The Risk of Completion

I'm reading the book Undoing the Silence: Six Tools for Social Change Writing by Louise Dunlap. It's one of those books that causes such deep thought that it takes an inordinate amount of time to read. I've been at this for months and I'm still in the first chapter.  Everything she writes feels so powerful that I feel like I have to take a break to chew on it for awhile.

She talks about the voice in your head that tells you that you're not good enough or that you don't deserve this or that, aka the personal silencing effect.  She gives the tool of affirmation to help work that  voice into something more constructive.  She gives a list of self affirmations (specifically to do with writing) that you are supposed to write over and over again to confront that negative voice that will naturally come when you start writing something empowering. Most of them sounded cheesy to me, then I got to number 12, the very last option and it was sitting there looking at me like she wrote it just for me, like it might not be in any of the other copies of this book, only mine.

"I am willing to take the risk of completing this."

I've never seen myself as much of a quitter, but admittedly, when something is terribly meaningful to me, I have this knack of holding on to it so hard that it dies a little. Like Tommy Boy.

I don't know if that resonates with any of you out there in blogging land.  But if it does, maybe it's time for you to pull out a pen and paper, or open a Word document and start writing that sentence over and over again until you start that dialogue with yourself.  It's interesting what you will find.