Sharing your experiences

I’ve been thinking about this topic for a little while now. It started with another aha moment for me that I was considering writing a post about. I wasn’t sure about posting because it calls into focus my belief in God. As a writer, sometimes I try to remain neutral (notice I said sometimes) with the face I present to the world. I’m not neutral though and this blog is my personal blog that I post whatever is going on in my head at the moment. As the title of the blog states, It’s never what you expect.

In thinking about the topic I was considering, I was reminded of the importance of sharing your experiences with others by two conflicting posts on Facebook. One friend posted about how she was humbled by an experience she’d had that day and how she was grateful for the lesson she’d learned. In an unrelated post by another friend that was next in my timeline, a friend ranted passionately about a celebrity.

Reading the one post right after the other gave me such amazing perspective. I couldn’t help but think about what we let become important to us. And then, of course I had to think about what things I was giving energy to in my own life. How many unimportant things am I giving my passion and my effort to?

I went to bed with those thoughts in my head and woke up feeling so wonderful and so positive. When I got to work I wrote down some of my thoughts and had every intention of coming home that day and writing a nice post about it. But as the day progressed I again let a lot of those things that shouldn’t have priority take all of my energy and all my emotions, until there was very little left for me and the people in my life at the end of the day. I didn’t have enough emotional energy left to check my email, let alone write the post.

In the past I wrote about my experience shaving my head. I posted it here and didn’t expect much to come of it. If you’ll look at the popular posts on the right hand side, you’ll see it’s the most popular post. I’m amazed at the number of visitors to this blog that come from that post alone. If you’re interested, take a look, and if you do, look at the comments. I was humbled by the fact that my experience helped someone I didn’t know who lived thousands of miles from me.

Today I had a similar experience with a runner who I follow on Twitter. She posted her experience and it was exactly what I was needing to hear this morning. So, in my long and rambling way that I always do... I’ll get to the point.

Sometimes we question sharing our experiences or our writing with others. Reasons might be that we’re afraid of what others might think or say. Will they like it? Will someone be offended by what I believe or have to say and be turned away? There are so many what ifs and reasons we can come up with to convince ourselves not to put ourselves and our thoughts out there.

For me, what I’ve found (but sometimes forget) is; there may be someone out there reading my blog who really needs to hear what I have to say. I never know when my words might make all the difference in the world to someone else. By posting or sharing my works, I may be helping someone in ways I can’t even imagine.

For some people that isn’t enough to outweigh the fear of rejection, or the fear of just putting themselves out there. For me, by taking myself out of the equation it makes the choice easier. By sharing this, hopefully, it’ll help someone else who is struggling with the same concerns.