Your Best

In Martha Beck’s latest book, The Way of Integrity, the Harvard-trained sociologist, life coach, and memoirist, wrote about the universal human habit of making decisions for oneself based on what she called cultural expectations, rather than from our authentic desires. She defined culture as any group of which we are a part, whether it’s a family, a school, a church, or a country. She pointed out that we are by nature social creatures, and the desire to fit in wherever we find ourselves has ancient primal roots in all of us. (You can watch my interview with Martha here).

It’s a challenge with which every writer is faced when she sits down and faces a blank page, whether she’s aware of it or not. It’s why I wrote Fearless Writing, in fact. You have to write your story, not the story you think the market, or your agent, or teachers want you to write. The belief that there is a conflict between our desire to tell our unique story and our desire to have that story accepted somewhere is what keeps many a writer up at night. To understand that these two desires need not be in conflict, that your story meant to find its own place, its own family, is every writer’s journey.

Indeed, it’s every person’s journey, whether they are writers or not. I wish for everyone to find their own unique way in the world, to listen only to their own hearts, their own guidance, but I know many people are not. I know most people are looking toward what Beck calls culture to tell them what to do and how to live. I also know that the books and essays and articles they read are a part of that culture.

It doesn’t matter whether you write the kind of inspirational essays and books I like to write. If you are sharing your stories, they are instantly a part of our vast, ongoing cultural conversation about happiness, and suffering, and justice, and honesty, and love, and fear, and how a person should live a life. Someone somewhere will be influenced by your story. It’s inevitable. Let that awareness help you. Let the story be the best you have to offer. You will never feel better, truer, more interested and alive than when you are telling the best story you know, and the world will be just a little better for you having shared it.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt available for pre-order now!
You can find William at: williamkenower.com