Unlearning Fear: Evolving Past Perceptions and Accepting New Challenges

Everyone has their own fears. Fears for creatives can be unique because sharing our interests and our work with the public can be a vulnerable experience. In this episode, I analyze my own relationship with fear from school age to now, and I share solutions to press forward as a creative in the public sphere.

Transcript

Raya: 0:01

Welcome back to The Sheer Creativity Podcast. Woo. I have not said that in a while, but welcome back to the podcast about creatives for creatives. So I've been on hiatus for the past two weeks, but in the words of Lil Kim, I've been gone for a minute, now I'm back with the jump off. These past two weeks, they've, they've been eventful, but it's been good things. And I think it's kind of helped me to reframe how I think about the podcast and how I think about creativity and myself and my mental, and it's been pretty helpful. One of my past interviewees, if you remember Alieshia from Alieshia's Adventures, she had posted something about this. Shout out to the corporate creatives, meaning creatives who work full-time in order to fund those creative outlets and activities on the side that they love to do. And I felt that wholeheartedly because these past two weeks I have been tired, a little burnt out, and while I like where I am and I don't despise this journey that I'm currently on, but it requires a lot of intentionality, it requires a lot of planning, boundaries, and being able to care for myself and not seeing my life as constantly going, going, going and doing, doing, doing. Sometimes I need the space to just be. So if y'all are still here after two weeks, I don't know why I felt like y'all were just gonna be like, girl, where are you? We don't even listen to you no more. We don found another podcast. I'm very irrational, but you guys are amazing if you're still tuning in, sticking around. I never wanted to be the person who took breaks. I was like, I'm going to have 52 episodes, right? And 52 weeks of the year, I should have 52 episodes. We gonna do some bonus. Like, I'm not gonna play around with it. However, at the end of the day, that's not really realistic because life is busy, life is chaotic, and I had the fear that I wouldn't be seen as legitimate or serious about my platform if I wasn't constantly doing it. So, That's just one of the pesky fear-based thoughts that I have, which coincidentally is what I'm gonna be talking about in today's episode. My relationship with fear and me and fear, we, we tight, like we are tight buddies and I'm really trying to disassociate myself from fear, but it's definitely a learning process so today I wanna talk about my experience with fear and anxiety a little bit and how that affects my creative journey this episode, it'll probably feel all over the place. I'm not gonna lie. It's gonna be like a story time. So I'm just going to unravel some of my fear, my fear-based memories onto you guys and help you see how I view fear now that I've grown from those experiences and how that pushes me creatively to become the creative that I wanna be. Strap yourselves in for a ride through my younger years, up until this point of my life, almost 24 years old. So let's go back to high school. Me, I feel like you need to know a little bit more about me in high school back then in order to understand my relationship with fear and anxiety. So high school Laraya is a lot like now Laraya, but she was very timid, but acted fully tough. I come from a long line of strong, independent women who knew how to speak their minds, and from the outside looking in, they've always known how to do that. But of course, they're older women. They've been through their own journeys and learned how to speak their peace about things. From my recollection, they've always known how to stand up for themselves. And I've tried to emulate that, especially in a school environment because as most of us know, kids are cruel and they care nothing about your emotions. They don't care how you feel so my way of coping through bullying or coping through friendship dilemmas or things like that. I went through building this facade where I made people fear me rather than them seeing that some social interactions made me a little anxious or that I really did care about what people thought about me. Instead, I was like, I, I will fight you. I, I really don't care what you think about me. And if you ever voice that opinion to me, I promise you I got something for you. I bet you won't say it again. And I know good and well that I'm a lot softer than what people assumed that I was. I think when you're a quiet person, people don't know what box to put you in, so I got away with being just spreading fear all across the school. Because I had built this very don't mess with me personality when I went to college. I kind of wanted to reinvent that about myself and reframe the way that I saw myself. So that's what I did my, my freshman year. I started off fresh and it felt really good. When I look back on that beginning part of my freshman year, I really, I really didn't struggle with the idea of fear or anxiety too much. And that baffles me now because it consumes a large part of myself now. For example, I joined in acapella group on campus because I love singing. Now, can I have a career? No. I'm gonna just tell y'all no. Mm-hmm. I can carry a tune, but I do love to sing and I sang a whole solo in front of the whole campus. Okay. Maybe not everyone let, let's scale that back. But my college used to hold these talent shows. And we also had Apollo, and if you know anything about Apollo, people were allowed to boo you and which we did frequently. There was one girl who, uh, she was a rapper and she was rapping at Apollo and she got booed. And when I tell you I never saw that girl on campus again. Like, I don't know if she changed her look or what, but I promise you Sis was gone and it's a very small campus, so I would've seen her at some point. But anyway our acapella group had sang Big Girls Don't Cry by Fergie, and now it's a little cringe. But I sang the first part of that song in front of so many members of the campus, and it's crazy to look back on that and be like, girl, like you went, you reinvented yourself. You changed the way that people saw you, and now you're at this new juncture of your life where everything is supposed to be experimental and brand new, and you're supposed to do this and that and now you're afraid. How does that happen? But as I thought about this particular situation, I remember why I stopped singing in college. I had sang a few more solos and I really enjoyed it. Like I really enjoyed it. Um, I have become good friends with one of the other girls in my group and her friend ended up joining and I went to this one particular rehearsal, and I remember the both of them were pointing and laughing at me. Now to this day, I don't know what was funny or what the source of their laughter was. But shortly after some other uncomfortable interactions I had with them, I ended up quitting the group and I found different things that I could succeed in things that didn't much require being in the spotlight or having this light shining down on me that made me the center. Further on in my college career, I ended up doing newspaper articles and. Really starting to love that I became Voice of the Year, which is this yearly thing that they give one of the staff writers. And then my senior year I became part of the leadership team and I got large stories that affected campus life and in different ways. So why did I share those moments with you guys? Because even though I have moments of triumph, I guess, moments of accomplishment, these times where I wasn't fearful, where I wasn't anxious, where I wasn't afraid, I'm at a point in my life where I feel fear and anxiety the most. And I wanna analyze where that fear and anxiety comes from and how did I break through it before? I feel like making people fear you is probably not the best solution. And really that's just a coping mechanism. Uh, I think that my specific relationship with fear is centered around outside perceptions of me, which is also out of my control no matter what I do to try to contain that and I believe if you don't know who you are, you're easily susceptible to your life being centered around outside perception. And that is going to easily affect the way that you see yourself, the things that you fear, the things that give you anxiety. When you allow people to dictate and distort your view of yourself, you then stifle your own efforts. It's not that you can't follow your dreams or that you're not capable. You simply don't believe you can because someone told you you weren't enough in some way. Whether they said that verbally or non-verbally. That's the message I received from those two girls in acapella. Something about me to them was laughable. Something about me to them was not desirable. And the same thing happened with school. You know, just because I wasn't like my friends or other people who achieved this attention that I desired, I struggled to see myself as more than someone's perception. And the crazy thing about it is that people will come and go throughout your life, but they always leave you with residue, whether that's good or bad, whether they know it or not. It only takes one situation, one circumstance, or one moment to take away a negative belief from someone's actions. Now that I'm coming into myself and learning a bunch about myself in the process and how I wanna grow forward in my creative journey, I'm back in that place of reinventing myself, like when I was coming into college. And I think I'm more afraid and I'm more anxious because the stakes feel higher the older you get. And I don't mean that like I'm ancient, like twenties is, you still young and spry out here. But what I mean is this isn't me joining an acapella group or being a college journalist. This is what do you want your life to look like? I say I wanna be a full-time creative. What does that look like practically? I say I wanna be a podcaster. I want this to be a stream of income. I want to be able to reach people and talk about things that are important to me as a creative and blending multiple niches together to form a cohesive brand. How do you do that practically? How? How do you do that? How do you become a successful poet? How do you become a successful photographer? How do you become these successful things? You're gonna have to be stretched. You're gonna have to learn some new skills. You gonna have to network which is awful. I mean, in my eyes, I feel like it's awful because I am also an antisocial person, but I'm learning how to not lean on those labels. Just because I don't like something doesn't mean that's what I am and what I mean by that. I'm trying not to lean on those labels because that's also a way of stifling yourself, right? You never go out to different events or stuff like that because you know you don't like them. You're gonna have to learn some new skills. You're gonna have to meet some new people. And this is the type of growth at this stage that you don't wanna renege on. Like this isn't, you know, I am going to join this acapella group. I'm Imma quit. I'm gonna join this new thing. I'm gonna quit. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna quit. I want this to last. And inwardly, I don't want to live this safe life when I feel called and led to be something that is difficult to visualize in my mind because I've never been that person. I've never been the girl who does not care what people think of her. I've never been the girl who held her ground, despite what people say. I've been the girl who cowers. I'm fully aware and familiar with that girl. I've been the girl who will try, but when it doesn't work, she's done. I've been her, I am her. And I've come to the conclusion that what I'm really afraid of now, and this may sound crazy, I'm really afraid of success because I don't know what that looks like and I don't know what it'll take to get there. Is that weird? Do y'all be fearing success sometimes? And I think the way that that manifests, there's a lot of negative habits that I'm holding so tightly to for dear life, because I don't know who I am outside of them. There's some work that I want to do, but I know it's going to require a new level of me that I haven't seen before. I'm afraid of not doing it, and then I'm afraid of doing it. It's very reminiscent of damned if you do, damned if you don't. And now I'm torn between these two facets of myself, where the old me doesn't feel comfortable, but the new me ain't comfortable either. What do you do with this? And I think one of the conclusions, one of the conclusions I've arrived at, and really I had to take a step back from social media and looking at my work and saying to myself, There's plenty of opportunities for people to hate me. I mean, when I wrote my book Wanderer, I go and read reviews now and I really should stop doing that, but they're not all positive and I have to learn how to be okay with that. There's plenty of opportunities for people to hate me. You could hate my subject matter as a poet. You could hate the way I perform. You could hate my interview style on this podcast. You can hate my ebonics. You could hate so many things about me. You could really take your pick. You can go to any YouTube video and look in that comments section. You gonna find somebody that don't like what that person is doing. When people have the desire to hate something or to pick apart something, they will do it and they will find something, even the most minute thing that you would think that wouldn't even matter. And I have to be okay with that. And that can't deter me from making the moves that I wanna make because then I'm just doomed to fail. And at the end of the day, people love and crave and desire authenticity. I recently read an article. I work in social media for my job. Which I know is ironic since, you know, I just said that I hated social media, but you know, you do what you gotta do for the money, for the check. Amen. But this article was about these social media apps that are gaining popularity with these younger Gen Z folks. And what they drew from the way that these social media apps operate and the different opportunities for connection. They've found that Gen Z folks prefer realness over brand promotion because we've literally grown up with the internet, so we can tell which people or brands are authentic or inauthentic. I can tell just by looking at your profile, I'm like, hmm. I guess. They also want these niche experiences that feel very personalized, like those broadcast channels that you see on Instagram or Patreon experiences where they receive perks and unlock different sides of the people that they're following, or brands that they're following. With that said, fear then becomes a moot point because free yourself, whoever rocks with you, will rock with you because they wanna see that authentic side of yourself and with this pesky fear of the unknown and fear of success. It's tricky, but here's, here's what I'm thinking about doing for a short amount of time, I want to live how I want to see myself living in the future. So personally for me, for the month of June, I'm thinking about taking a week to work on my future self because a week doesn't feel like a lofty amount of time when you are trying to work on yourself and your outlooks and creativity. We always seem to think, you know, long term or throughout life. And I can only commit to a short amount of time, cuz that's how I know I'm gonna be able to do it. It's the same thing with like quarterly goals versus yearly goals. When you set goals for the year in January, chances are you're not gonna go far with them. When you set goals for the quarter, chances are you're probably going to reach them because it's a shorter amount of time and it's like a focus in on certain things. So I'm gonna focus in, so if I want to focus on writing every day, I'll commit to a week of writing every day. If I wanna focus on tackling negative thoughts or negative habits. I'll focus on it for a week. If you think you can go longer and make it two weeks. If you wanna be a more scheduled person, try a week of scheduling out those shoots, making those deadlines for script writing or I don't know, whatever it is that you wanna be better at. Whatever it is that you do creatively, do that for a week and see if you see a change in your anxiety or your fear of the unknown, or being a new version of yourself. And that's just what I'm doing. I'm not saying that this is going on with y'all, but if y'all relate, just let me know. So this month, my focus is tackling my anxiety and confronting my fears. And let me tell y'all one thing that I did to do that. Yesterday I went to an open mic and I've performed, and now this isn't my first time performing. I've performed in college a couple of times, but this is the first time I've done it in my hometown and it was a really cool space, a lot of kind people. And I was shaking, bro. I was shaking like a salt shaker. I was allowing myself to have these pauses, mainly because your girl kept losing her place in her notes app, because I just can't get my life together. So I would stop and I would hear people clap for me or say, Ooh, that last line was a bar, or something like that. And that was really encouraging. I say all that to say that there's, there's opportunities coming up for me that I know I have the ability to conquer and I refuse to be afraid of it because you know how when things feel so tailor made for you, like, like this is for you, like it just fell into your lap. Sometimes you have to do those things shaking like a salt shaker. And when I thought about it, this same open mic happens monthly, and last month I had went, and I didn't perform anything at this one of course, but there was this one girl who came and she said before she performed, you know, this is not something I usually do, so ignore my shaking, and she was shaking. But the next time when she came and she performed again, she did not shake, and I thought that was so amazing and it really made me acknowledge her bravery because it's, it's so vulnerable to share work. Being an artist or creative of any kind is vulnerable, but more people notice your bravery more than they notice your timidity. And that's a bar. That's a whole word right there. So here's to us embracing our bravery more than we fear people noticing our timidity, and even if they notice it, what about it? At least I'm doing it. At least I'm stepping out here. There are people who are sitting on ideas. There are people who are sitting on their ideas because they're too afraid to step in and you're not supposed to know everything before you step in. You just gotta step out. I did not know anything about podcasting until I started it, and there's probably a lot that I need to learn, but I'm doing it. You can't say I'm not. So that was a rant of the things that I have been thinking about recently as pertaining to fear and how I wanna move forward in my life as creative. And y'all, I got some things in the works. I'm really excited. I'm gonna just say it right now and claim it. My birthday's next month, I'll be 24 and 24 will be the best year of my life. I'm not even gonna play with y'all. It's gonna be fire. It is gonna be amazing. I hope you guys are doing well. I hope you guys are finding your creative energy, and I hope that you guys are pushing through your own fear, no matter if it's creatively based or not. Push through that, do it shaking. If you're not following Sheer Creativity on Instagram, make sure you do that at Sheer Creativity. Also sign up for our newsletter that I really need to update. I haven't been writing recently, but definitely sign up cuz there's still content on there and I would love for you guys to read it. So definitely sign up for that. And that will be in the show notes. I will talk to you guys later. Here's to being back on the ball. You guys have a great one.