a pep talk for your content creator self

I have been going live every day this week for the Substack 5-Day Bootcamp and it has been giving me so much more than I anticipated.

It's also, not surprisingly, been about so much more than Substack.

On Day One, I said this thing that I have been repeating all week and it's that if you were to 10x how much you are showing up right now (because, let's face it - it's probably not a whole lot) in your content and your commitment to your creative output and expression - you would still hardly be scratching the surface on what people deserve to receive from you. 

Let that settle in...

What I know about you is that you are gifted in a way that changes people's lives. You are the kind of coach, creative, practitioner, seer, oracle, magical genius  unicorn that people say, "Wow..." when they experience your work.

What I also know about you is that you probably have a complicated relationship with sharing yourself, with centering yourself and your work, with talking about what you do and how people can work with you.

But here's a true thing that doesn't get less true just because it's uncomfortable for us...

One of the most relevant data points of the most successful folks I know have this one specific thing in common - they're prolific and consistently so. 

Beneath that is another really important factor - they feel a sense of satisfaction from their creative practice and it not only shows - it's felt. And as a result of that, the feedback loop feels clean.

But there's an even more important factor...that feels almost too nuanced to even mention: Some part of them feels a real conviction to share. 

Meaning, they value what they have to say.

I think it's important for me to confess that this has been the most challenging aspect of my creative life.

Somewhere along my path I developed the belief that no one cared about what I was creating - which, for the record, is unequivocally a flat out LIE.

Nonetheless, it has been a shadow that's hung around for longer than I would like to tell you.

But, what I've come to realize is that the satisfaction I have from typing these words on the screen, while I listen to this song takes me to a place that I want to spend more time in. And when I get to this part - the real truth-telling, where tears start to well, where I am not trying to be something for you - other than honest...I'm free.

I write because it feels like breathing to me. 

I want this for you, I want this for us...and for humanity.

Because there's something that happens when we allow ourselves to work through the resistance and stay with the feeling long enough to let it take us over.

It's where the magic happens and the connective tissue starts to regenerate - where the whole point of the thing starts to make sense and the art is born. 

Going live every day has been giving me this gift.

Letting the commitment guide the action rather than letting perfection keep me from the action is the breakthrough zone.

Saying real things out loud, not just in our heads and sharing our humanity out in the open, rather than hiding behind our fears - is the way.

This is my way of saying, go create something...

xo

Amber