Everyone Needs Encouragement
Building a Community of Encouragers
There has been a flurry of subscribers to this publication, which is very encouraging even if you try not to get too hooked up on the numbers. I am (quietly) celebrating because the trigger for the surge in sign-ups seems to be our offer of a fresh round of Encouragement Sessions:
There have been 16 declarations of interest and so far the diary has been wrestled into shape for hour-long Zoom calls with eight Substack folk from as far afield as Norway, the UK, and the east coast of America. One person is coming back for a fresh burst of encouragement (which is always reassuring). What is super-interesting is that everyone who has booked in looks pretty swept up in their Substack presence and in their corners of ‘the world of work’.
Which got me thinking.
Why do the Encouragement Sessions work?
Why do folk choose them?
Our Encouragement Sessions are one-hour bursts of enthusiasm and positivity, free at the point of use. I host them, bringing to the table a mixed experience of ‘corporate’ life, five years of creating and running a small business, and recent time spent travelling, setting up a smallholding in France, and mentoring folk from our online community who have asked.
The Sessions are true to the values at the heart of the Encouragement Manifesto, though they aren’t coaching or mentoring in a formal sense.
I reckon everyone needs encouragement.
By that I mean EVERYONE. You, me, that person over there with thousands of subscribers, the person finding their way as a reader here on Substack, the elite athlete, the star performer, the fiction writer, the mum heading into work, the dad doing the 3 am feed, the writer, the painter … you, me, everyone.
Offering encouragement is a superpower we ALL have.
I have been struck by how many people are encouraging folk within their Substack communities. Good souls like Charlene at
put their doubts, fears, and processes out there to encourage others that it is okay to feel the same. Charlene’s newsletter this week was the perfect encouragement:
These words, in particular, arrived at the perfect moment for me:
We’re often advised that we get better at writing by writing and, of course, it’s true. Practise makes closer-to-perfect. But sharing our work as it now, testing the boundaries of our courage in relation to our creativity, is the only way to build those artistic muscles and the resilience we need to be makers out loud in the world. We’re led to believe that we have to be good at something before we make it public, to do the learning in private in order to avoid looking foolish or risk failure in front of an audience.
‘Create imperfectly and share it anyway’ (Charlene Storey)
Over at ‘Just Write, Right’, a little side project that aims to make me a little braver about creating and sharing my fiction writing, I had just posted a 100-word story written for a writing competition (the Welkin Mini). I was pretty pleased with the story and the way the words flowed, but they didn’t strike a chord with the judges. Not many years months ago I would have hidden the words away … but they’re out there, in the court of public opinion.
Charlene’s words reminded me of the necessity of getting my work *out there*.
Here’s the thing, even encouragers need encouragement.
We ALL need encouragement.
Update on the Encouragement Sessions:
All the available slots for January 2024 are booked up.
I will open up several Sessions in February 2024 (look out for the details here and in Notes).
Encouragement is the one thing that I always tell people I didn’t receive from my parents when I was growing up. It took me until my 40’s to learn how to encourage myself as I never learned the skill as a child. Even now I still sometimes have to consciously remember to encourage my daughters before jumping into problem solving. How awesome that you do these sessions, especially for all of us navigating the feelings that come with exposing our writing, well done 🙌🏻
To me, this is about just not being alone. I write and create almost in complete solitude and I am deeply in need of a fiery connection of positive momentum. I set out to encourage every day and love the reminder to prioritize it. Thank you.