(This is the third in a series of articles about transcending the feeling that we’re “trapped” in what we’re doing right now, whether in our careers or elsewhere.  If this article is helpful to you, you’ll probably find Part One and Part Two useful as well.)

My friend has almost finished a novel that’s largely a retelling of the facts of her life.  But recently, her writing has come to a standstill.  Throughout the project, she’s been nagged by the sense that she doesn’t “have the right” to write her book, and this feeling has been particularly strong lately.  Although she’s passionate about and proud of her work, she doesn’t think she’s old enough, or that she’s well-known or important enough, to publish the book.

My friend, of course, isn’t the only one who has faced this sort of emotional block.  Many of us have felt the sense, before we embark on some project, that for whatever reason we don’t have “the right” to do it.  I experienced a little of this feeling myself recently as I was putting the finishing touches on my upcoming audio program.  I’ve focused on producing written work in the past, I thought, and maybe I don’t have the “right” to release an audio product if I don’t normally do radio shows or podcasts.  (Don’t worry, I got over it and the course is still coming out.)

What do we really mean when we say we don’t have the “right” to pursue a goal?  Well, let’s start with what we don’t mean.  First off, we aren’t suggesting it would be illegal to do what we want.  There’s no question, for example, that it would be perfectly lawful for my friend to publish a book about her experiences.  Nor are we usually concerned about hurting someone else and “violating their rights” — my friend’s book probably wouldn’t do that either.  I think what we normally mean is that, because we need to accomplish or do more to “deserve” to follow our dreams, it would be immoral for us to pursue our goals.  If we did what we wanted, in other words, it would be as if we were taking something that didn’t belong to us.

If it were clear what we had to do to earn the “right” to go for what we want, perhaps this wouldn’t be much of a problem.  We could just do what we needed to do, and then begin pursuing our goals.  My friend could just wait a few years, publish a few magazine articles to gain some notoriety, and then start shopping her book around.  Unfortunately, as many of us have learned firsthand, it’s not quite that simple.  Even if we do all the things we think are necessary to get “the right” to achieve our goals, we’re often still plagued by the sense that we need to do something more to deserve what we want.

Fear Is What’s Really Lurking In The Background

Why does it seem that the bar for what we must do to “deserve” what we want just keeps rising higher and higher?  I suspect it’s because, when we fret about whether we have the right to do something, we’re really just giving voice to our fear of doing it.  We can’t “earn” our way out of this dilemma, because doing or accomplishing more doesn’t really address our fear.

At the deepest level, it seems to me, what’s motivating my friend’s concern about finishing her book is fear — perhaps, for instance, a fear that people will ridicule or shame her for writing her book — not a desire to behave morally.  As psychologist Karen E. Peterson writes in The Tomorrow Trap, “shame is the true source of your ‘impostor syndrome’ — the feeling that you don’t have the right to make healthy decisions, to express yourself creatively, or to fulfill your dreams.”  But it feels more comfortable for my friend, and for the rest of us, to tell ourselves we’re trying to be right and ethical than to admit we’re afraid.

We usually associate fear with weakness or vulnerability, and so we feel better telling ourselves we’re actually concerned with being moral.  But I think there’s another, deeper reason why we tend to obsess over whether we have the “right” to accomplish our goals.  I’m talking about our desire for order in the universe.  It’s comforting for us to believe that our behavior is governed by a clear, objective set of rights and rules.  We have the right to pursue certain goals, and we don’t have the right to pursue others, and that’s just how things are.  Even if this means we aren’t allowed to follow our true calling, it’s better than living in a chaotic, rule-free world.

If we see the world this way, we don’t have to face the uncomfortable possibility that there actually are no objective rules for what we can and can’t do.  Or at least, if such rules do exist, we human beings have no idea what they are.  No supernatural being or all-powerful entity is going to appear and tell us whether we have the “right” to publish a book, change careers, or do anything else in our lives.  Our instincts are all we really have to guide us in making those decisions, and there’s no way to know whether those instincts are correct or moral.

Understandably, trying on this perspective is scary to many of us.  If we accept that there are no objective, universal standards for how we can “earn” the right to pursue our goals, the universe starts to look less safe and predictable.  Without clear rules for what we can and can’t accomplish, how can we know what we’re supposed to do with our lives?  How can we be sure we aren’t wasting our time in what we do?  Why should my friend write a book at all, or do anything for that matter?

Getting Comfortable With Chaos

On the other hand, the less we buy into the notion that there are hard and fast universal laws governing which goals we can pursue, the more freedom we experience.  If we release the need to earn the “right” to follow our dreams, a new world of options opens up to us.  All the rigid structures that used to limit what we can accomplish in life — perhaps our parents’ expectations, the need to be socially acceptable, and so on — begin crumbling away.  If my friend discards her belief that she doesn’t deserve to finish her book, who knows what success and fulfillment she might achieve in her writing and other areas of her life?

I’ve come to believe that trying something new, regardless of what it is, almost always raises the kind of “existential unease” I’m talking about.  Whenever we consider doing something we haven’t done, whether it’s skydiving, publishing a book, starting a business or anything else, we’re forced to confront that fear.  This is because exploring something new requires us to break the rules and traditions we used to see as governing our lives.

When we let go of those rules, the universe starts to look like a chaotic and unsafe place to live.  As psychologist Erich Fromm wrote in The Fear Of Freedom, “freedom, though it has brought [man] independence and rationality, has made him . . . anxious and powerless.”  This is why most of us tend to “escape from the burden of this freedom into new dependencies and submission,” rather than “advanc[ing] to the full realization of positive freedom.”

As I suggested earlier, one way to get comfortable with that uneasy feeling is to see it for what it really is — just a bunch of sensations we experience in our bodies.  The fear that we’re living in a chaotic universe manifests differently in different people.  Some of us (as Jean-Paul Sartre did) experience this feeling as a nausea; others feel it as a shortness of breath; while it may occur in others as tension in the jaw.  However it shows up for us, the key thing to remember about it is that it’s just a physical sensation and nothing more.  Experiencing it can’t hurt or destroy us.

While many of us understand this on a rational level, getting it on a physical, visceral level is harder.  Even though, for example, we understand that publishing a book wouldn’t put us in physical danger, the fear that comes up for many of us when we think about “putting ourselves out there” still tends to paralyze us.  To convince our bodies that breaking the rules we’ve followed in the past is safe, I’ve found, it’s helpful to breathe through our fear — that is, to fully experience any existential angst that comes up, while taking deep, slow breaths, until it passes away.

But before we can even begin on this path, we must be willing to let go of the belief that we don’t have the “right” to pursue our true calling.  We need to acknowledge what that belief truly is — nothing more than a disguise for our worries about what might happen if we started living our deepest desires.  In other words, we need to accept in the first place that we’re afraid, and only then can we work toward overcoming our fear.  Simply being aware of this is the most critical step toward moving beyond our anxieties and stepping into the lives we’re most inspired to lead.

Related posts:

1. Are You Really “Trapped”? (Part One)
2. Are You Really “Trapped,” Part Two: Facing The “Fear Of Freedom”
3. What Gives You The Right To Say That?
4. How Our “Enmeshments” Hold Us Back
5. Is This All There Is?