Fearful Productivity

Have you ever had one of those moments where you realized something wasn’t as scary or as complicated as you thought it was? Did you ever chastise yourself for not jumping on an opportunity because you were too afraid to go after it?

If any of you know me, you know that I rarely post on social media. In fact it makes me anxious. I like knowing who I'm talking to and who consumes my material. Documenting and posting is just too fussy. Whipping out a camera to capture a moment takes me out of the moment. Unfortunately for me that preference does not work in the era of social media. Being open and filtered is popular. And this has been my biggest struggle starting out.

Posting everyday makes me uncomfortable and anxious. Instead of embracing a way to personally market myself and be in control of my brand, I fear the exposure. However, one thing my self help journey has taught me is that I have to go through the fear or work with it. Never run from it or push it down. It only gets worse. So I sat down and analyzed my feelings.

The most notable thing was that my fear didn’t prevent me from working; it only slowed my productivity. Procrastination became one of my close friends, and I had a hard time refusing its advances. Thankfully, I read enough books to know that doing a little a day on your worst days gives you the strength to keep pushing in better times. And that’s what I did. Even if it was 25 minutes instead of an hour, I needed to give it time. But I still didn’t know the cause of my fear.

I decided to meditate and ask myself over and over again what scared me. And after two and a half weeks, the answer came to me. I realized that I was afraid to be successful on social media. Success on social media meant:

No privacy.

No real world engagement.

Trolling.

Fake interactions.

It was empty. I didn’t want to lose myself while finding myself. But it was something I needed to confront. Strip it down and help me understand it.

As with everything you request in life, the universe answers when you ask for directions. Towards the end of my two and a half week stint, I had a meeting with two of my high school friends. One happens to be a social media marketer and the other always gives me great life advice. We set the meeting up a week earlier when I wasn’t as concerned about my slowed productivity. I was looking forward to hearing about their lives and talking about the latest events in my life. I didn’t know they’d be the people I needed to see.

As we were catching up it clicked that I have the perfect people right in front of me. And I unleashed my concerns. They flooded me with valuable tips, tricks, advice and strategies I could use. My social media marketer friend sent me so many valuable resources to help with my marketing strategy. They also gave me great advice on how to relieve some of the pressure I’ve felt in regards to the quality of content I post. You will see some of those changes reflected over the next couple of weeks.

The moral of the story is when you are experiencing fear, talk to it.

Find out the baseline reason. Only then can you know what you’ll need. If I didn’t do that soul searching before I met with my friends, I wouldn’t have asked them for advice. Our meeting would have been filled with surface level issues and regular life check in. I would not have picked their brains for the best strategies.

The universe always delivers.

If you concentrate on something long enough, it will reward you with what you want. So whenever you are afraid, find out why and ask the universe for the antidote. Embrace the darkness of the unknown and trust that the universe will shine a light for you. Work with your fear. Make it work for you. It’s only letting you know that you need more information and/or more preparation. Go for your dreams and don’t let your fears stop your train!

Thank you, thank you, thank you for reading this post today. I am grateful for your presence and I hope this post gets you closer to achieving your dreams.

See you next Wednesday!