Afraid to Share Your Work? What If It’s Better Than You Think?

Stop deciding what your work is worth to other people. Somewhere along the way, we started confusing our opinion of what we create with what it’s actually worth to someone else.

Robyn Lee

I’ve been in the position plenty of times where I’ve created something I wanted to share, but then decided it wasn’t good enough. The weird part is sometimes that creation wasn’t even put onto paper before I stopped myself from putting myself out there.

It kinda reminds me of when I did a bit of cold calling in the past (ok, I didn’t actually do the cold calling; I chickened out and hired an agency). But in my coaching program, they coached a lot around how to get past the “gatekeeper.” This was the person who fielded all the calls for the person you actually wanted to talk to.

I’ve felt like that with my creative work, and sometimes I still feel like that. And it’s an exhausting feeling because, before you can ever get your work out there, it’s shut down. Each time you allow the mental gatekeeper to decide whether your work is “worthy” enough, it seems like it gets stronger.

Basically, you’ve created something you want to share (or thought about it). Maybe you’ve written an article, created a piece of art, recorded a video, or worked on an idea you’re excited about. You’ve put time and energy into it, and at some point, you thought it was worth creating.

But now you’re questioning whether it’s good enough.

You start wondering whether people will like it, and will anyone connect with what you’re trying to say? Will they find value in your work?

And don’t go looking at other’s work online or even in person. That’s the worst. You’re almost guaranteed to find someone else who has done it “better” than you. So why do you even need to put your “less than perfect” version out there anyway?

Suddenly, the thing you were excited about creating doesn’t seem quite as good as it did before. Why bother?

You’re not stopping per se, you’ve just put a pin in it until you’re happier with it, or when you have more experience – or even just feel a little more confident in yourself or that people would appreciate it.

But how do you know when it’s ever good enough?

The more you question your work, the harder it can become to put it out there.

I’ve been thinking about this because I’ve noticed how easily judgment can become a roadblock to success, and I think it’s closely connected to perfectionism and fear of rejection.

When we create something, we can start evaluating it before we’ve even given anyone else the opportunity to experience it.

Is this good enough? Are people going to like it? Is this going to resonate with anyone? What makes this worthy of being out in the world?

Those questions may seem reasonable to ask yourself. After all, if we’re going to share something, we want it to be worthwhile.

But I’ve started to look at those questions a little bit differently than I have before.

When I’m questioning whether something I’ve created is good enough, I’ve already judged its value.

I’m trying to determine how other people might respond to something they haven’t even seen yet. If I decide it isn’t good enough, I may never share it.

What’s interesting to me is that my judgment might have very little to do with what someone else could actually get from it.

I’m deciding what my work is worth before anyone else has had a chance to decide what it means to them.

And that judgment can do more than keep something from being published. It can stop the creation itself. I’ve stopped myself from creating something before someone even has had the chance to experience it.

How Judging Your Work Can Stop You Before You Even Begin 

One thing I’ve noticed about judgment is that it can interrupt the creative process.

When you’re creating something, you’re exploring an idea and figuring out what you want to say, how you want to express it, or what you want to make.

It may not come together perfectly the first time. You might have to work through several versions before you get closer to what you imagined, and sometimes the process takes you somewhere you didn’t expect.

But when you start judging whether what you’re creating is good enough, your attention shifts.

You become focused on evaluating what you’ve already done, and questions start coming up.

Is this any good? Is it worth continuing?

And if you don’t like the answers, you may stop.

We can become so focused on whether something is good enough that we stop giving ourselves the opportunity to make it better.

At some point, the question becomes whether what we’ve created so far deserves to exist outside our own minds. We may make that decision before we’ve even finished exploring what we could create.

I’ve been realizing that judgment can become the very thing that prevents us from discovering what we’re capable of creating.

I can take the experience of learning and getting better away from myself, by just a thought.

And the interesting thing is, once you succumb to that thought, it’s not like it even goes away. It doesn’t make you feel better, it just supports the lie that you shouldn’t create at all.

That doesn’t mean that everything you create will be perfect the first time around.

The thing you’re working on might still have room to develop into something much better. But if you stop because it doesn’t meet your expectations right now, you may never find out where it could have gone.

Why Your Work Might Be Worth Sharing Even If You Doubt It 

And here’s another part I’ve been thinking about.

When we judge our creations, we’re usually looking at them through our own expectations. We know what we wanted to create and what we hoped it would become, so we can see the places where it doesn’t quite match what we imagined.

Someone else doesn’t necessarily experience our work that way. They haven’t seen the version we had in our heads. They’re experiencing what’s actually there.

And something that doesn’t seem particularly amazing to us might be exactly what someone else needed.

And that’s the other funny part. Isn’t it crazy how we judge our work through our OWN eyes, when we’ve already had the experiences and learned the lessons that led us to create it in the first place?

Of course, some of it might not seem that amazing to us now. We’ve already learned those lessons. But think about the “you” from three years ago, before you had those experiences. Wouldn’t some of what you’re creating today have helped or inspired that version of you?

And there are people out there right now who are where you were three years ago.

They may never have considered that perspective before.

That’s what makes judging our work before sharing it so limiting. We’re assuming we know what other people will think or whether they’ll find it valuable, even though we really have no way of knowing.

When we decide something isn’t good enough to share, we’re also making the decision that no one else gets to experience it.

What if something I don’t consider good enough could still help someone?

It’s often not our ENTIRE creative work that makes meaningful change or a moment of joy in someone else’s life. It may be one laugh, one insight, a different way of looking at things, that really creates a shift that makes a difference in someone else’ s life.

How Sharing Imperfect Work Can Lead to Something Extraordinary 

There’s one more possibility that I think we overlook when we’re judging our work.

What if the thing you’ve created is only kind of good?

It might be something you’re reasonably happy with, but it doesn’t feel amazing or quite what you had hoped to create.

It can feel disappointing when something doesn’t match our expectations. We might even question whether it’s worth continuing because we expected it to turn out better.

I’ve been considering whether every creation really needs to be amazing.

Some parts of creation are about the practice. Creating and publishing.

Something that’s only kind of good might be helping us develop an idea, discover a new direction, or learn something that will influence what we create next.

I’m realizing that some of the value may come from where the experience of creating something leads us.

That’s a different way of looking at work that doesn’t meet our expectations.

Something we consider less than good enough could still be an important part of a larger creative journey. And if we stop that journey because we’re judging what we’ve created so far, we may never discover what could have come next.

What if something you’re judging today is part of the journey toward creating something extraordinary?

It could eventually lead you to create something you haven’t even imagined yet, perhaps something that helps hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that anything we create will have that kind of impact. But there’s also no way to know what we might eventually create if we stop ourselves from continuing.

That’s why I think judging our creations can become such a significant roadblock.

We could be preventing one piece of work from reaching other people while also stopping the creative process that might eventually lead to something far greater.

What If You Shared It Anyway?

I keep coming back to those questions we ask ourselves when we’re afraid to share something we’ve created.

Is it good enough? Will people like it? Will it resonate with anyone?

I understand why we ask them. We care about what we’re putting into the world, and we want it to matter.

But I’m beginning to question whether we can really answer those questions on behalf of everyone else.

We can decide whether we’ve put care and effort into something and make improvements when we see something that needs work. What we can’t know is exactly how another person will experience what we’ve created, or what creating and sharing it might eventually lead us to do next.

Something we’ve made may not be as good as we’d hoped. It might only be kind of good, and perhaps that’s enough for where we are right now.

It could still mean something to someone else, and it might be one part of the journey toward creating something we haven’t even imagined yet.

I’m starting to see that when I judge my work as not good enough, I may be closing the door on possibilities I haven’t had a chance to discover.

Maybe the question isn’t whether what I’ve created is good enough for everyone else, but whether I’m willing to give it the opportunity to be experienced.