Make it personal.

👋 Hey friends,

For most of my life, I've dealt with anxiety. I'm pretty good at masking and managing it. I journal. I meditate. I go to therapy. But occasionally, I do experience debilitating bouts of fear and worry.

These anxiety attacks usually occur when I find myself in a double bind. Double binds are situations where we're presented with two irreconcilable options; where either choice feels like the wrong choice.

Double binds feel like being the rope in a game of tug of war. No matter what you do, both sides just keep pulling you in both directions; creating so much stress and tension that you feel like you're going to tear in half.

When I'm having an anxiety attack, this internal tug of war plays out in my mind as my body sweats, my heart races, and I am unable to think or breathe normally – until the pain of indecision is greater than the perceived pain of either outcome.

The Latin root of the word "decision" is "decidere," which translates as "to cut off". This is the only way out of a double bind. Cut the rope. Release yourself. Decide.

The relief from the fear, worry, and pain is almost immediate after making a decision. But it's a lot easier said than done.

When I write blog posts, I try to follow certain rules. One of them is, "Make it personal." This means grounding the piece within my lived experience in order to make the messaging intimate and relatable to you, the reader. My best writing comes when I follow this rule.

But over the past year, I've seemingly been on a quest to remove any trace of myself from the pages of this book. I've tried to replace the personal with the provable—facts, historical anecdotes, truth—out of fear of being wrong.

And this is part of why I think I've felt lost, unhappy with my drafts, and unable to share my work with others. Because I'm in a kind of creative double bind.

If I write a book about personal business philosophy, it will be the best book I can write, but publishing it will make me vulnerable to personal attack. And if I attempt to write an infallible book, I'll never finish the damn thing.

So, this week, after months of tension, I've decided to make this book personal. What that means exactly, I'm not sure. But I'm accepting the fear of looking stupid, being wrong, and making myself vulnerable.

Because I'd rather publish a bad book than no book.

Until next time,
Drew