Hello - I Finally Made it Here!
Welcome to the first edition of my newsletter. A brave little initiative by a private person — ‘Growing with Gauri’ is my invitation for you to join me in my journey of self-expression and growth. I am on a mission to treat each day as an opportunity to learn and grow, and in the process, I hope to share helpful, interesting, and insightful notes through this newsletter.
The themes here will be super fluid. I will show up every fortnight (sometimes weekly) with thoughts, observations, learnings & experiences, ideas, reflections, questions, recommendations, and prompts to ponder over, about life, therapy, emotions, relationships, motherhood / parenting, client stories (with consent and without names), and much more!
The vibe of this space will be thoughtful, grounded, and always a work in progress :)
The theme for today - Getting Started
I love writing. I often write for myself. I communicate best when I write, and I have been wanting to write publicly for a long while. My writing style is very conversational. Yet, I always hesitated.
I realised that I hesitate not because I don’t want to do this, but because of a few fears.
“What if others already know what I’m sharing here”. I asked myself, so what if they do? Am I promising that I would know more, or know it all? No. However I was holding an unrealistic expectation from myself to show up with new information all the time. That felt unfair, and with this realisation one layer of hesitation was gone.
“what if what i write doesn’t add value for the reader?” I thought and asked myself what’s my definition of value? Working as a therapist over the past years has made me realise that value does not come from just having it all figured out. It comes more from credibility, authenticity, and the ability to hold space while observing, reflecting, and not rushing to conclusions. I trust myself in these aspects and am able to foresee this space reflecting these values. Hesitation number 2 felt much lighter.
There was a third hesitation that was leading to procrastination -
I want this to be an authentic space, which may naturally include moments of vulnerable sharing — once in a while, or perhaps often. Who knows? (take this first edition for example!) Would this impact how I am perceived as a professional?
I took some time for this one. Some questions came up and reflecting upon these eased me
Is this a professional endeavour? Not really.
Does my profession limit my human experiences? On the contrary it makes me more aware
Does this newsletter come with a purpose of me being perceived as an expert in my field of work and life? Definitely Not.
Is there a way for me to communicate the intention - Of course, and so I did above :)
At this point, I decided to stop the thinking (because there were more hesitations and I had realised none of them will be relevant enough to not do this), and get to the doing, and here I am.
If you find yourself in a similar place, I hope this serves as a gentle nudge to reflect and get started. In addition to having a wonderful mentor who gave me the nudge to get going, the one thing that helped me most is setting and communicating the intention - it gets rid of the pressure (even the self imposed kind).
What I have shared above as my journey of getting started is a common challenge in many contexts. It is often very quickly termed as “Self-Doubt”.
If this feels relatable, ask yourself - are you unsure of your abilities (i.e. do you doubt your self) or are you unsure of the impact and result of your abilities put to action? Sometimes what we call self-doubt is actually a search for certainty. And really - can we truly be certain about any aspect of life? Maybe not, and that need not mean we don’t give things (especially low risk ones) a shot. Best case - it works, worst case - it fails, either way there is something to learn.
I will be back soon. See you! Till then, I wanted to leave you with a question: How do you define love, or being in love? I will come back with a piece on this theme in the future and am curious to hear the definition you hold at present. You can write to me on growingwithgauri@gmail.com
Impatiently waiting for the next newsletter...