The Power of a Posse

I understand perfectly  that our beliefs hold us back. But I still have plenty of them that I allow to get in the way. We all have them.

The difference is I know what mine are, so sometimes I beat myself up because I “should” be able to get rid of them. After all I help other women with theirs every day. When I go through a self critical phase thankfully I can usually turn it around quickly!

One of the beliefs that has been holding me back though is that I’m not a very good writer

I read some peoples blogs and they can seem so witty and engaging that my efforts feel a bit mehhh.

However I keep blogging because I feel I have an important message. I want women who are feeling stressed out and overwhelmed to feel empowered to change their life.

For around 2 years I have had an ambition of being published in The Huffington Post. But I really believed that I wasn’t a good enough writer. That belief was holding me back from even submitting a guest blog. I knew that, yet still I put off submitting an article to be considered.

Eventually I was feeling brave and sent an article off. I was totally unattached to the outcome because even sending it was stretching my comfort zone so that alone was a success for me, I had finally stopped procrastinating!

3 days later I received an email from Arianna Huffington herself to say that they would love to feature my voice on Huff Post!!!

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!! I was in shock

She had copied a senior editor in and asked me to send my bio and a headshot. I did that pretty quickly as you can imagine :)

Then I waited…

and waited…

I had contacted them originally in October. By mid December I hadn’t heard anything. I convinced myself that everyone gets a “yes we’d love to feature you…” email and that they were just fobbing me off.

But I had made a commitment that I was going to step up into my business in an even bigger way in 2015. For me that started now! There was no point waiting until January . I put my big girl pants on and emailed the editor to ask when my article would be featured.

I almost asked IF it would be featured then gave myself a shake. Arianna Huffington told me herself that she wanted to feature me so it was about time I started acting like I believed I would actually be published.

And ta-da…. here it is…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julia-harris/this-is-why-you-feel-like-a-failure_b_6344478.html

I can’t believe I actually got published I am so happy :)

Naturally I would love you to read my article and if you like it please help me to spread the message further by sharing on facebook or twitter so more people see it.

But I didn’t do it on my own… The article wouldn’t have been there without the support of my posse.

My favourite description of posse is in the urban dictionary:

“Your homies, your peeps, the gang of friends you hang out with that make you powerful”

Yes I’m 46 which is far to old to have a posse but I’ve got one anyway and so should you!

I have never even personally met most of my posse, my posse are other women like me who have the audacity to think they can change the world. We hang out in a few different Facebook groups and we have each others backs. We understand that its normal to feel like you can conquer the world in one area yet in another you feel like “who will listen to me”.

They understand that it takes courage to step out of our comfort zones. And sometimes its only possible to do that with support and encouragement. Sometimes that support is a kick in the pants and sometimes it is about creating a safe space where its ok to be vulnerable.

After connecting with my power posse I got the guts to send an email to Huff Post

Only after allowing myself to be vulnerable after not hearing anything for 2 months did I decide that it was ok to contact the editor again. It was also my posse that I celebrated with when my article was published because they really knew how much it meant to me whereas my husbands response was “that’s nice”

I have been asked a few times how I got published and thought about writing about that but you know what?… I’ve read at least 10 articles over the past 2 years. You too can google “how to get published on Huff Post” yet I still did nothing for a long time.

If you are procrastinating about something IT IS NOT KNOWLEDGE that is holding you back. You will find anything you need to know by searching Google, it is never knowledge!

It might be procrastination, self doubt or a lack of focus but whatever it is you can overcome that with support and accountability!