When we share our success or our failures, we share a lot about what steps we took to get there, what went well, what didn’t and sometimes reflect on what should we have done differently to make it all better. We share each milestone of our journey, but very rarely share how we really felt through all of this. And even if we do, we share those feelings very briefly, touching just the surface of it.

In our workplace, school etc when we see a successful person speaking on stage, all we see is the person and the success stories. We know nothing about the emotions they dealt with and overcame while making those success stories. Or possibly the anxiety they had before coming up to the stage that day. And thus we all think that success is made with hard work, overcoming business obstacles or personal limitations, and such. Which is mostly true. But we do not get to see the emotional hardships that that successful person went through. And then in our own emotional whirlwind of fear, anxiety, self doubt etc., we all, each individually, feel that we are perhaps the only ones who feel that way and thus are likely incapable.

I feel half the battle in any endeavor is inside of us, with our feelings. Feelings of of fear of failure, fear of what others will say, feelings of self doubt, feeling stupid, feeling incapable, missing home, crying it out, feeling lonely, feeling like a misfit and so on. And that battle is worsened because we haven’t heard many people feel the way we do, while we know many people have accomplished what we are trying to. If we all start collectively weaving our feelings into the details of stories, it will make it easier for us to make our emotions more acceptable by ourselves as well as by others. We can do this by purposefully sharing (in our stories) those feelings that make us feel vulnerable, and also then talk about how we talked to ourselves (or others) to work through all these feelings. That can go a long way in strengthening our own emotions as well as in giving hope to someone who is going through similar battle within.

This is how I feel, how about you?