For Yourself

“A creative life cannot be sustained by approval, any more than it can be destroyed by criticism.”
– Will Self

Dear Reader,

As I sit down to write this week’s letter, it marks eight years since I released my first book.

I still remember what it took to get there and honestly, most of it had nothing to do with writing.

When I made the commitment to write it, I didn’t announce it. I didn’t ask for input or feedback or opinions. I just started writing. In fact, I had a full draft finished before I really told anyone what I was doing.

Not because I was hiding it, but because I knew what would happen if I invited everyone’s opinions too early. They’d tell me how hard it would be. They’d give me reasons to stop. And slowly, the ideas would never make it out of my head and onto the page.

I’ve learned that some things have to be built in private before they’re ready for the world.

It took about eighteen months, as life kept pulling me in one direction, then another. But I kept coming back to the commitment I’d made to myself, to get the book done.

And then came the harder part. Putting it out there and releasing it.

At the time, I did not like making mistakes. The thought of releasing something with my name on it, for people to read, critique, and judge, was genuinely uncomfortable. It’s one thing to write. It’s another to let the world see it.

So I reviewed it, and revised it, and reviewed it again. Did that sentence sound right? Was this one too long? The endless second-guessing we fall into when we’re nervous, when we care how it will be received. Eventually I had to accept it would never feel perfect, and release it anyway.

But here’s what I’ve noticed in the years since. I’ve come across so many people who talk about writing a book, starting the project, making the thing they dream about and they never do. Not because they can’t. But because they’re waiting. Waiting for the right time, the right encouragement, the permission that never quite arrives.

The truth is, the things worth doing get done for yourself, not for approval or praise. You don’t need everyone to understand why you’re doing it. You don’t need them to co-sign it, or to get it, or even to like it. You just need to do it.

Approval is a nice feeling, but it was never the point. And criticism, as much as it stings, fades. It can’t take your accomplishments away.

So whatever your thing is: the book, the business, the creative leap, the life you actually want, let me encourage you: stop waiting to be understood. Do it for yourself.

My question for you this week:

What have you been waiting for permission to do, that you could simply begin, for yourself?

Sit with that.

– Ken