How to Be Bold

A Change in Your Mindset.

Being bold is polarizing. When you decide to be bold, you decide to act.

You are choosing not to remain neutral anymore.

Because you are engaging in a polarizing act, you are going to run into two sides of the same coin. People will love you. People will hate you.

One of the reasons I write about this is to remind myself that it is okay to be bold while being uncomfortable.

One of the main reasons people are afraid to be bold is because of the judgement they will face.

I have to say with all my heart:

They will judge you.

They will make fun of you.

They will misunderstand you.

But so what? Do it anyway.

You see, you don’t have to — and you couldn’t, even if you tried — change what other people will think about you. You have zero control over that.

Doesn’t that sound so good?

You don’t have to change what other people think about you. Let other people be wrong about you.

All you can do is change the thoughts you are having about those circumstances.

I used to be terrified of putting my work out there. I was afraid and unsure and one of my worst fears was people making fun of me and thinking everything I’m doing is stupid.

That is bound to happen to all of us. I realized how much I’m wasting by caring: my time, emotions, thoughts and energy.

I have way more to gain instead.

When you pour your heart and soul into your creative work and try to reach an audience, you’re absolutely bound to run into circumstances in which no one understands you, people think what you’re doing is weird and no one really gets it.

I knew that I had to accept that reality. So what?

You have to appreciate what you’re doing so much that you allow all this opposition to happen and you still do it.

You have to care more about something else; you’re putting your blood, sweat and tears into your craft in order to create something that is going to serve the world in your own unique way.

Some people will scoff at it. Some people will be saved by it. What is more important?

Your work has to mean more to you than other people’s negative criticisms (which could be a good thing sometimes, by the way).

Your work has to be your own act of courage. It has to be something that you decide to put out there in the world, knowing it could be rejected, but doing it anyway because you believe so much in its value.

You have to believe in the value of what you are doing.

Believe in it so much that everything else falls away.

The simple act of doing is bold enough.