Getting the courage to write online takes guts.
I’ve always overlooked that fact. I’ve stupidly believed you just do, and those of us who do it are everyday people. Over the last 4 weeks I’ve been teaching back-to-back writing classes and realized I was wrong.
Read how to use this hack over the next 4 minutes to break through.
Believe you have value
The crux of this hack comes down to permission.
You have to give yourself permission to write. No one else can do that for you. To give yourself permission you have to believe your life has value.
It blows my mind how everyday people skip over their careers and jobs as if they’re nothing. As if they’re experts in nothing. As if their life is worthless.
It’s not. Whatever you do for work or in life, it has enormous value. Readers on the internet are dying to read about the world of average people just like them who share experiences they can relate to.
This is counter-intuitive. We’re trained to believe that the best stories come from famous people. That’s not true.
Can we really relate to a story written by Elon Musk in a tweet about his young son? No. He has more money than most of us will ever have. He lives a life of riches and can afford to make lots of mistakes.
In some ways, his success has made him immune from criticism or cancel culture. They’re not the sort of people we want to read personal stories from. We want stories from people like us.
The relatability helps us look at our own lives and think “If they solved this problem or lived this hard experience, perhaps I can too.” That’s the true definition of value, and everyone reading this can do it.
Once you see your value it’s easy to write your permission slip and start writing online, fearlessly.
Know your writing skill is good enough
Too many people don’t give themselves permission because they think they’re a bad writer.
Like writing is only meant for Greek gods. Like internet people expect perfect prose and amazing grammar.
Have you read tweets before? The grammar is bad. No capital letters. Spelling mistakes. Bad formatting. Split sentences. Yuck. Yet some of these tweets go mega viral despite all that. Why?
The idea.
People buy ideas and forgive the writing and technicality. Your writing skill only needs to be basic. If you write emails or send text messages, you already have what it takes.
In fact, those who have English as their second language have a huge advantage. The more basic your writing is and the smaller your vocabulary, the easier your work is to read.
People love to read easy. They love simple.
Good enough is near enough.
Do something just for you
Writing is something a lot of people love to do.
It’s special to them. They get excited when people read their stuff or hear their stories. It’s why the idea of publishing a book and getting a New York Times Bestseller is one of the most popular goals you’ll ever come across.
The thing is people give their soul to jobs, families, the pursuit of money, etc. We give all our spare energy to our children or our aging parents. But why can’t you do something just for you?
Writing can be that pursuit. Write for you. Write because you want to.
How to overcome the fear of writing online
Here’s why a lot of people never start writing online: fear.
A lot of people stop writing because of fear too. The thing about fear is it can never be avoided. Anything worth doing in life carries fear. The greater the goal the higher the level of fear.
The trick isn’t to walk away from fear. It’s to embrace it.
Feel the fear and do it anyway, as Tony Robbins says. Dare to be so bold. When we stay clear of fear we end up plateauing in life. The energy gets sucked out. All the fun is gone.
Fear isn’t crippling. No. Fear is energy.
Use fear’s energy in your writing. What I do when I feel fearful is tell myself that what I wrote will never get published.
Then I let it sit there for a few days. When enough time has passed I feel enormous anxiety and eventually hit publish.
Then I run from the computer and tell myself, “If I wake up in the morning and still hate it I can always delete it.”
But when I wake up in the morning I forget everything. By the time I remember about the vulnerable piece of writing that made me fearful, it doesn’t matter because the world has already seen it.
Don’t let fear stop your writing. Let it enhance your writing.
That’s how you give yourself permission to write online and use fear rather than let it use you. Now go write. Then hit publish.
