Whatever comes your way, you can handle it
A reminder that you're stronger than you think.
A few weeks ago, someone punched me in the face.
It was 9am on Friday morning, exactly 30 minutes after I’d pressed publish on a newsletter titled “I’m working late, cause I’m a writer (among other things)”. My inbox dinged with a notification and I opened it immediately, expecting a positive comment from a reader or at the very least, a constructive piece of feedback.
Instead, the email simply read “literally no one cares”.
It felt like the wind was knocked right out of me. Usually I wouldn’t let this type of comment affect me but I’d been up late the night before painstakingly refining and tweaking and editing and overthinking whether readers would find the deep dive into my portfolio career schedule boring, or worse…self-indulgent.
These moments suck, albeit temporarily. It’s not easy building any business, let alone one where your skills are the product and your story is the brand. People question and criticise. They have OPINIONS. They make you doubt what you know deep down is right, and cause your thoughts to bounce around and echo with all the things that could go wrong. All the ways you might fail. All the possibilities and improbabilities. They hold you back from starting a business or launching a portfolio career or taking action towards your dreams.
But every judgement, every disappointment, every struggle, every failure.
You can handle it.
Every unreturned email, every door slammed, every risk that doesn’t pay off.
You can handle it.
When your pitch falls flat and your Hail Mary hails nothing. When you pour your heart and soul into a piece of work and someone responds by saying “literally no one cares”.
You can handle it.
When you are catapulted into a new arena with more seats, brighter lights, a bigger crowd. A place you are not ready nor prepared for.
You will handle it, because you’ve handled hard things before.
The radiating pressure of a high stakes job that claws at the edge of your sanity and bursts uninvited into every corner of your brain. The suffocating comfort of dragging your feet down a pathway you’ve trudged down a million times before. The entrepreneurial rite of passage of running out of clients, of confidence, of cash.
You have handled it. You always do.
And if your fear of what might happen is still stopping you from what could be, then ask yourself if maybe you’re capable of more than you give yourself credit for. Maybe you’re tough enough to walk through the fire without getting burned. Maybe you’re made for more than this.
Maybe you’re deserving of it all.
🙏🏼 Can you help me?
I'm thinking of packaging up some of my portfolio career systems and templates for you to implement in your own business.
Diving deeper: “the entrepreneurial rite of passage of running out of clients, of confidence, of cash”.
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Years ago, I wrote a post and sent it to my list. Within a few minutes a woman responded to tell me that it was “the kind of garbage she didn’t have time for.” I was sitting at a coffee shop when her message came in and my face went red and my stomach lurched and I was sure everyone was looking at me. It was brutal.
Months later, a friend sent me a text with a picture of her friend (a woman I did not know)’s fridge. On it was piece of paper held up by a magnet. When I zoomed in, I realized it was a copy of that same ‘garbage’ post. She had printed it and put it up on her fridge because it had helped her and she wanted to regularly remind herself of my words.
Somebody’s garbage is another person’s fridge inspiration. 😊
So true, Anna. I love Brene Brown on this - if you're not in the arena, I have no interest in your opinion... (I've quite possibly butchered that in the paraphrasing, but you know what I mean.) Thanks, as always, for sharing the bad as well as the good!