In an excerpt from her book Heart. Soul. Pen.: Find Your Voice on the Page and in Your Life, Robin Finn offers advice on reframing thoughts and beliefs that inhibit your creativity and finding the confidence to write what you feel. “We all have them,” she says. “There are different versions and often originate in childhood or when we are young, but essentially, all say the same thing: you are not good enough so stop writing. They keep us small and quiet. They force us to give up.”
But we can unpack, reject, and evolve those thoughts. “When I changed my beliefs, my life experience changed,” Finn writes. “That is how powerful and predictive inner beliefs are: they dictate your inner thoughts as well as your outer experience.”
Nonetheless, when Finn started writing in earnest, those old beliefs bubbled up. “I knew they were there,” she says. “I knew that I held judgments against myself. I knew that I did not believe I was a real writer. I knew that I thought everyone else was cooler and smarter and way more interesting than me, a middle‐aged mother of three.”
Finn examined those beliefs, such as the fear that she was too old or too boring, that her topics weren’t interesting, and that she simply wasn’t a good writer. Then she asked two questions: Did the belief support her goal to write? Did the belief make her feel good? If the answer to both questions was “yes”, she kept the belief. If the answer to one or both questions was “no”, she revised or rejected it.
Her new beliefs include that writing is her calling and that she is naturally creative. Finn gives herself permission to write what she feels is true and to treat writing as an adventure and an exploration. “If we want to find our voice, write with abandon, or allow our thoughts and ideas to flow onto the page, we have to stop and look at the beliefs we hold about writing before we start writing,” she writes. If we don’t engage in this practice, we are likely to become excited about our story ideas, but fail to follow through.
“When I talk with students who have encountered this phenomenon, they tell me that, deep down, they did not feel their story was enough—not big enough or important enough or worthy enough—to justify spending time writing about it,” Finn adds. “They tell me they felt they did not have the authority, wisdom, talent, or commitment to write it.”
Instead of giving up on your writing, give up your limiting beliefs.
