I\u2019ve\u00a0been absolutely terrified every moment of my life<\/p>\n
And\u00a0I\u2019ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do.<\/p>\n
– – – \u00a0Georgia O\u2019Keeffe<\/p>\n
I\u00a0started facing my fears in a dream when I was five years old. I was sitting on\u00a0our black and white diamond shaped floor tiles in the kitchen of my childhood home.\u00a0I was looking at my white ankle socks and my lace up shoes when I heard an\u00a0eerie guttural sound. I looked across the room and there was a massive lion glowering\u00a0at me. He was roaring so fiercely, I covered my ears with my hands to block out\u00a0the terrible noise. His thick yellow and dark brown mane that encircled his\u00a0powerful neck was wet with drool that was spilling down across his huge fangs.\u00a0His eyes were inky and a tuft of thick black hair stood upright at the end of\u00a0his long bushy tail.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0rushed to the door behind me and grabbed upwards for the knob. It was just\u00a0beyond my reach. I teetered on wobbly legs when I realized I was dreaming and I\u00a0needed to wake up. I got back on the floor and rolled myself into a tight\u00a0little ball, covered my head with my hands and waited for the beast to attack.\u00a0I heard the raspy inhale, I felt a blast of hot wind and I smelled the musky\u00a0scent as he flew into the air. A moment later, I woke up in the kitchen,\u00a0standing barefoot at the Formica table, holding a pick plastic placemat in my\u00a0hands.<\/p>\n
When\u00a0I look back, my life has been filled with fear, it still is, but I never let it\u00a0stop me. After I helped a motivational speaker write a powerful bestseller, I\u00a0got a call to write a memoir for a legendary diva. She had fired her first\u00a0writer and she needed to find another one right away to meet the terrifying\u00a0short deadline. The plan was that I would write a chapter for her and she would\u00a0decide if she wanted to hire me to do the rest. I agreed, hung up the phone, climbed\u00a0into bed and pulled the covers up over my head.<\/p>\n
Why\u00a0in hell had I agreed to do this? I was filled with dread. I was scared to meet\u00a0her. But I would have to do in-person interviews to study the way she spoke,\u00a0the words she used and the rhythm of her sentences. I would have to write this\u00a0book in the first person as if I were she. How could I be presumptuous enough to\u00a0think I could write in the voice of a legend? I had no idea how to organize the
material, tape the sessions (there were no cell phones at the time), transcribe\u00a0the tapes and write a book that would reflect who this woman was and how she\u00a0had achieved massive stardom. I thought about a friend who got an offer to help\u00a0Princess Diana with her public speaking skills. My friend was so intimidated,\u00a0she suggested they meet next month. A few weeks later, the princess died in a\u00a0car crash and to this day, my friend has regretted her decision\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u00a0didn\u2019t want that to happen to me. It was time to face the lion in the kitchen,\u00a0so I sat down and wrote the chapter in two days. I knew it wasn\u2019t perfect. That\u00a0was impossible. Salvador Dali said, \u201cHave no fear of perfection \u2013 you\u2019ll never\u00a0reach it.\u201d But I could try. She would either hate what I wrote and move on to\u00a0someone else, or like it and hire me. To my amazement, she hired me.<\/p>\n
At\u00a0first, I was ecstatic. I felt proud that I had done a good job \u2013 until the next\u00a0morning when Fed ex delivered two large boxes filled with photographs, magazine\u00a0articles, souvenir programs from the star\u2019s concerts and stunning reviews of\u00a0her movies. I carried the boxes into my living room, took out the contents,\u00a0spread them across the floor and started to categorize them. My inner critic was\u00a0very loud. He yelled in my ears that I was certain to fail and I better quit\u00a0while I was ahead. But once I started sorting out the material and began to write,
I got too busy to think about it and it felt like the project started writing\u00a0itself. It turned out to be a bestseller. Now, with two bestsellers under my\u00a0belt, I got calls from publishers who wanted me to ghostwrite celebrity books\u00a0and each time, the fear showed up. The lion in the kitchen. I started expecting\u00a0it and the more I wrote, the less anxious I became and the smaller the lion.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s important to point out here that there is a big difference between facing our fears and putting ourselves in harm\u2019s way. We have a knee jerk reaction to get the hell out of there when we\u2019re in danger and we need to listen to ourselves to stay safe. But finding the courage to create something new and difficult takes a different kind of audacity and belief in ourselves. None of us want to look foolish, but there\u2019s no way to succeed if we don\u2019t give it a go and put a foot in the door. It may get slammed in our faces, but it also may swing wide open and invite us in. Babe Ruth said, \u201cDon\u2019t let the fear of striking out hold you back.\u201d<\/p>\n
When\u00a0I started writing professionally, a writer friend gave me advice that I keep in\u00a0mind to this day. She said, \u201cDon\u2019t think about the book as a whole. Go chapter\u00a0by chapter so you don\u2019t get overwhelmed.\u201d When I have a hard job in front of me\u00a0and a short deadline, I take it word by word. Step by step. It\u2019s about starting\u00a0small, one page at a time and moving forward from there.<\/p>\n
During\u00a0my AIDS volunteer work, when I sat at the bedsides of people who were saying\u00a0their last good-byes, I never heard anyone talk about regretting what they did.\u00a0Even if they failed. They regretted what they didn\u2019t do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve\u00a0been absolutely terrified every moment of my life And\u00a0I\u2019ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do. – – – \u00a0Georgia O\u2019Keeffe I\u00a0started facing my fears in a dream when I was five years old. I was sitting on\u00a0our black and white diamond shaped floor tiles in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2461"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2462,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2461\/revisions\/2462"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}