More on Fear. Hint: Allow it.
I feared that by posting that I had a 5-star rating on my first published book, that someone would come along and want to change that, and that is exactly what happened. Today as I went to retrieve the link for a buyer, I saw it. Someone had come and given it a 2-star review.
When I told my publicist who brought the perfect rating on Amazon to my attention in the first place, she said maybe you manifested it with that thought.
And with that, I felt like I had finally gotten the missing piece to the phenomenon of “manifesting your fears” that never quite clicked until now.
What if our fears come, not to haunt us because we thought them, but to neutralize them so that we no longer have it to fear? Thoughts are powerful. We know this. But more than our fears being the thoughts that we create, I believe our fears come to show us we have nothing to fear. Because once they’ve happened, and you survive, they are no longer a fear.
When I first thought about the fact that someone might feel threatened if I post about my perfect rating and want to change that by giving me a low rating, I tucked it away. I thought if I don’t think about it, then it won’t manifest.
Trying not to think about our fears is not what keeps them from manifesting. It’s not having the fear to begin with that keeps them from manifesting. If the fear does exist, the best way to conquer it is to get to the other side of it. If we never experience it, then we continue to live in fear of it. And if it’s holding us back, then God in His infinite wisdom, will find a way to gently confront us with it so that it no longer has it’s power.
My fear of receiving a low review was stopping me from performing at my highest and boldly releasing what I felt called to. On the other side of receiving this 2-star review, I no longer fear the thing I feared the most about becoming an author. It happened. I’m okay. If I hadn’t allowed that fear to manifest, I’d still be a sitting duck about my next book coming out, mortified about the possibility of a bad review. Now that that’s out of the way, I not only survived, I continued to have a great day, AND made another sale moments later.
More critics will surface, most certainly, but they will have way less of an affect on me or get in the way of what I produce.
So trying not to think the things you fear is futile, because if you secretly do fear the thing you may as well think it, speak it, admit it and get it out the way. The quicker we get to the test, the quicker we get to experience a life where that fear does not exist.
Oddly, getting that 2 stars has me ready and excited for more. 1. Because now I KNOW people will go out of their way to be negative, which says way more about them than it does my gift. And 2. Because it will do absolutely nothing to my momentum.
I could spend an entire blog post on why people do that and what’s going on inside that causes them to. But that would be giving it more attention than they actually deserve.
In my last blog post, I talked about exposing your fears. I share how writing and speaking your fears takes away its power, and admitting them allows you to create a better strategy knowing that they are true.
In this case, the only strategy to avoid the fear coming true would have been to not post about it. But then no one would know it existed, and the other three people who saw it, bought it and were touched by it would not have known it existed. And that’s just the short list of people who actually reached out to me, telling me they did. I imagine there were others too.
Our fears put us in a lower vibration that repels the thing we actually want. Be it fear of partner infidelity, fear of loneliness, fear of fame or failure and everything in between, that fear is keeping you from experiencing the thing you truly want at its best.
Allowing those things to happen and fully embracing them, while painful and scary, can get you closer to the thing you desire, in less time than it avoiding them ever will. In my case, if I want to be a well known author, then fearing critique puts me in a vibration that repels my future audience, thus prolonging my journey to being known.
Like everything that happens in our lives, that 2-star review happened for me. For me to get out of my own way. For me to get over the fear. For me to get familiar with rejection in the publishing world. For me to become a resilient author.
Some things, even if admitted, you just have to experience to know that they are nothing to fear. We can’t control everything in this life. We’d exhaust ourselves trying. So maybe the lesson is, don’t try to.
Just let go and live. Live fearlessly. Love fearlessly. Give fearlessly. Post fearlessly. Create fearlessly. And when the thing you once feared happens and doesn’t kill you, you realize there is nothing to fear. And you fear life happening a lot less.
So let those fears come. Confront them. Expose them. Live inspite of their truth. That is how you conquer your fears. On the other side of receiving that low review, is a life still worth living and an author who is still going to deliver more for them to critique. 😁
If you’re interested in checking out my 2-Star writing, you can purchase it here: The Black Woman in Leadership's Survival Guide: 9 Things You Should Know About Surviving as a Leader When All of the Odds Are Against You
It is a very short book, and won’t take up much space on your book shelf, which may have gotten it the rating they gave. But that was intentional and who doesn’t love a quick read? So enjoy!
And if you’re going to rate it poorly, at least include feedback on why, so that I can improve. But one thing I’m not gonna do is stop because of it.
xo,
Bex
