CHAPTER 2

FACE YOUR FAKE NEWS FEARS

As women, let’s be real; many of us have sadly been known to fake at least one thing in our day. (Which, by the way, while it might protect your partner’s ego in the short term, does no one any favors long term. #ScrewThat.)

On the other hand, there’s one thing most of us have never faked: our fear of failure. We fear failing when it comes to the massively vital components of our lives, like our goals and our relationships. We fear failing when it comes to the teeny minuscule components of our lives, like our outfits and Instagram captions.

Despite our daily dominating doubts, we also all know at least one person in our life who somehow seems impervious to this fear of failure. Someone who is somehow missing the jittery gene. This person seems bulletproof. Badass. Unafraid (for the most part) of the world saying “Oh no, girl.” In writing this book, I grilled the grittiest gals I know on exactly how they got to be like that. How were they so efficient at keeping their anxiety and worries at bay? And I came in hot. I wasn’t going to settle for workouts or wine or woo-woo meditation. I wanted the real answers, no matter how nonsexy they might be. And my suspicions (like yours perhaps!) proved correct. Every single power­house gal ultimately landed on some nonmagic bullet version of this: They were simply better at being brave because they had failed the most. Their armor was forged from the sheer quantity and quality of their failures. The secret to their strength stemmed from learning with intention as their wounds of failure healed into their scars of success. And at the end of our conversations (many of which you can listen to on my podcast, Highlights with Erin King), almost every single gal flipped the script on me and told me to think about what I’d already experienced and subsequently accomplished. Which, of course, I instantly brushed off with a “yeah, yeah, whatever” vibe.

Here’s where I need to pause and ask you something: why is it that as women, we are so deeply programmed to discount our own stories? Why did it take a dozen of my sheroes to tell me that my story matters before I actually began to believe them? How many times are we going to disregard our anecdotes with the classic audacity asphyxiator: “Oh yes, but it’s not like I’ve done [insert cooler, more badass person or story here].” Yes, there is always someone who has made a much “larger” impact than you, but there are also those who have never even tried or come close to the impact of your experience. We must become better at internalizing the fact that our memoirs matter.

There is no scarcity when it comes to our most sacred stories. Her story and your story and my story and your other story can all take up residence within the success story sanctuary. Yes, our individual adventures of success and failure, of courage and fear, may have had different impacts, but they are all of equal importance. While I don’t know your failure fables (yet), with the encouragement of my fellow sisters and, I hope, the “go-on” nod from you, here’s mine.

I started not one but two epic-fail businesses. I’m not talking about my own little side hustle that didn’t pan out and was kind of embarrassing when I had to update my LinkedIn with my plan B backup job. I’m talking about failures of truly epic proportions: I’m talking about the fancy, oceanfront Laguna Beach office with a heart-attack-inducing monthly rent and a dozen W-2 employees. I’m talking about the six figures of overhead in the form of payroll and more every month. I’m talking about the unhappy investors who pulled out of their contracts. I started, ran, and closed down two fiscally unsustainable and unsuccessful companies—and it totally sucked.

After I walked away from my first venture, Jump Digital Media, it took me years to dig out of my personal $70,000 credit-card debt working at a nine-to-five corporate cubicle job playing stupid office politics and barely enduring a monotonous, horrendous Groundhog Day existence (sooooo much “touching base”). My professional life, for a few years, was, to be California concise, a total bummer. I lived for the weekends. Sunday Scaries to the max. At 4:59 on a Friday I made a beeline for the first barstool I could find at Yard House for a cold beer to help me forget that I was spending most of my precious life submerged in spreadsheets. A pint later I would inevitably begin face-blasting some poor innocent guy who didn’t ask and didn’t care at all about how I used to be a super-cool entrepreneur. It was the most unfulfilled (and annoying) I’ve ever been in my life.

So let’s take a quick flashback to where we started with our tampon talk in the Introduction. I’m not afraid to tell you that, just like there’s more to a Disney movie after it ends with everyone living happily ever after, there’s more to the story that you weren’t exactly shown. There’s a reason Ariel and Prince Eric: After the Marriage doesn’t exist. Ariel has buyer’s remorse and wants to be a mermaid again, so she and Ursula slug drinks down by the dock while reminiscing about how cool life was like “Unda da Sea.” Or something like that. In real life, my PMS.com “not so happily ever after” ending went something like this.

After getting the backing of Todd and the Tan Tampon Dudes, my team and I spent months creating the perfect “tampon fairy” brand. (Magically delivered monthly for just $15!) We designed packaging, websites, ads, and emails. We became experts on FDA regulations and Chinese supply-chain shipping policies. My friend Kylee and I drove to the Port of Long Beach at 5 a.m. to pick up tampon shipments that had arrived by boat from Asia. We learned the extremely complex world of e-commerce inventory management. We ruminated on how to maximize margins on an already very inexpensive, highly accessible product controlled by legacy brand giants. Forbes wrote an article on us, and as Dollar Shave Club had just been bought by Unilever for $1 billion, I had all intentions of replicating that success in the women’s healthcare space.

But that’s not what happened. Not. At. All.

Even though I thought it was a genius idea (because I never had tampons on hand when I needed them), the actuality was a big, fat nope! Turns out, most women are just responsible adults who pick them up at the grocery store, like normal people. Not a Big Deal, if you will. And for women who were open to the idea, it was really, really tough to convince them to abandon the brands they had trusted since back when Nirvana was on the radio. We ran every ad campaign. Deployed every social media strategy. We sank crazy amounts of capital into public relations. We recruited influencers and sent emails, and even though we had about 20,000 women subscribe, about 18 months into the venture, all financial signs were pointing to a big, fat failure. (Startup side note: Is your big idea actually solving a seriously severe problem? Is your concept a nice-to-have or a need-to-have? Those answers are likely the difference between excruciating pain and extraordinary profits.)

As our fiscal runway got shorter and shorter (and my stress levels skyrocketed higher and higher), I finally bit the bullet and scheduled a meeting in that same beautiful Pacific Ocean conference room where we had begun. Except it didn’t look as packed with promise as the first time I was there. It felt more like a funeral home where I would be laid to rest on that beautiful long marble table. Surrounded, of course, by our remaining unsold, massive inventory of Chinese-manufactured tampons.

The investors who had said they bet “on the jockey, not the horse”—aka “me, not the idea”—listened to me eat a massive poo sandwich, as I admitted straight up that I had failed. The jockey had run this horse into the ground. It was humiliating. It was nauseating. It was the mother-of-all-confidence erasers.

The logistics involved in shutting down PMS.com felt like a never-ending messy divorce. I lost former dear friends who had become disgruntled employees in legal battles. I had to negotiate my way out of ironclad supplier contracts. (The ones in Chinese were particularly challenging.) I lost face in our small, everyone-knows-everyone beach town.

The worst part? I lost all faith in myself because my fear of failure had come to fruition. And it turns out, the reason that we fear failure so ferociously is because when you fail on a large scale and face-plant with no one to blame but yourself, it is horrendous. Professionally, it paralyzed me. For months and months, my legit fiscal failure froze me from doing anything but wallowing in my self-pity, self-flagellation, and real self-hatred. For weeks, I was so haunted by my defeat that I started losing huge clumps of hair in the shower. I would wake up in the middle of the night in a full-body sweat, somewhere strange in my house after sleepwalking during night terrors. In an extreme twist of irony, the former failed CEO of PMS.com was so afflicted by anguish that I actually stopped getting my period for a few months!

One day, after drinking too much red wine, eating an entire bucket of Trader Joe’s peanut butter cups, and crying my mascara’d eyes out for hours, I stared into the bathroom mirror like a complete psycho and said out loud, “You are an absolute loser.” This doesn’t sound that dramatic as I’m writing it here now, and it’s not like I was actually physically harming myself or anything, but for a pretty baseline positive person, it scared the hell out of me for two reasons: (1) I was talking to myself out loud in a mirror, and (2) I was being downright malicious about it.

Why the vile self-talk? Because I was totally terrified. Sure, we’re all afraid of something. Yes, cancer, snakes, and the regretful return of nineties fashion like scrunchies, fanny packs, and bike shorts are frightening, to be sure. But above all, it’s those look-in-the-mirror moments that alarm us to the deepest degree. This is why we fear all the Ghosts of Failure: our past failures, our current failures, and our future failures. We fear letting our failures direct our choices. We fear repeating mistakes, falling short of our own or others’ expectations, botching the job, losing the money, missing out on the best option, or having regrets. We fear the repercussions of our choices. We fear judgment. We fear punishment. We fear staying stuck in analysis paralysis. We fear not achieving our perfectionist fantasies. We fear that we just aren’t enough. We fear the no. Sometimes we even fear that we aren’t being fearful enough! Many of us have been groomed to think of fear as a zero-sum situation: it’s you or the fear. If that’s true, then the reality is that there’s no way to successfully coexist with it, right?

Tell me something: when was the last time your fear of failure held you back from making a move? Was it one of those situations where you really wanted to say something to someone that everyone else is scared to? Or maybe it was one of those times where no matter how much you analyzed something to death, you knew there was actually no other way to do it besides jumping out of the plane and pulling the ripcord—even when people (whose opinions matter to you) would think you’re insane? Or maybe it was that time you knew exactly what you needed to do or walk away from, but you were paralyzed with anxiety that it had the potential to trigger massive disappointment or judgment (or both) from someone you love? And while you may have avoided letting that one person down, in the process, you let yourself down. So, really, you still failed anyway! Ugh. Is it any wonder something this shitty is so powerfully paralyzing?

Here’s the thing: our fear of failure (especially as women) far too often comes not just from an objective standpoint, but from a subjective standpoint via the opinions of others. Now, I’m certainly not going to dispense the ridiculous notion that you “shouldn’t care what anyone thinks about you” because (1) it will never actually happen unless (2) you become a ragingly self-centered narcissist nightmare of a human. If we never took our truth-tellers two cents to help us get back on course when we lose our way, we’d be lost in the Kanye West woods of life. We all have situations where people we love have let us know that we’re riding the Hot Mess Express—and thank goodness they did! But distinguishing between “looking out for you” reactions and “holding you back” reactions is where things morph into murkier waters.

See, there is something about your fear that is so critical to really realize, and fully grasping this fact has been the catalyst for Big Deal courage in my life like nothing else.

You probably know that what holds you back from doing the thing is that, on some level, you’re afraid of people you care about reacting negatively to it, yes? But that’s not really what you’re afraid of. Not deep down. What you’re really afraid of (and this is something that is tough for any of us to admit) is not that they’re rejecting what you’re doing. It’s that what they’re really doing is rejecting you. You might fear them rejecting who you are as a friend, a family member, a colleague, or a lover. You fear them rejecting you as a human. In fact, if I may come in super-hot with this, you are probably so afraid that the people you love (and sometimes even people you don’t know) will reject who you are at your core, that it’s the number one thing keeping you scared, stuck, and staying in line right now. Even if you know better. Because your heart always trumps your head. And who would ever want someone you love to not love you back? For some of us, we’d rather be dead! (A tad dramatic, but you’re tracking with me, right?) I can honestly say that much of my fear after my business failures stemmed from this maddening mindset.

See, the truth is (and we all know this to be true) that reactions are just reflections. People’s reactions to you are just a reflection of how your big, bold, audacious move made them feel. Or what it made them reflect on in their own life. Maybe your Big Deal move forced them to view a version of themselves in a mirror that they thought they had nice and covered up. Or that they perceive as being a small deal reflection by comparison.

This is why big changes trigger big reactions. And the more massive your move, the more the world can’t help but match it with a massive response. If what you are doing isn’t significant, isn’t a game-changer, isn’t really that big a deal, people’s reactions won’t be, either. So if you’re hell-bent and determined to retain your relationships in the “happy days, frictionless, good times zone,” fabulous! But just know that the flip side is you’re also staying still, and only you can know if that stillness is safe or suffocating.

So the question is: What if you reprogrammed the way your brain classifies big, oftentimes negative or less-than-comfortable, reactions? What if you rewired your mind to process a big scary reaction as a green light, instead of a red one? What would happen in your life if you transformed the momentum-stalling “No, girl” into a momentum-igniting “Go, girl!”?

Someone’s objection to your decision isn’t necessarily a rejection of who you are. Because doing and being aren’t the same. Have you ever known a good person to do a bad thing? Or a bad person to do a good thing? Not to get down on Kanye again, but you can love the song “Stronger” as your go-to pump-up anthem without Kanye being your go-to person in terms of mentors or advice dispensers. And the same goes for you: your people can love you without loving your choices. The people who love you the most might not love those choices right away, but if they’re truly your people, they will eventually.

After I moved to California, my dad finally came back around (a decade after threatening to cut me out of his will). He commended me on my choices. His “No, girl” finally became a “Go, girl!” but only because I chased down my dream in spite of his rejection. Which really really sucked at the time, but was really really worth it in the long run. Worth it even after my failed businesses—because my failure wounds healed into success scars, just like yours have, will soon, or will someday, but only if you have the Big Deal courage to keep going in the direction you know you must.

Once you can really realize this deep down in your heart of hearts, you’ll also understand that many of the fears that freeze you from going forward are the fakest of fake news. And every time you stutter-step on your path to where you know you were destined to travel, that’s just you accidentally taking the fake news clickbait. You’re unintentionally sending stupid spam right to your sweet soul. And if, for some reason, it’s not? That that person sees your actions and doesn’t love you? Well, is that someone you really want in your life anyway? Or is that someone who can just kiss your audacity? Because if that person doesn’t know that you’re kind of a Big Deal, well, that’s just simply not your problem.

UNPACKING YOUR FAKE NEWS FEARS

You might raise seven figures of capital for a startup company (or you might start a new job/venture/side hustle) and fall flat on your freaking face. You might do it in front of a lot of people who laughed at you from the start. You might move (back) across the country for the “love of your life” and then break up a year later. You might lose your best friend in a tragic jet-skiing accident. You might be told one day that you or someone you love has a health issue that a few Advil cannot solve. You might lose your eight-month-old puppy to a freak car accident even though you were a helicopter dog mom who was obsessed with protecting your fur baby from that exact fate. These are my dark stories, and you have yours, and there’s nothing we can do about fearing life’s scariest shit because it is real and it can happen.

While this may be true, fear is also the thing that keeps us from getting in elevators with sketchy men. Fear is what motivates us to save our money for a rainy day. But it’s also true that the majority of the things we fear going wrong are typically not quite so life shattering. It’s more likely that our everyday fears are either (1) not going to happen or (2) not going to impact us in the devastatingly negative way that we conjure a false future narrative about. (At least in the end.) It’s highly likely that your fears holding you back right now are fake freaking news.

So let’s unpack some of the most common fake news fears, one at a time. They are ranked in order from all-time most fake to the still-pretty-freaking fake. These fears come to you straight from the brave DMs I’ve received packed full of fake news loops that some of my online friends still subscribe to even when they know (just like you do) that they should opt out and remove themselves from such a spammy list.

FEAR THAT YOU’LL SCREW UP

Maybe you’re afraid that you’ll royally screw something up. Let’s be clear: unless you are perfect, screwing something up is a when, not an if. Your fear of screwing up is likely stemming from your childhood, like the first time you knocked over an open gallon of milk all over your mother’s immaculate floor mere hours after she had spent an hour on her hands and knees making it shine. Hell hath no fury like a a mother whose kitchen floor was made messy back in the day growing up in our house. Maybe you’re afraid you’re not ready to take on a leadership role, or launch a new venture, or accept an unprecedented level of responsibility because what if you screw it up?

Rejoin me back in my horror movie bathroom scene of mascara down the face and peanut butter cup crumbles accentuating my red wine–stained teeth. The morning after I went mad, I woke up in my loser bed, brushed my loser teeth, and dragged my loser butt to the couch. With my head in my hands, I knew I had to call in some backup before I kept spiraling toward Mayor of Crazy Town (population one).

I asked one of my best friends (who is also a business mentor of sorts) to join me for a beach walk. Staring listlessly at the water, I worked myself up into a frenzy of fears and tears about how I was completely lost, how I hated life and didn’t know myself anymore, and how I was falling apart (noticing a trend here? You’re not alone!) when suddenly she stopped and grabbed me by the arms: “Hey! Hey! Look at me! You are not your business! You are still Erin, who likes to laugh and drink wine—although maybe you should drink a little less of it these days—but regardless, you are a dear friend! You are there for people when they need you. You are fun and kind and smart. The tampon fairies may be dead, but you’re not! You are successful with or without the damn bloody business!”

And with that horrendous pun, after a huge pause, for the first time in months, I burst into laughter. Well, not exactly laughter, but that ugly cry-laugh combo when all the failure feels are bursting forth like water from a fire hydrant. In that ugly cry-laugh moment, finally, after months of agony, the wind and the waves began to carry the most intense sadness away, out to sea. My perspective began to realign, not instantly, but the cracks of light had begun to shine through the darkness.

Whatever failure you’ve experienced in the past or whatever failure you fear might happen in the future, you are not your failure. You are not your business. Your business is not you. These are two separate entities. They belong in two different buckets. I realized that “successful human me” could fully coexist with “unsuccessful CEO me.” And the same goes for you. Have you ever noticed that a lot of men are excellent at immediately pointing to what went wrong, not who? It was the wrong timing, the wrong market, the wrong positioning. No matter what the specifics are, they find ways to assign blame to external factors. They certainly don’t consider that what went wrong bears any implication on their awesomeness as humans. They are able to separate themselves from what they do with crafty compartmentalization. And it’s high time we, as women, become better at doing the same.

Now, I realize that sounds easier said than done. Have you ever met those people who underplay how paralyzing fear can be and spout inane platitudes like, “Just throw away your fears!” What? Where? There’s been an official fear trash can this whole time? Where is this elusive, magical fear trash can? Can I get it at Ikea? Did I have one and accidentally Marie-Kondo’d it because “fear” and “joy” are polar opposites?

If you’re someone who is so passionate about what you do, who defines yourself by your wins, who lives, eats, breathes, and sleeps your business, your family, your art, or your cause, when you come up short, there will be a mourning period. Like death, it might take you four full calendar seasons of grieving. It certainly took me at least that long. There’s no way for any of us to engineer or rush our own cathartic super-moments where the salt water from your face finds its way into the salt water of the ocean. All we can do is be intentional about opening the space for it to occur. And it’s only until our failure wounds begin to scab that we can start to see the beginning of our success scars.

The truth about my failure catharsis is it was only after I was able to separate me from my failure that I was able to discover the pearl left behind. And this pearl changed my entire life. So as I’ve said, I wasn’t exactly marvelous at managing overseas teams or operations of a digital subscription service, but one thing I had managed not to screw up was cultivating a huge online community of millions of women. Women who had come together on PMS.com’s Facebook page (which you can still see today) to connect over a previously taboo topic. Our little page became the internet’s largest space at that time for “period joke” laughter and “why aren’t there more scientific studies on this topic” frustration. I discovered my real superpower was creating camaraderie by nurturing community. But I could only see this once I released all the failure feels. And when I did, I discovered my “third time is a charm,” finally fiscally successful venture: creating social media communities for clients via my current business—Socialite Agency. Within the dumpster fire of PMS.com arose the phoenix of Socialite Agency, which finally yielded the monetary success I had been searching for. And I never would have gotten there had I stayed on the couch crushing peanut butter cups—as tempting a lifestyle as that sounds.

Until you release your failure feels, it’s impossible to see your good, harness your skills, and unlock your success potential when you’re shrouding it in Small Deal Energy! I know that you know you already have what it takes to march boldly toward your dream destiny. But you can’t activate it if you can’t see it.

Only because of the vital “failure” of not one but two of my own early businesses—Jump Digital Media and PMS.com—could I create the success of Socialite. I went from mean mirror smack-talking to running social media for the Oscars in Hollywood, the US Navy at the Pentagon, and dozens more of the world’s biggest brands. Those experiences then led to writing books, coaching, and speaking—and my life has never been the same! If I could send my failures a massive, handwritten thank you note with a cold magnum of bubbly, I would.

So please hear me here: almost always, rock-bottom rocks. You might know the Rascal Flatts song “Bless the Broken Road.” Whatever broken road you’re walking, keep going. Your “screw-ups” are just cue-ups for your most audaciously successful destiny to unfold.

FEAR THAT YOU’LL LOOK STUPID

Sarah Jessica Parker tricked many of us into believing that designer high heels were life-changing, fabulous, and the secret to real happiness. And maybe for you, they are. If you are a heel lover, with all due respect to both you and Carrie, yay for you, but I vehemently disagree. Sure, even though my massive calves do look slightly slimmer in a pair of absurdly pricy nude heels, after five minutes of tottering around like a kid playing dress-up, let’s just say my dogs are barking. I’m just more of a jeans-and-sneakers surfer gal, and no matter how many years I forced myself to wear heels working with my corporate clients, I still never made peace with my loathing for them. So for years I carried the dreaded heels at every conference, to and from each stage, to and from every meeting, to and from every airport like designer ball-and-chain spikes.

One day, I was scrolling Instagram backstage before my opening keynote for a highly conservative corporate sales meeting when I saw a post from my friend Brian Fanzo challenging his followers to try something they were truly afraid to do even for fear of looking stupid. He ended it with “I dare you—today—to walk your most authentic walk.”

Just talking about walking authentically propelled me to fantasize about the moment 90 minutes later when I could slip back into my beloved sneakers. Unless . . . what if . . . I dared to just wear my sneakers onstage? With my businessy dress? OK, before we go any further—yes, I am fully aware that this is likely an eye-rolling “basic brave” moment. I realize that this is not anywhere in the stratosphere of the universe of big brave. I understand that wearing sneakers on stage is maybe, just maybe, slightly less heroic than, say, Malala fighting off the Taliban. Or Bethany Hamilton going back to surfing with only one arm after a shark attack took her other arm. Or other everyday sheroes who stand up to racism, other kinds of discrimination, assault, trauma, and other truly admirable, astonishing, inspiring levels of heroism. I get that daring to wear sneakers onstage is not remotely big brave, but in that moment, in the context of that corporate event, it registered on my little wimpy scale as basic medium brave. And for most of us, dear reader, basic medium brave is the most easily accessible bravery gym you can visit to put in your reps so that when you find yourself in your own big brave moment—you’re prepared enough to prevail.

So how do you know if the universe is presenting you with a chance to be medium brave? You’ll know if you answer yes to any of the following questions: Did your heart race? Did you start to sweat through your Spanx? Did your eyes dart around? Did your inner monologue start to backseat-bicker? If so, you were looking a medium brave moment directly in its defiant face. Back to my majorly basic, medium brave moment:

I remember experiencing all of the above-listed symptoms, plus my hands were uncontrollably shaking at the mere thought of wearing casual sneakers at this highly judgy, tough-crowd, extremely buttoned-up old-school corporate event. I’m already a privileged woman under 40, who loves her job and her life, and for that reason alone the audience does not want to like me from the moment I take one step onto that platform. But that’s the package I come in, and the truth is that anytime you have a physical reaction to doing something like that—just like when other people react to you in a big way—it’s the most excellent indicator that you have just turned the key and are about to unlock your Big Deal Energy.

I remember going back and forth backstage with only minutes to spare, thinking:

What if the client gets mad because she requested business attire?

What if the stiff corporate crowd doesn’t take me seriously?

What if I look like a large-calved linebacker since, while comfortable, these high-tops do cut me off in exactly the wrong place?

What if people think I’m trying to be like some cool young hipster that I’m certainly not?

Then I thought of the worst-case scenario. As a female keynoter, while you’re presenting, people typically tweet—a lot—about your appearance. They love your dress; they hate your dress. Your energy is amazing; your energy is too much. What if they write mean tweets about the fact that urban black high tops with a suburban preppy pink dress is not a look in any stylebook on the planet?

As I was pacing backstage, my mind racing with the Crazy Town overanalysis of these absurd deliberations, one of the AV guys walked by and tossed off, “Cool sneaks.” Reflexively, I looked back over down at his, and hand to the sky they were the dirtiest pair of Chuck Taylors you could ever imagine. These were Chucks this guy had either been wearing since preschool or found in a dumpster, or both. “Um, thanks. Yours, too,” I returned with the sincerity of a Southerner “blessing your heart.” I will never forget this guy puffing his chest up, and with the most confidence I’d ever seen, he said: “Yeah, I know. Sick, right? I love ’em.”

And as he kind of nerd-strutted away, I was hit by something. This is obviously a massive generalization, but for the most part, dudes are fairly unfazed by looking dumb. Or not being stylish enough. They just don’t! I’m not wrong here, and I’ll prove it. When soccer was shut down in Europe during the pandemic, a contest for the “oldest-looking” former soccer players surfaced online, where competitors would win points for categories like being bald or having yellow teeth. These 50- and 60-year-olds started posting the ugliest photos of themselves online in hopes of being voted the “oldest looking” and winning the competition! Globally, historically, and generationally agnostic: dudes just have this attitude like, Eff it! I’m the man! I call it a Dude-itude. And it’s audaciously awesome. And for many of us gals, in many situations, in my opinion we, as a whole, could sure stand to borrow some Dude-itude of our own.

So I used Mr. Chucks’ overconfidence in his dumpster kicks. I took a deep breath and instead of walking out in my heels like a perfectly poised, pink-dress beauty pageant contestant, for the first time ever, I ran out onto the stage like a gladiator facing down dragons.

And in that medium brave moment, I felt like I had been reborn. My impostor syndrome, formerly protected by power pumps, immediately evaporated. Wearing what made me physically comfortable enabled me to release any anxiety around what the audience might think or do or tweet. Showing up authentically in a way that I felt comfortable authorized me to show up mentally in a way that I’d never been able to access before. I shocked myself by lying down on the stage to act out a story. I could move confidently without being afraid of tripping. I was so relaxed, I had so much fun, and I was so in the moment that not only did the people in the audience not judge me the way I had feared, but they gave me the very first standing ovation of my speaking career. Everything I had worried about backstage was all 100 percent fake news. Yes, it was just a pair of stupid sneakers. But one teeny, tiny, “So what?” choice ignited a series of events that began to change the trajectory of my entire career. Something as insignificant as a pair of sneaks ignited this momentous shift in my life. Those kicks were a tangible sign that an acceleration of authenticity and an authorization of genuineness were needed, like, yesterday.

If you’re also mentally manufacturing moments that haven’t happened or imagining how a scenario might play out for the worst, can you remind yourself that you are likely succumbing to fake news mental clickbait? Because not only do things not happen the way we fear (like the sneaks), but being audacious enough to own your authenticity, no matter how initially scary it might be, enables an even more magical experience to transpire for you. Walking (or running) with the belief that you are already a Big Deal is the fastest gateway to getting more standing ovations on the stage of your life. This experience wasn’t about the sneakers; it was about the Big Deal Energy that rocking them unlocked. What could be possible for you if you stepped into your authentic awesomeness with your own pair of sneakers, heels, outfit, or whatever it is for you that makes you feel like the Big Deal that you actually are? I’m over here cheering and applauding with the highest hopes that your answer is not just yes but a resounding hell yes!

Now, let’s take this talk from offline to online—let’s unpack what living in the Digital Age means when it comes to the fear around looking stupid. For starters, take a wild guess who is viewing your social media profiles the most of anyone on the entire internet? Who do you honestly think is examining your carefully curated Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook “life résumé”? No, it’s not the ex who never got over you. (Well, actually it might be. Once you’ve dated a Big Deal, it’s tough to go back.) But seriously, the answer is you. Social data scientists find, time and time again, that the most views on anyone’s profile 90 percent of the time (excluding celebrities and influencers) are from the profile owner’s own account. Think about it . . . have you ever looked at your own Instagram Story, TikTok video, LinkedIn résumé, or Facebook bio and tried to contemplate it through someone else’s eyes? No? Are you sure? What about when you meet some really cool people and connect with them online? You’ve never tried to look at your profile and wonder, just for a little bit, what they might be thinking about you? Uh-huh . . . sure, you haven’t.

Here’s a truth that you can find either extremely depressing or incredibly liberating: not only is the world not judging you for how “stupid” you may or may not look online; most people in your orbit aren’t even thinking about you at all. Other than your mom, your grandma, and maybe your bestie, this major lack of other people contemplating you and your choices can be one of the most empowering insights you’ll ever embrace. Bear-hug this truth, shake off the ego bruise, and charge forward with a candid answer to this question: What have you been afraid to do, say, or try because you fear looking stupid in front of other people? Or perhaps in front of one particular person? Can you even imagine what might be possible if you chose to focus less on what that person might think (but probably won’t!) and more on what your heart desires you to dare to do or try?

Maybe it’s something as small, silly, and medium brave as choosing an outfit or footwear that isn’t “standard” for the situation you’re strutting into but it makes you feel that BDE (or at least super-comfy). Maybe it’s something heftier like going back to school at an “older” age or picking up a hobby that’s typically “for kids.” Whether you dream of wearing sneakers when you’re supposed to wear heels or traveling the world or being radically real with a client, boss, coworker, or child—do it. And when you do grab hold of your audacity, and you do actualize your Big Deal moment, will you share it on Instagram? Because your Big Deal moment deserves a virtual standing ovation. And even better? It will inspire others to lace up for their very own Big Deal moment as well. (Tag me @mrs.erin.king so I can see you in action!)

FEAR THAT YOU’LL ACTUALLY DO THE DANG THING

Personally, I find this is the craziest of the fake news fears because I never really fathomed it could actually be real. The fear of failure I understand sure, but what kind of sadist would fear success? Well it turns out a lot of people have this fear and that not only is our unconscious self-sabotage a very real thing; it’s sneaky as hell, too.

Have you ever found yourself within reach of that one goal, milestone, promotion, or relationship, and then found yourself tripping up, dragging your feet, or doing something just straight-up stupid? My friend Judi Holler totally called me out on this once when I was making excuses about my procrastination “problem.” I would always joke around saying, “Why do meeting planners always ask for our slide decks so far in advance? Don’t they understand that the best slides can only be created within one hour of show start time?” She challenged me gently, explaining that procrastination is typically a huge indicator that on some subatomic particle level I was actually fearful of the success that might come with operating from a place of organized calm. She suggested that I was actually afraid of what I could be capable of if I got my shit together with my time management and took my ability to deliver on time to the next level. She explained that I was terrified of operating without the adrenaline rush of “Will it all get done in time?” that I had been feeding on like some kind of deranged diva. I really used to categorize the notion of being “the one in your own way” as something truly preposterous. Why would we ever do that to ourselves? Why would we ever work so hard—only to build a dam stopping up our hard-earned flow of abundance?

Well, as Judi (who is an expert on fear management) explained it to me: Success means change. Success means higher expectations. Success means bigger demands on your time, your mind, and your body. If (and when) you “fail,” everyone sees it—even if what people see as failure is only a stepping-stone you needed to lead you to success. And that success forces us to dig deeper than we ever have before, to relocate far away from our hometown comfort zone and examine our flaws and our personal lives under a very revealing, unfiltered, less-than-selfie-perfect spotlight. Maybe you’ve been feeling scared of success because, deep down, you’re scared of the price you might have to pay. Maybe you’re scared to trade in your current life that you like for one that is unknown—which you might love more, but you also might not. What if your success changes your relationships that you currently cherish?

What if success changes you? And not for the better?

If you really force yourself to examine the answers to these questions, there’s actually some validity to this fear. But when your desire for a shining future or that Big Deal win is so insatiable that it eclipses the cozy of your mediocre now, the real truth is that your success destiny has sort of already been decided for you. Your internal GPS lady has already determined that you are not a life passenger that can be content riding in coach forever. And until you both discover what’s on the other side of that two-sided coin of paralyzing, promising fear, she’s going to manically keep bossing you around until you do! The thrill of your dreams transforming into your actual reality is like a self-driving vehicle whose destination has been preprogrammed. The potential you see for your life will ultimately override any ancient fear of success coordinates. Only if, of course, you have the audacity to keep your foot off that brake as you make a hairpin turn on the windiest roads.

What if today you reconditioned your reaction to your most limiting habits or most bogus beliefs? What if you decided to make your fear of success old news? What if today you showed the universe how sincerely serious you actually are about smashing your goals? What if you trashed limiting phrases like “I’m trying to,” “I’ll eventually,” or the worst one: “I’m an ‘aspiring’ xyz”? What if you raised your hand, no matter where you are, and you said three of the most powerful words you can utter: “I am ready”?

Do it! Say it with me: I am ready! Kick your fake news fears to the curb and invite your audacity to saddle up for the ride, not tomorrow, not on Monday, not in one year, five years, or ten years. Today. Success has a price, but you and I both know that you are ready and prepared to pay up. And if you still think you aren’t ready? You’re even more so. Don’t fear your new power. Friend it. And fire away.

BIG DEAL DIARY