You won’t fail if you don’t share what you create – but you won’t succeed, either.
Sharing your work can be terrifying. It can feel like you’re putting yourself out there to be judged.
I write and post blogs 4 days a week. In addition, I do a podcast once a week. Then, because that’s not all, I have a dozen works of fiction published on Amazon – and more coming.
Despite all that I do – I still fear that I’ll fail. And that’s deterred me multiple times along the way from acting to grow my life and expand my art how I desire to.
Yet it’s impossible to succeed if you don’t do the thing and share the thing.
As a creative, there are various degrees of doing. Some people create for themselves. Others create for friends and family. Then, you get professionals.
Writers, painters, sculptors, and every stripe of artist you can conceive of face the same challenge. Our creations still have personal touches to them – and thus, rejection of them feels like a rejection of us.
Putting your work out into the world means you are – potentially – setting yourself up to fail. I can’t deny that as being so. But then, if you don’t put your work out into the world, that means you definitely won’t succeed.
This can be a truly frustrating process sometimes. But fear of failure is often a stopping point when you do anything that takes you out of your comfort zones.
It’s important to recognize that many of our fears are based on false narratives we absorb along the way.
What you see from others versus the truth
There are tons of stories about people getting a win handed to them, succeeding wildly on the first try, and being so damned gifted that failure was never even possible.
To be fair – I have no doubt some have had exactly this experience. But for every one of them, there are hundreds, if not thousands of others that had to put in sweat equity, time, and take a chance in the face of potential failure.
The notion of talent so raw and rare that it can’t fail has been the subject of lots of literature, movies, and the like. We’ve romanticized many of the great artists of history and believe they were such extraordinary, inevitable talents.
But the reality is that most, if not all, put in time, effort, work, and whatever it took to hone their craft.
Not to add a layer of complication to it – but some experienced little to no success in life. Vincent Van Gogh is an unfortunate example of this.
Then, just to add some more insult to injury, we have been presented with a bar of success that’s often obscenely high. What we consider success is many steps beyond our immediate capacity – and though desirable, not terribly reasonable.
The truth is that we all must do the work to create. Then, when it’s done, we have to take the risk that we might fail if we share that work with the world.
You can’t fail or succeed if you don’t do it
As my favorite quote from Yoda goes,
“Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.”
While try can, in some contexts, be good, the dismissal of it in this quote bears recognition because it has an important meaning.
Yoda’s problem with try – in this context – is that it lacks conviction. Luke makes it very clear that he’s pretty sure using the Force to lift his x-wing out of the swamp isn’t going to work, but he’ll give it a half-hearted try. Yoda’s admonishment points out that the power is his if he does it with conviction – rather than half-assedly trying it.
Unsurprisingly, Luke fails because he doesn’t believe in what he’s doing.
On too many occasions, I gave it a half-hearted, half-assed try. Doesn’t matter what “it” is or was – I didn’t do it with conviction. And thus, big shocker here, it didn’t go anywhere and failed.
But if you don’t do it – in this context, produce and share your work – you won’t fail. But neither will you succeed.
This raises a new and important question:
What does success look like?
As an author, the pinnacle of success for me would be best-seller status. Then, with that, offers to turn my books into TV shows or movies. And also the opportunity to give talks online or in person on the writing craft and so on.
But that’s not success on a realistic level. That’s ultimate success and would rock. But there are other levels of success to achieve first.
The first level of success is finishing a book I’m working on. There are so many would-be authors who just can’t complete a work. Finishing is a success.
The next level of success is having a work edited and then publishing it. I did it – I wrote the story, put the effort into making it solid and whole, and then put it out there in the world.
From there, the next level of success is increasing recognition and sales. That’s only partially in my control – but an important part of the greater whole, and levels of success.
To succeed isn’t a one-and-done proposition. There are multiple levels to measure success. And no one is any more important than the next.
Reaching the pinnacle of success that I shared above would be amazing. But I won’t get there without the prior successes above. Recognizing and acknowledging this goes a long way toward growth as I would choose it to be.
But to go anywhere and succeed in any way – you need to do the thing and risk failing.
You might fail – but that’s not a bad thing
There are some incredible things in our world today that wouldn’t exist were it not for failure.
Bubble wrap, WD-40, and Post-It Notes failed to be what was intended for them. But all of these are tremendous successes in their current, well-known iterations.
Yes, when you share your work, you might fail. And that’s not fun. However – that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Failure can teach us all kinds of useful things we might not otherwise have learned. And that can be incredibly invaluable.
You won’t fail if you don’t share what you create – but you won’t succeed, either.
Here’s the most important thing to keep in mind regarding this – it’s not the end if you fail. So long as you are drawing breath, you have more opportunities to do it again. But maybe do it better.
Yes, if you share your work you might fail. But if you don’t – you’ll definitely fail. And you can’t succeed if you don’t do it.
Nope, this is not easy. But so very worth it when you are choosing the path for your life. I for one wouldn’t have it any other way.
Stepping out of our comfort zones isn’t easy. But it’s how we grow and evolve on our own terms. I think that’s a worthwhile endeavor.
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