Allison Vesterfelt's Blog, page 10

Some Things To Try When Life Feels Out of Control

We are meant to be powerful. I really believe that. We are born with an innate power over our decisions, power over our bodies and personal space, power over our circumstances and power to organize our surroundings the way we want them to be. We are not all-powerful but we are incredibly powerful.

Yet many of us are living powerless.

Powerless might not be the word you would use for your circumstance. You’d probably say something like, “depressed, anxious, helpless, frustrated, angry” instead.

I wrestled with powerlessness for nearly two decades before I ever called it that.

Powerlessness usually starts because of injustice.

This is how it was for me. My first experience with a loss of power was when someone I trusted took advantage of me when I was very young. At the time, I was a child. I didn’t have power to change my circumstances. I didn’t have the voice to speak up about what I wanted.

I didn’t even have enough of a consciousness about what was happening to make sense of it.

But, here’s the crazy part.

Even when the injustice stopped, I didn’t suddenly begin to feel more powerful. It was as if I had gotten so used to living without my own power, I didn’t want it or need it anymore. If I’d had it, I wouldn’t have known what to do with it. Even the idea of having power over my life and circumstances was foreign to me.

I thought we were all just victims to circumstance, to those around us and to injustice.

What I didn’t realize was that I was really a victim to my own choices.

Powerlessness is learned. But it can be unlearned, too.

This is what I’ve been trying to focus on lately. The powerlessness I have learned for so many years—which led to depression, anxiety, frustration and persistent hopelessness—can be unlearned if I’m willing to change the way I think about power.

Although powerlessness began with an injustice, the only injustice now is that I’m still living powerless, by my own choosing.

For me, powerlessness shows up most often in these four ways:

Complaining
Blaming
Striving for acceptance
Disengaging or numbing

Are you living powerless?

I’ll never forget the first time someone suggested I might be giving away my own power. I felt furious. I seethed for days. How could that person possibly say something like that!? Clearly, they had no idea what I had been through.

If they had, they would understand what I was up against.

It wasn’t until I ran out of energy to be angry that I realized she was right.

It’s horrifying to stand up, turn around, and realize the oppression that once controlled your whole life isn’t there anymore. When did it leave? You wonder. How long have I been living as if I were oppressed, when I really wasn’t?

In order to reclaim my power, I’ve had to focus on the four behaviors I listed above.

It hasn’t been easy. They are deeply ingrained habits that are hard to change. I don’t have it totally figured out. But the more I lean into the learning process, the happier I feel.

I struggle less often with depression. My anxiety is slowly shifting. I feel more centered and peaceful.

Here’s a little about how that has looked for me:

Rather than complaining about being too busy or stressed, I choose to organize my time differently.
When there is a miscommunication, I choose to assume I didn’t communicate well, rather than that the other person didn’t listen.
Rather than complaining about how certain people treat me, I try to set better boundaries and expectations.
Rather than looking for someone to blame when things don’t go how I want them to, I look for ways I can accept responsibility, even if it’s small.
Rather than always deferring to the advice of others, I’m learning to listen to myself
Rather than worrying about my reputation, I focus on my character
When conflict or discomfort comes comes, I work to stay engaged and open—being as honest as I can about how I feel.

Like I said, this isn’t easy. I don’t get it right every time. But I keep working at it because I believe it is my obligation.

With power comes responsibility.

Maybe this is the reason so many of us avoid grabbing hold of the power we deserve—because we recognize that when we take the reigns of our circumstances, we have to own those circumstances.

We can’t pass the blame anymore. We can’t complain. Our choices create our reality.

This isn’t about controlling everything that happens to us. But it is about trying—it’s about failing gloriously, being willing to make a fool of myself, about not taking myself too seriously—and about using the small amount of power I’ve been given and using it well so that power can multiply.

The post Some Things To Try When Life Feels Out of Control appeared first on Allison Vesterfelt.

The Best Thing You Can Do for Your Life And Career Is Make A Fool of Yourself

I’ve dedicated a great deal of energy in my life trying not to make a fool out of myself.

When I was in junior high, I remember thinking EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD was allowed to watch TV shows I wasn’t allowed to watch and listen to music I wasn’t allowed to listen to (at 13, most of life happens in caps-lock).

So to avoid looking foolish, my solution was to wait for the moment my friends began talking about the latest pop culture phenomenon and pretend like I knew exactly what they were talking about.

“Oh, I know! Boyz II men are so bad-ass!”

“Isn’t Clueless like, so totally awesome?!”

Even now that junior high is over (thank God) I still find myself, at times, going to great lengths to not make a fool out of myself.

These days, it looks something like this:

I prepare and prepare and prepare and over-prepare for speaking engagements, so I make sure not to say anything weird.
I sometimes agonize over what to post (or not post) on social media.
I obsess over blog posts. “Did I say it right? Did I miscommunicate? Am I going to look stupid? Do I know what I’m talking about?”
I hold back from doing things that feel outside of my comfort zone (even something simple, like playing frisbee) because I don’t want to look like an idiot.

And what good have these obsessions ever done me? Are they preventing me from making a fool out of myself? Probably not.

My latest realization is this:

The harder we work not to make fools out of ourselves, the more foolish we end up looking.

Trying not to make a fool out of myself has kept me from so many things I wanted to do in my life.

It has kept me from trying something new for fear of coming across as incompetent or unintelligent or unrefined (recently a friend offered to let me paint with watercolors and I nearly refused…for fear of looking stupid. I’m so glad I didn’t!)

It has kept me from taking risks.

It’s kept me from speaking up about things that matter to me.

It has kept me from being myself.

What has your fear of looking foolish kept you from doing in your life? When you consider the opportunity cost, ask yourself this: was it worth it?

What if making a fool out of ourselves could actually work to our advantage?

What if the things we think of as “foolish” aren’t really that foolish after all (like being out-of-the-know when it comes to pop culture)? What if they are the pieces of the puzzle that set us apart, that make us who we are?

What if making a fool of yourself could teach you an important lesson?

What if the chance of making a fool of yourself meant you got to try something new? What if you succeeded in an area where you never thought you could?

What if a willingness to make a fool of yourself is a prerequisite for creativity and innovation?

Would you give it a try?

I have a challenge for you—and it’s the same challenge I’ve been giving myself lately. It goes like this:

Go ahead, make a fool of yourself.

Seriously. I mean that as a literal challenge. Look for ways this week you can make a fool of yourself and go for it.

Wait for a moment when you would have, in the past, stayed on the sidelines or held back. But this time, don’t retreat. Don’t back off. Don’t give into fear. Move forward. Get in the ring. Make a fool of yourself.

Just see what happens. I think you might be surprised.

The post The Best Thing You Can Do for Your Life And Career Is Make A Fool of Yourself appeared first on Allison Vesterfelt.

One Phrase I’ve Stopped Using When It Comes to Money

Do you ever feel like no matter how much money you have, it just isn’t enough?

You try to tell yourself it is enough (after all, you should be thankful for what you have, right?) but maybe you’re struggling to pay your bills or you have dreams and aspirations which seem unattainable at your current income.

No matter how many “you’re blessed” pep talks you give yourself, it doesn’t eliminate the frustration of limited finances.

I get this. I didn’t grow up with a ton of money.

I mean, it’s all relative I suppose. I always had what I needed. I had more than some and less than others. But we didn’t shop at the fanciest stores. We didn’t eat out much. We didn’t drive brand new cars.

When people talked about buying things or going on nice vacations or spending money on experiences, just the thought of it would give me anxiety.

The things I wanted always felt a bit out of my financial reach.

That is, until recently.

To be honest, my financial situation hasn’t changed that dramatically. I do make more money now than I did when I was in college or graduate school (obviously). Plus, I’m married and we don’t have kids yet, so with two incomes, we have a little wiggle room in our financial life we didn’t have before.

At the same time, I’m still in a little bit of debt from graduate school and we have bills and obligations, like anyone.

We still don’t drive fancy cars. We probably eat out too much. But I look for coupons and sales. For the most part, we are pretty conscious about where our money goes.

There are still several things we desire to do for which money seems like an obstacle.

That said, something really specific has changed about my financial life—and that’s the way I talk about money.

Talking about money differently has significantly reduced the anxiety I feel around money, it has given me the freedom to spend money on the things that matter most to me and in a really weird way it feels like it has expanded the money I do have to make it more valuable.

I know that seems impossible, but stay with me.

There is one particular phrase I’ve stopped using when it comes to money.

The phrase goes like this: “I can’t afford that” (or “it’s too expensive”)

It’s not that this phrase is never true in its own right. But learning to reframe the statement has helped me reframe the way I think about money—to stop thinking about it as a scarce resource, only available to certain people, and to begin thinking about it as a renewable resource that follows certain laws of nature.

So, for example, I really wanted to go to Italy for our anniversary this year. It’s obviously not a necessity, but we never went on a big honeymoon and it’s always been a dream of mine. I checked airline tickets and they’re around $1200 each.

To us, that’s pretty significant.

But rather than saying, “It’s so expensive!” or “We can’t afford it!” I’m saying, “it’s not our number one priority right now. Maybe next year.”

This simple change takes the responsibility off of my outside circumstances and puts it onto me for my financial choices.

It allows me to be the one who controls my money, rather than the other way around.

This might seem like a small deal, but I don’t think it is.

The more I pay attention to the people I know who talk about money this way—as a renewable resource that is not fixed in space and time, but as a resource we can train and use to our advantage—the more I believe this is a key to being content with your financial circumstances, no matter what they are.

I find this simple shift to be helpful whether I’m talking about a trip to Italy or whether I’m talking about my next light bill or rent payment.

As Marie Forleo says, “Not enough is a spiritual state, not a financial one.”

I’m curious. What phrases do you need to stop using when it comes to money? What are your strategies for being content with what you have, rather than constantly hoping for more?

The post One Phrase I’ve Stopped Using When It Comes to Money appeared first on Allison Vesterfelt.

When Life Gets Hard, Have More Fun

Some seasons in life are just more difficult than others. Period.

Maybe it’s because of a project you’ve taken on, maybe you’ve lost a loved one, maybe you’re worried about money or you ended a relationship or you’re in a relationship that is taking a ton of your energy.

It’s inevitable. There’s no escaping it. Some seasons are just plain hard.

Something that occurred to me recently, though, was how often I make life so much harder than it needs to be. It’s not that hard things aren’t hard. They are. There’s no denying how a jam-packed full schedule or a loss of relationship or the sense you don’t have control over your surroundings can leave you anxious and frustrated.

But I’m noticing lately how often my own response to those difficulties is to hunker down, so to speak, to grin and bear it until the season is over.

It’s like a kid on a roller coaster who closes his eyes and buries his head in his fear-crossed arms on the “scary” parts. His attempt to protect himself from the circumstance doesn’t actually save him. It just blocks his view.

Lately I had an epiphany about this. I had to start asking myself:

What if I’m missing my life because of this tendency?

What if my response to difficult circumstances is making it even harder than it needs to be?

When the steep hills come, when things seem to flip upside down, when I realize there’s no way to get off this “ride”, what if closing my eyes doesn’t protect me? What if it actually just blocks my view—from the bad and the good?

What if a better response would be to have more fun?

I love the image of the roller coaster because the picture that comes to mind is of a little kid who decides to stop being scared of the ride. He realizes he’s on it already, anyway. There’s nothing he can do about that.

So he might as well enjoy it. Right?

Instead of closing his eyes, he opens them. Instead of crossing his arms and burring his head, he looks up and lets go of the handle bar. He lets the wind blow through his hair. He smiles. He’s having fun.

His circumstances haven’t changed. Only his attitude has.

What would happen if we changed our attitudes when we couldn’t change our circumstances?

Maybe we’d feel the wind on our face and through our hair.

Maybe we would smile instead of hunkering down, afraid.

While we can’t choose our circumstances, we can choose our response to them.

We can choose not to take ourselves too seriously—to laugh at our biggest mistakes.We can choose not to let stress get the best of us. When we’re up to our knees in paperwork, we can make a game out of it. When we’re stressed about finances, we have gratitude for beans and rice the same way would would for an expensive steak.

We can choose to focus on the light at the end of the tunnel (rather than the dark tunnel itself).

Maybe, if we do this, we’ll start enjoying this crazy ride—rather than burying our faces and waiting for the day we’ll be able to get off.

The post When Life Gets Hard, Have More Fun appeared first on Allison Vesterfelt.

Act In Spite of Your Fear, Not Out Of It

Fear is inevitable. We all have it. There’s no getting rid of it. But have you ever noticed how fear has a way of making us act totally crazy, irrational and illogical?

So yeah. That’s fun.

Recently I’ve been paying attention to the role fear plays in my life and asking myself how I can admit the reality of my own fear without letting it sabotage me. Here’s what I’m learning.

The best way to deal with fear is act in spite of my fear, without acting out of it.

Here’s what I mean by that.

Recently my husband and I have been thinking about taking on a project that is a little bit out of our comfort zone. Actually, that’s an understatement. This project feels like a huge leap. Think of the last time you did something and thought to yourself, “if this works out, it will be a miracle.” Now you can relate.

We’ve taken a few cautions steps forward, testing the waters so to speak, to see if the doors will open.

The doors have opened in front of us, and I’ve felt the familiar breeze of fear rush in.

This project is huge. It’s going to take us years. It’s going to consume all of our energy and our money and our time. I’m afraid it’s going to put a strain on our marriage. I’m afraid we’re going to run out of money and not be able to finish.

I’m afraid I don’t have what it takes—that I’m not strong enough to carry it to completion.

When I act out of my fears, I find myself racing around to make things happen for us.

I work harder and faster so I can make as much money as possible. I turbo-charge my work day. I go over the top—creating all kinds of rigid boundaries and rules to make sure our marriage is protected.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, I’m exhausting both of us. I’m spinning my wheels and wasting energy. I’m putting a strain on our relationship before we even get started. I’m exhausted and we haven’t even started the project.

My efforts are doing the opposite of what I want them to do.

My fear is growing and growing and taking over my life.

On the other hand, I’m learning what it looks like to act in spite of my fear.

Acting in spite of my fear requires acknowledging how scared I am, but not trying to do anything about it. I don’t try to fight the fear or will it to go away. I don’t try to work harder or faster to beat the fear. I know I’ll lose at that game.

Instead, I think about myself as a casual observer to my fear. I observe it the way I would observe the date on a calendar or the time of day.

There is nothing I can do to change it, to make it go away.

It is not in my control. It is not good or bad. It just is.

From that perspective, suddenly, I can hear what my fear is telling me—and this is the most valuable information.

It’s telling me about my priorities—that no matter what “projects” I take on in life, my marriage is an ongoing project that is most important.
It’s telling me about my insecurities—I often underestimate my own natural strength and ability to face life’s challenges.
It’s telling me I’m expecting too much of myself—I don’t have total control over everything, so I can’t be in charge of the outcomes of my life. All I can do is make the best decisions I know how and trust that a power greater than me is at work, even in my failure.

With that information, my fear is still present.

But now, it doesn’t feel so threatening to me anymore. In fact, it feels like a friendly force, reminding me what matters and helping me move toward what I actually want.

I don’t have to control all the details, pick up my pace or turbo-charge my day.

This whole thing doesn’t depend on me.

My marriage doesn’t need a bunch of rigid boundaries and rules to make it work. It just needs an honest, vulnerable, real version of me—where I admit my insecurities and talk about what’s important to me and commit to sticking it out, even when things get hard.

As for the project, who knows if we’ll get to do it. That part is out of our hands. We’ve taken the risk, put ourselves on the line, taken the right steps, done everything we know how to do. And all we can do is all we can do, you know?

The rest isn’t up to us.

The post Act In Spite of Your Fear, Not Out Of It appeared first on Allison Vesterfelt.

Learn to Fall in Love with Writing Again

What is it that made you fall in love with writing. Can you remember?

For me, it was the safety of it. Writing always felt like the only place I could really be myself—my messy, confused, convoluted self. Maybe it was the same for you.

Or maybe it was grief that drove you to the page.

Maybe it was desperation or pain or frustration. I don’t know.

But if you’re anything like me, the honeymoon phase with writing has come and gone.

At first it seemed so cathartic and easy, didn’t it?

You pictured yourself escaping someday to a cabin for a weekend, sitting perched at your computer with a cup of coffee in hand, sun streaming in. The birds would chirp. Lake water would lick the shore. Wind would blow through the glass and words would flow through your fingers like lightning.

Photo credit: Victor Bezrukov, Creative Commons

Brilliance would be so easy!

Instead, it’s more like this: you drag your tired butt out of bed at 5:00am, tripping over kid’s toys and re-warming your old, cold coffee (because you didn’t have time to make new stuff). You sit down to your computer and pose there, ready to record what comes to mind.

But the only thing that comes is garbage. Total garbage.

Before long, you’re asking yourself, “why am I doing this? Is this a waste of time? Does this even matter?”

Not exactly the love story you pictured, is it?

But here’s the thing. If you want to reignite with your passion with writing, you’re going to have to put aside all the tips and techniques. Not forever. Just for now.

If you want to rediscover your love affair with writing, you’re going to need to go back to the basics. You’ll need to uncover (or recover if you’ve had it before and lost it) your unique voice.

When we can discover our voice as writers, we have the power to do just about anything we want.

Uncovering your unique voice as a writer isn’t easy. There’s no formula or step-by-step process. It’s not about memorizing a list of tips or techniques or tricks.

Even some of the most well-trained writers haven’t accomplished this.

But the value of uncovering your unique voice as a writer is this:

1. It will build your confidence as a writer.

Again, even the most well-trained authors don’t necessarily understand their unique voice, or what sets them apart as a writer. But my guess is, the writers you love—the ones who have written books you can’t put down—are those who understand their voice.

They know their message. They know themselves. They know how to connect with an audience.

It doesn’t take years of training to be confident in yourself as a writer. But it does take this: an understanding of what sets you apart.

How much time have you spent thinking about what sets you apart?

2. It fuels your creative energy.

Something really wonderful happens when you begin to gain confidence in your unique voice. Suddenly, you have an energy when you come to the page.

You aren’t trying to ration your energy, or guard it, or save it for later.

Because you’ll find your creative energy is renewable.

3. It gives you permission to write for writing’s sake.

For a long time I thought I would feel like a “real” writer when I got a degree, or when I made a bunch of money doing it, or when I had a publisher, or when I published my first book. But even when I finished doing those things, I still didn’t feel like a real “writer”.

It wasn’t until I began uncovering my voice as a writer that I realized:

Far better than any book contract, any amount of fame or notoriety, any level of success was the feeling that I knew my strengths as a writer, was able to share my story in a way that was honest and clear, and could see how my story connected to a wider audience.

Are you interested in discovering your unique voice as a writer?

If so, I’m gathering a group of writers to walk through the process together in an online course I created called Find Your Writing Voice.

The course will last 4 weeks and will be packed with assignments, activities and lessons guiding you through your own process to rediscover your love for writing. It’s going to be really fun and enlightening as we work together to re-discover why we love this crazy, fun, exciting confusing process so much.

Your love for writing is there. You just have to find it again.

Join us by registering HERE

The post Learn to Fall in Love with Writing Again appeared first on Allison Vesterfelt.

You Don’t Need to Grow Your Audience. You Need This Instead.

I meet people daily—teachers, lawyers, moms, college students, web developers—who want to be writers. They don’t want to quit what they’re doing, necessarily. They just feel in their gut they have something to say.

Usually, they’ll say something like, “I’ve always wanted to write a book someday… or everyone always tells me I should write down my story.”

My response is, “you should!”

That’s when the excuses start. “No, I could never… I don’t have the time… no one would ever read it… what makes my story unique?… there are a million people out there who are better writers than me…”

Here’s the funny part.

I also work with people on a daily basis who are writers. They’re usually teachers or lawyers or moms or college students too, but they’re also bloggers or aspiring authors or storytellers and they reach out to me because they need a writing coach.

“Okay,” they admit. “I want to be a writer. But I’m not sure how.”

I tell them that’s a great place to start.

But you know what really gets me about working with these writers?

They say the same things to me everyone else says. They say, “What if I spend all this time writing my story and no one ever reads it? Why should I do this when there are a million people out there who are better than me? What makes me unique?”

And you know what I tell them?

I say: great questions. Those questions are an excellent place to start. In fact, I suggest we actually answer those questions. Like, let’s put them down on paper and see if we can answer them for ourselves.

What is the point of writing when I’m not sure if anyone will read it?
Why should I do this when there are a million writers out there who are better than me?
What does make me unique?

And after years of making myself ask and answer these questions—and making hundreds of other writers do it, too—this is what I’ve come to.

The point of writing when I’m not sure anyone else will read it is that it changes me.

It really doesn’t matter if anyone else ever reads it, or if it becomes a New York Times Bestseller or if an agent picks me up or I get a publisher and make a million dollars and get to quit my job. I mean, sure, all of that would be nice, but it isn’t the purpose of writing.

It isn’t the reason we do it—is it?

And of course there are writers out there who are better at writing than I am.

That will always be true, no matter how talented I become. Can you imagine if I said, “I’m never going to play tennis again because Andre Agassi and Serena Williams will always have me beat? Or, what if I were to say, “you should never play tennis again, unless you can beat me.”

My guess is, you would say, “but what about the joy in playing tennis?”

“What about the exercise, the friendship, the fun?”

The same is true for writing. Writing doesn’t have to be about growing a following or building a platform or getting a million people to read your work. It doesn’t have to be about growing your career. It can be, and if it is, you have to start where everyone starts—right where you are. But it doesn’t have to be about any of that.

Writing can be about becoming yourself.

In fact, I’m finding, when I make it about this—about becoming myself, rather than becoming famous—I’m much happier and more productive in the end. And, as a happy benefit, when I write for the right reasons, the audience tends to to follow.

And finally—the answer to the third question.

What makes me unique is I am me.

No one else in the whole world is like me. No one else has my temperament, my intellect, my experiences. No one else talks exactly like me, or has my same quirks. No one else spaces their hangers perfectly apart in their closet or listens to the same song on repeat 100 times while working on a project (yes, I do that. Don’t judge).

I’m perfectly my own person, perfectly valuable, perfectly me.

Saying, “my voice doesn’t matter” is like saying, “I don’t matter,” and although I’m certain at times we each believe that is true, it feels like a tragedy.

But what if we changed our motives for writing?

What if it wasn’t about becoming famous or selling a bunch of copies? What if it was just about becoming ourselves?

If that were the case, I have a feeling our motivation would drive us to write—even on days when it didn’t feel like anyone was reading, or days we worried no one would ever read. I have a feeling it would help us trust the process and lean in and stay true to our voices and our message—no matter the audience.

When we can do this, it’s almost like magic.

Our writing improves. Our audience grows (slowly, but surely). We become more wholehearted, well-rounded people.

Our healing becomes healing for others.

If you’re interested in growing a huge audience or selling a bunch of copies or becoming famous, I’m not sure I can help you.

But if you’re interested in this—in learning what it looks like to see yourself, to listen to yourself, to know yourself and to show up on the page, I have really good news for you.

I created a course for you—and for anyone who wants to become a better writer.

I designed this course specifically to help you:

Gain confidence in your innate ability as a writer–to draw out the talent already inside you
Achieve clarity by pinpointing your message
Grow in your satisfaction by teaching you how to connect with an audience in an authentic way.
Improve your productivity by teaching you to generate and re-generate creative energy

Whether you’re a mom, a college student, a teacher or a lawyer who wants to write but has been too afraid to start, or you’re already writing but aren’t sure about your next step, I challenge you to join me in this four-week journey to discovering your unique voice.

You won’t regret it. I promise.

Get Started With Find Your Writing Voice Today

The post You Don’t Need to Grow Your Audience. You Need This Instead. appeared first on Allison Vesterfelt.

Why Smart, Creative People Underestimate Themselves and How to Quit

Have you ever noticed how really smart, really creative people often totally underestimate themselves?

I see this in my work pretty much every day. I meet people who are brilliant thinkers, good writers, creative, passionate people who say things like:

“There are plenty of good musicians out there… the world doesn’t need me.”
“I would love to ______, but I don’t have the time, the energy or the money.”
“If only I were like [fill-in-the-blank], I could be successful someday.”
“I want to write a book or make music or build furniture, but so-and-so is already doing it.”

They are constantly under-playing themselves, staying small, talking themselves out of their dreams have and suffocating their creativity by comparing themselves to other people.

If I’m honest, I have to admit I do this, too.

It’s a habit I’ve tried to break, but I find myself slipping into it every now and then, especially when I’m tired, or when I’ve invested myself into a project and I’m feeling particularly vulnerable. All the statements I listed above are things I’ve said to myself.

But even more than that, I find myself living out of the following totally powerful, but completely untrue belief systems:

Success is only reserved for certain kinds of people—and I’m not one of them.
No matter how long or hard I work, it’s not likely I’ll achieve the things I want in life.
If only I were more talented, or more business-savvy, or quicker-on-my-feet (less like myself) I would be more successful.
Maybe, someday, I’ll catch a “big break” and that will change everything
Success is mostly about luck. I wish I were lucky like those other people.

When I think about it—and get really honest with myself, I realize there is a really distinct reason why I do this.

These beliefs are protections against disappointment and rejection.

There Are No Guarantees

One of the hardest parts about dreaming is we don’t have any way to know if the things we imagine for ourselves will ever become a reality. We have no way to know if what we most want will ever be close enough to grasp.

You can want to be married, want to own your own business, want to write a book, want to make the New York Times Bestsellers list, want to have children, want to own a home, want to be a millionaire, or want to move to another country—but will you ever get those things?

There’s no way to know for sure. There are no guarantees.

Learning not to underestimate ourselves requires learning to deal with rejection, to accept disappointment, to be open to redirection and to know, no matter what happens, life is better when we live aligned with our authentic selves.

Living open to our potential gives us a ton of freedom—but it also leaves us incredibly vulnerable.

So what if this is you—how can you stop?

If you are a smart, creative person and you find yourself constantly underestimating your potential (In other words, if you’re sitting here reading this, thinking, “Oh, I’m not that smart or that creative…”) this next part is for you.

Here are a few things you can do to shift your reality and live in line with your truth.

Agree that Choosing to Believe in Your Limitless Potential is Not Arrogant

Choosing to believe our potential is limitless is not an arrogant way to live, although a lot of sensitive, creative people tend get trapped in this belief. Choosing to believe in your limitless potential is the most incredibly humbling way to live.

When you admit your limitless potential, you leave yourself open for disappointment and heartbreak. You submit yourself to the laws and realities of the Universe—which means acknowledging your health, your surroundings, other’s behavior, and other important factors to the actualization of your dreams, are out of our hands.

This change. Dreams change. Life is unfolding. There are no guarantees.

Additionally, choosing to believe in our limitless potential means we are willing to put in the work to make the life we imagine for ourselves become a reality. It means we abandon the damaging ideas about success being reserved for a select few, or resources being limited or the idea of a “big break” coming our way.

We begin to embrace our own power and potential to shift and shape our circumstances.

That’s a hard, humbling pill to swallow. But admitting you play a role in your circumstances is the only way to embrace the power you have to change them.

Embrace the Power of Your Own Intuition

Advice is good. Those who have gone before us certainly have insight to offer us that we couldn’t have on our own.

The advice of experts can help direct us to become our best selves.

But too many smart, creative people lean on the intuition of others when their own intuition is pointing them down a unique or not-so-logical path.

Don’t ignore your own intuition just because you can’t make sense of it right away. Instead, grow in your ability to listen to yourself, to experiment and to learn from your own failures. Your intuition doesn’t always tell you the right answer, but it does always tell you something—and that something can be a gift to you, if you’re willing to see it that way.

Don’t ignore the gift of your intuition.

Embrace the Uniqueness of Yourself

One of the most damaging things we do as creatives is look to our right and look to our left, comparing ourselves, our lives and our projects to the people around us.

Not only will this take us off track, it will limit us—limit our potential.

It’s like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

There’s a quote I love from Martha Graham that sums this up perfectly. She says, “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it.”

She goes on to to say, “It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”

Finally, she says, “You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction, whatsoever, at any time. There is only.. a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

Join me in a commitment to quit limiting myself, playing small, comparing myself to other people or downplaying my gifts to appear more humble.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to underestimate myself anymore.

The post Why Smart, Creative People Underestimate Themselves and How to Quit appeared first on Allison Vesterfelt.

Stop Waiting for Someone to Tell You You’re a Writer

Way too many people sit around waiting for someone to tell them they should write.

They want to write. They sense they should write. They have things they want to say. But they’re waiting for family or friends to point out how talented they are, or for a few hundred people to click a link on Twitter. They’re waiting for a publisher to pick up their manuscript or to be “discovered” by an agent.

Meanwhile, they’re missing the most important determining factor of great writing—a willingness to just get started.

I did this for way too many years of my writing life.

When I first set out to be a writer, I was full of energy and enthusiasm. I had finally discovered the thing “I was meant to do all my life,” so I was convinced all I would have to do would be to take a leap of faith and the Universe would respond.

click image to learn more

So with a few freelance gigs under my belt, I quit my full time job, started writing my book and waited for publishers to show up on my doorstep.

Strangely enough, they never came.

I know. You’re shocked.

I went through a period of pretty intense frustration.

Actually, come to think of it, it was a little bit like a grieving process. There was denial at first—this couldn’t possibly be happening to me, I thought. A publisher would come any day. Any day they would be here.

Then there was anger, the kind of thrashing around that happens when we try to take things into our own hands.

Then there was bargaining. Like, “please God, I’ll do whatever you want me to do, if you’ll just help me make this happen.” Then, finally, depression, when no matter what I did, nothing seemed to change my circumstances.

But finally, I came to a place of acceptance.

And acceptance looked like this: I don’t need anybody to tell me I’m a writer because I just am a writer. I don’t have to make any money doing it. I don’t need an agent or a publisher. I don’t need to be on any lists or make a million dollars. I can even work at Starbucks.

I’m a writer. It’s in me. No one can give it to me or take it away.

And my biggest regret as a writer is that I didn’t come to this place much sooner. Because, somewhere in all of that, I lost years of great writing time waiting around, stalling, hoping for validation only I could give myself.

Somewhere along the line, while I was waiting for someone else to validate me as a writer, I forgot my being a writer had nothing to do with anyone else.

But here’s the beautiful part.

Although I lost myself in the process of becoming a writer—or, another way of saying it would be I realized I’d never had myself in the first place—nothing has helped me uncover and recover myself like writing.

Writing is incredibly healing. It is beautifully calming. It can help us find our way home.

So these days, when I sit down to write, I don’t wonder to myself who is going to publish my writing or who is going to read it or if it’s going to make me a bunch of money. I remind myself how writing is the only thing that has ever made me feel like myself.

And how that’s all I ever really wanted, anyway.

I’m not sure where you are when it comes to writing.

Maybe you know you’re supposed to start writing something but you’ve been putting it off. Maybe you are writing, but you find yourself wondering if it matters—and if so, for what? Maybe you want to take your writing to the next level but you’re not exactly sure where you’re supposed to start.

If that’s you, you’re not alone.

But here’s the deal: no amount of validation that will make you feel like you’re ready. You have to decide you’re ready for yourself. And once you do decide you’re ready, my guess is you’ll need a little bit of guidance to help you know the right next step to take.

I created this video course to help guide you through your next steps.

Don’t waste any more time waiting for someone to tell you you’re a writer. You’re a writer. It’s in you. And even if no one ever reads what you’ve written, it will be worth it. I promise.

Learn More About Find Your Writing Voice Now

The post Stop Waiting for Someone to Tell You You’re a Writer appeared first on Allison Vesterfelt.

A Course to Help Writers Find Their Voices

I read a statistic in the New York Times that said 81% of Americans, when polled by a small publisher, admitted they had a “book in them”. I’d say, from my incredibly informal research (by that I mean, my life) this seems right.

Most people I meet, when we get to talking, tell me about they book they’d write—someday—if time and space and money and “life” ever permitted them.

Here’s the saddest part of that statistic—most people will never do it.

Writing is really hard.

Some of what makes it difficult is logistics—questions like, “Where do I start? What should I include? What do I leave out?” But most of what makes it difficult is the sort of invisible resistance that seems to show up anytime we try to create something.

I work with writers on a daily basis and the biggest obstacle they are facing when it comes to writing is not a lack of skills or expertise.

The biggest obstacles they face are things like:

Distractions
Insecurity
A fear of insignificance
Uncertainty about their voice

In fact, most of the writers I work with—even those who have never been trained as writers, but are moms or lawyers or executives or business owners or teachers—are far more gifted as writers than they give themselves credit for.

They could write a book someday. They should write a book someday. They will write a book someday—if they can get over the obstacles I listed above.

Here’s the craziest part about all of this.

I have two degrees in writing. I have a bachelor’s degree in Writing and a Masters in Teaching Writing. I could put together lesson plan after lesson plan filled with the skills of great writers. But learning those skills won’t help you as much as you think they will.

At least not if you didn’t understand your purpose as a writer.

Not if you don’t understand the why behind your writing—who you are and where you fit.

Not until you discover your unique voice.

This is the predicament I found myself in a few years ago.

I had been writing for as long as I could remember. I had gone to school to be a writer, had started a blog and learned everything I could about narrowing the focus of that blog and growing my platform. I had followed dozens of other writers and tried to learn from what they were doing.

But at the end of the day, I didn’t know who I was as a writer.

I didn’t understand what made me different.

And because of that I would say to myself, “well, there are all these other people who are better writers than me, and they’re saying the same things I want to say, so what’s the point? Why should I even try? Why would I keep writing?”

What was stopping me from writing wasn’t that I didn’t have the skills to be a writer. It was that I didn’t understand:

Where I came from and how this was connected to what I wanted to say
What made my message unique from everyone else’s
How I could connect in an authentic way with my audience—without being cheesy, but without being totally self-centered
How to keep the creative energy flowing

That’s why I created this course for writers.

After working with writers for the past several years—and being a writer myself—I finally decided I wanted to do something to help.

I wanted all of us to be able to live into our brilliant and beautiful voices.

So I developed a set of lessons and assignments to help writers uncover the unique voice already inside of them. My approach has four parts (I developed these intuitively, based on the questions hundreds of writers were asking me and the questions I was asking myself).

The parts went like this:

Where do you come from?
What do you want to say?
Who do you want to say it to?
How can you nurture your innate creative spirit?

What I found is, when I could help a writer answers these four questions for themselves, all the other excuses and blockages and supposed “obstacles” keeping them from what they wanted to write simply faded away.

It didn’t always come easily (nothing important ever does) but when I could give them a little support, they were far more likely to make progress.

It was important to me to make this material accessible to as many writers as possible.

So, I decided to film the whole thing.

I invited my friend Raechel over to my house and guided her through the process, one-on-one. She’s a gifted communicator and I knew she would benefit from the curriculum I had created—and that others would benefit from listening to her process the information.

I also created a 42 page workbook to walk each writer through the process.

And here’s the best part—after months (and really years) in the making, I get to release this resource to the world in about two weeks.

This course is going to help you:

Know where to start when it comes to writing
Overcome the needless obstacles getting in your way
Generate and re-generate creative energy
Answer the questions, “who am I?” and “why does my voice matter?”
Connect in an authentic way to your audience
Understand your message

Ultimately, I hope this course gives you the confidence you need in who you are as a writer to continue on the path to becoming the writer you were always meant to be.

Check out this video to learn more about the course. If you’re interested, visit the page and sign up to learn more. Also, if you know any writers who need to discover their unique voice, please pass the message on to them!

Learn More About Find Your Writing Voice Now

The post A Course to Help Writers Find Their Voices appeared first on Allison Vesterfelt.