The worst post I’ve ever written

The morning I opened my email and read the post that I’d sent to my list of blog subscribers, a dreadful feeling went down my spine.

That was the worst post I had ever written in my whole life. What I was thinking when I pushed the button to send it? I wouldn’t be surprised if half of the people on my list unsubscribed straight away after this terrible post.

I felt terrible, and I felt a lot of shame.

I could see people’s faces reading the first two lines and deleting the email with a grin. To stop torturing myself, I concluded that while it was probably the worst post that I’d ever written in my life, now that I knew it the next step was just to keep on writing, trying to be better, and to pray that at least one person was still on my list to give me the chance to connect.

In the middle of this conversation in my head, fighting the shame and criticism, I got an email from one of my subscribers saying ‘What a great post!’ And five minutes later, a second one with similar words. And in the next five minutes a third one, congratulating me for an inspiring post.

When we’re creating wholeheartedly in a way that we haven’t done before, exploring different ways, breaking old narratives, assumptions and beliefs, we can expect criticism.

Change always brings resistance, but be prepared, because sometimes our worst enemy is just in our head.

#criticism #writing