persistence
Right now I have 8 draft blog posts. I get stopped by hitting publish, because I’m trying to get it perfect. A good enough blog post published now is better than a meticulously researched and perfectly written blog post published never.
Often, I miss an opportunity on a timely topic because I took too long trying to get it right. During the University of California (UC) budget hikes of 2015, I wanted to write a post about how the increase in healthcare premiums was a major culprit for increased tuition. Instead, I missed my opportunity and students continued to protest the UC Regents rather than look at hospital and pharmaceutical companies’ charge practices. These missed opportunities happen constantly on my work teams as well. We spend so long making decisions and getting the framing right on a political issue that we end up not being a part of the conversation.
My perfectionism is constantly holding me back. I’ve organized my life around avoiding criticism the way people avoid political discussions with that one uncle. I’m striving for perfection so that nobody can criticize me. I imagine people are kept awake at night thinking, “Wow Lauren’s blog post was so terrible. Isn’t English her native language? How did she go to Berkeley never learning how to use commas and hyphens?”
When a friend recently asked me, “What if nobody is thinking about you at all?” I started laughing because he was right. Nobody is thinking about me. Gilbert sums this up in a quote from a mentor.
“We all spend our twenties and thirties trying so hard to be perfect, because we’re so worried about what people will think of us. Then we get into our forties and fifties, and we finally start to be free, because we decide that we don’t give a damn what anyone thinks of us. But you won’t be completely free until you reach your sixties and seventies, when you finally realize this liberating truth—nobody was ever thinking about you, anyhow.”
Most of the time I get no comments on my blog posts. Nobody is staying up at night thinking about me.
This idea freed me up to start sharing my work. Getting anyone to pay attention to what you are doing is hard enough. If it's not perfect, don't worry because it's likely that nobody will notice. If they do, they will keep scrolling onto the next instant gratification tweet. My new Lizzo-confidence inspired mantra, "Nobody is worried about your shit. They are too busy dealing with their own shit".
Gilbert’s recommendation for avoiding perfectionism is keeping your work light, playful, and fun. Any creative art is pretty meaningless, and it means a lot to us. My career and life are not riding on a single blog post, but writing and creative work is meaningful to me.
No matter what happens, I will keep going. As Gilbert says any motion beats inertia and attracts inspiration.
Gilbert says don’t measure yourself by success or failures; measure your creativity by the dedication and persistence to keep practicing your craft. I’ve had a goal to publish 2 blog posts per month. So far I’m at 2 published total over 6 months or 16.7% towards my goal. I definitely need more persistence and less perfectionism to reach my goal. I do this in my other creative practices. I’m in an accountability art practice group where I post ugly 5-minute drawings. I need to create the same carefree, committed attitude to my writing.
Whatever your art is, make space for it. Schedule it into your calendar.
Now that I’m getting over my fear, writing is becoming pleasurable. I try to get through my work quickly so that I can have a date night with my writing.
Even if blogging leads to nothing and my writing is read by nobody, I’m committed to doing it for me. For the first time, I don’t have a boss telling me what to write. I don’t have a communications team watering down my voice. I don’t have to wait on a team member’s feedback. I get to do what I want.
Most people start ambitious projects they never finish (myself included), so getting anything done even if it sucks is still making more progress than most people. Although this post isn’t perfect, it’s done.
What do you love doing so much that you would do it for free, for fun, where success or failure is irrelevant? Confront what is stopping you, and make space for it in your life.
Shout out to all the generous people in my life who have provided feedback to different stages of this post and/or hit me up when I had a typo including Amy Huynh, DJ Bowers, Chris Wood, Daniella Valdez, Venkatesh Rao, Marat Stary, and Tiago Forte.