Why is it so hard to take a leap of faith in ourselves?

Is it being a woman? A woman of a certain age? Societal expectations? My own unreasonable demands of myself that I can't let go of? I know the answer but I don't like it.

The other day I was challenged by my wise and empathetic coach¹ to become the CEO of my own life. If I want a damn sabbatical to devote to my fiction writing, I should take it. Does a boss ask permission? Double or triple your hourly rates so you can do less of the business writing that pays the bills and more of what fills you up, she suggested. And then she pushed my edge further: More creating, less consuming, Amy. Think about it.

She wasn’t talking about consuming fewer calories but rather turning off the voices that fill my head through my constant reading and listening. The podcasts, the audio books, the NPR news shows, the music in my earbuds when I’m walking, the conversations with friends on Marco Polo while I’m driving. Plus all those Substack newsletters I subscribe to, the New Yorkers unread on my coffee table, the pile of books on my nightstand. Put it all away for a day. Even for an hour. Clear your mind. See what’s left when there is no other voice in your head but your own.

When we ended our video call, I ran. I jumped in my car, chasing a sunset that would disappear in ten minutes. I was distracted and took a wrong turn and got stuck in traffic. In an echoing silence I didn’t like one bit, I watched as the blaze of pink and orange clouds faded into gray and then the oncoming darkness. I turned around and drove home.

I had made a pointless run for it because I didn’t want to face what the Create vs Consume and CEO challenges had surfaced. Tears. Big, fat, inconvenient, unproductive tears. They would get in the way of forging ahead with my to-do list. I didn’t want them. But the tears didn’t care—not the ones that emerged on our call or the ones that came later when I was driving. “What’s behind those tears?” my coach asked gently.

“If I’m alone in complete silence, just with my own thoughts and feelings then…then I will feel it all. The loneliness. The yearning. The sadness. The disappointment. The anxiety. And I don’t want to go there,” I told her.

Later, when I told her about the desperate escape from my apartment, the sense that the walls were closing in on me as I sat in the silence, she said she understood that I was afraid that if I went to my feelings it would stop me or at least slow me down. That fear comes from our ego, always poised to protect us from whatever it perceives to be unsafe or uncomfortable for us.

“You know, it’s very likely that going into your feelings isn’t as big a deal as you think it will be. Rather, it will speed up the pace of healing. You’ll feel more integrated, more whole. You won’t be dragging those feelings around with you. You’ll feel lighter,” she said.

I could see the sense of it. The more I ignore the uncomfortable feelings the heavier their weight. I gave it a try that evening. I sat for a few minutes on my couch with a few flickering candles. No music. No guided meditation. I didn’t even get on my yoga mat.

I put my hand on my heart, which science has shown to be an excellent way to release oxytocin, the brain's naturally occurring neurotransmitter of “calm and connect,” and the direct and immediate antidote to the stress hormone cortisol.

I practiced 4-8-8 breathing: take a breath in for four counts, hold your breath for four counts and then exhale for eight counts. Intentionally extending my exhale to last longer than my inhale, my heart rate slowed.²

After those deep slow breaths, my monkey mind started to quiet. The anxiety I’d been feeling eased. A little voice inside me said, “You’re okay. You got a little scared. But you’re going to be fine.” Thanks to

Letters From Love with Elizabeth Gilbert

I now know that voice is unconditional love because I write letters to myself from love. It is the voice we all carry inside us yet is often suppressed by the pushier, louder inner critic. Why is it so easy—almost unquestioned—to have a constant litany of negative thoughts about oneself all day long, but when we are tempted to say something loving to ourselves, we feel sheepish. Undeserving.

First, however, there was the problem of tears—that is, why I saw them as such a problem. I’m sure I did my fair share of crying as a toddler and young child. I don’t recall being constantly shushed by my parents and not allowed my tears. Yet I internalized the idea that good girls don’t cry. I decided to ask Love.

“Dear love,” I wrote, in the candlelight, “what would you have me know today?”

Sweet girl, it is okay to cry. I know you are afraid to cry. You seldom let those tears flow. You don't want to probe beneath the meaning of those tears, fearful of what they might tell you. Darling one, you see tears as a distraction, as a weakness, as unproductive. I see you letting them start to flow and then stop them in their tracks. But the tears came today and I encourage you to be curious about what being in the silence of your own beautiful heart will tell you.

I want you to know, darling, that no matter how far you run I am always with you. You are here with me now, in love’s arms. I am cradling you with great tenderness, as only love can. I welcome every thought and feeling you have. Nothing you feel or think could make me love you any less. So tell me—what thoughts are you pushing away, that might crack open the tears? Give it over to me. All the hurt and unknowing. Just breathe. In this moment and the next and the next. Close your eyes, put your hand on your heart, and just breathe.

Photo by Danie Franco on Unsplash

My dear friend and fellow Substacker writer

Louisa Wah

at

Lily Pond

explored “The Healing Power of Tears” when her therapist asked her if she had a good cry lately, a “complete” cry. The instruction was to “cry until you have completely released the emotions pent up inside.” Terrifying, right? Not so, in Louisa’s experience. Like me, she feared that if she started crying, she would never be able to stop. Instead, when she didn’t hold back, her tears ended sooner than she thought they would. “I felt a sense of lightness in my body, and my head felt incredibly clear, as if the windshield was wiped clean.” From then on, Louisa decided “that I will make crying a part of my wellness routine, and fight to remove the shame around it.” She is showing me the way.

Now that I was calmer and not running from my tears, I could look at why the two challenges I had been given had triggered that reaction in me.

First, the invitation to be my own CEO.

There is an irony in this proposal because for all intents and purposes, I already am my own CEO. I have been a solopreneur for most of my career with my own company specializing in journalism and sustainability and business writing. But I am a lousy boss. I’m stingy with vacation time, preferring them to be working vacations. I don’t pay overtime and insist on evening and weekend hours. I expect myself—boss and employee in the same package—to be on call 24/7. I also have a hard time delegating. I try to do all the jobs my company requires and to do them all well—the writer, the editor, the marketer, the business developer, and the chief financial officer. And while it’s not unusual for a self-employed owner of her own company to have to do all the things, she’s smart when she recognizes she can outsource certain expertise she lacks.

I wasn’t that smart. The only thing I did outsource was my confidence in my ability to manage the money side of my business and my personal life. I left nearly all of that to my ex-husband, despite the successful career that supported us. I could make money but some voice inside me told me I couldn’t manage the money and I certainly didn’t know the first thing about how to invest it. Now I am playing catch up—finally hiring those experts: an investment advisor and a financial advisor to coach me on budgeting and long-term financial goals. I’m learning. I might even have an aptitude for it.

It is that outsourced confidence that my coach probed when she encouraged me to be my own CEO and raise my rates. “To ask for what I’m worth?” I verified. “No, let’s leave the idea of worth out of it,” she said. “That gets your self-worth tied up in it. You charge what the market will bear, what your experience and skills demand in the market.”

Deep breath. Could I really do that? Money issues go deep, as

Dana Leigh Lyons

explored so wisely in her recent essay on

Sober Soulful

, “Financial Bingeing vs. Financial Anorexia.” She suggests that people live either with the Fear of Not Enough or the Fear of Too Much when it comes to money. And I fell squarely into the Fear of Not Enough camp.

Being my own CEO meant getting out of my people-pleasing comfort zone and the risk that I could lose customers if I pushed the edge of what she was suggesting. Rather than “not enough,” I might be left with nothing at all. Or, I might just get the thing I really wanted. “If your clients turn you down, you’ll have your answer, won’t you?” my coach said. “It will make the idea of the sabbatical that much easier.”

I am not sure where I land yet on this challenge. I do know figuring it out is going to require more of that uncomfortable silence.

Second, the challenge to Create more than I Consume

My passion is fiction writing and always has been. When I am creating entire worlds from my imagination, I am at my happiest. But this part of my writing life has always come second—or third, or fourth—to the writing I do to earn a living, hovering on the fringes of my life. It has been convenient to blame that on circumstances but I know I’ve been making choices along the way that kept my novel writing on the sidelines. Now, with a novel I’d birthed into being in the last two years, I longed for a sabbatical to finally turn that creation into something I was ready to put out into the world.

The sabbatical I envisioned had me alone in a house in a picturesque setting, perhaps a small house in the woods, enough food and drink to sustain me, paths to wander to clear my head, but otherwise, just me, a notebook, a few books and my laptop. Lost in that world I had conjured on the page.

A lovely image, isn’t it? Which is why it was inconvenient to have my coach point out that I didn’t need to go anywhere for a sabbatical, as enticing as that seemed. Tuning out other voices so I could hear my own voice loud and clear was the key to unlocking the door to my house in the woods. By consuming less, I would create more.

My mind came up with excuses, and a lot of fear. The voices—the connections I find via various podcasts and newsletters, the books and the poems and the music, the conversations with friends—they are my comfort in the unaccustomed loneliness of my first-ever home of my own. They keep me company. They keep the walls from closing in. But they also keep the tears at bay. The tears that might just tell me more about what I need to create than anything else.

I now know the voices—and the hearts and spirits behind them—are not going anywhere. They’ll still be there after I emerge from my sabbatical, which after all is nothing more than enough space to breathe and be and create. And maybe even cry.

Questions for the comments: What does being your own CEO look like to you? And how are you managing the Create more than you Consume challenge?

Three Songs for 3D

Divorce

“Big Girls Don’t Cry,” Fergie

Dementia

“Dust in the Wind,” Kansas

This song was playing on the TV music channel at my mother’s memory care facility today and I didn’t hold back the tears. Her eyes keep closing these days. I hope the dreams are sweet.

I close my eyes
Only for a moment, and the moment's gone
All my dreams
Pass before my eyes, a curiosity
Dust in the wind
All they are is dust in the wind

Destiny

“Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself,” Jess Glynne

1. My coach is Deb Blum, founder of The Whole Soul Way. I have found her approach, program and supportive community of women life-changing and I love talking about it. I am looking forward to having Deb as the first guest on my Substack podcast next month. Learn more about The Whole Soul Way here. (Note: This is an affiliate link, which means if you should sign up for any of Deb’s offerings I would be paid a small referral commission at no cost to you. Affiliate links are one of the ways to support this newsletter which is largely a labor of love.)

2. My friend, yoga instructor and breathwork coach Cathy Struecker, has some excellent breathwork as well as yoga resources on her website and podcast, “ Health, Happiness and Harmony with Cathy,” like this one on the power of functional breathing.