Why you must risk the bad to experience the good

Discover why your fear of negative feedback might be the biggest thing holding you back creatively, and how embracing both praise and criticism is the key to unlocking truly resonant, impactful work.

Hi,

I’m going to tell you a secret. One you probably already know deep down, but can’t quite bring yourself to believe: If you want to be loved—truly, wildly, obsessively loved—you also have to be okay with being hated.

A lot of you, so many of you, are unable to succeed in the way you want because you are so worried about the negative externalities that you optimize to avoid them, unwittingly also negating the possibility for positive externalities.

For instance, when people really, really love your work, it means that people will really, really hate your work. There is no maybe here. Eliciting deep emotions cuts both ways. When good people find deep value in your work and are transformed by it, bad people will also find that value, but they will use it to further their own ends, plagarizing and stealing it, passing it off as their own.

In order to achieve great joy, you must welcome in the ability to feel great sorrow, too.

In my early days as a writer, I thought success was about perfecting my craft. That if I could just make the work good enough, everything else would fall into place. Readers would flock to me. Reviews would roll in. Sales would spike. Everyone would get it.

What I didn’t realize is that most of us—myself included—aren’t blocked by a lack of skill or drive. We’re blocked by fear of exposure.

You’re not afraid your work won’t be good. You’re afraid it will be good and someone will still hate it. You’re afraid that if it resonates deeply with the right people, it will also trigger the wrong people. You’re terrified that if you open the floodgates to passion, you won’t be able to control what rushes in.

So instead, you aim for the middle. You tone it down. You sand off the edges. You try to make it palatable, marketable, safe.

And in doing so, you strip the work of everything that made it yours. We talk about "going viral" like it's this universally good thing, but you know what happens when you go viral?

• People misinterpret you.

• People plagiarize you.

• People attack you for sport.

• People DM you threats because you wrote a blog post about writing habits that triggered something in them.

It sucks. But it also means you struck a nerve. You evoked something. You mattered. If your work is completely safe from judgment, it’s also completely shielded from meaning.

There’s no such thing as a deeply resonant, widely impactful message that doesn’t also piss someone off.

Let’s name the thing. Call it The Emotional Pendulum Principle. The deeper you want your work to be felt, the wider the range of emotions you must be willing to invite.

If you want to touch someone's soul, you have to risk irritating another's ego. If you want people to cry when they read your words, you have to be okay with someone else laughing at your audacity.

This is true in love. It’s true in business. It’s especially true in art.

You cannot only swing toward joy, connection, success, and resonance. The pendulum swings both ways. And the farther it swings into pain, the farther it can swing into beauty.

This is how we self-sabotage. We all say we want the good stuff:

• The fans.

• The love.

• The impact.

• The meaning.

But we optimize our lives to avoid the bad stuff:

• The trolls.

• The rejection.

• The loneliness.

• The theft.

So what do we end up with? Nothing.

No good, no bad. Just numbness. If you never share your work, it can’t be stolen. But it can’t be loved either. If you never pitch, you’ll never be rejected. But you’ll also never be accepted. If you never risk falling, you’ll never fly.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t try to avoid bad things, but by optimizing to avoid them, you limit the ability for good things to happen.

So, how do you work with the pendulum, not against it? Here’s the shift.

You don’t try to avoid the negative outcomes. You plan for them. You expect them. You accept them.

You start asking different questions:

• What if someone does plagiarize me? What systems do I need in place to deal with that?

• What if someone does hate my work? What am I going to tell myself so I don’t spiral?

• What if I go viral and get backlash? Do I have boundaries, friends, self-care routines?

You don’t fear the dark. You light your torch ahead of time, because the pendulum swings both ways, and you’re going to be okay.

You make the thing. You hit publish. You speak with your full chest, knowing someone will twist your words. You write the book that feels dangerous. You share the truth that feels too raw.

You let the pendulum swing—and instead of trying to hold it still, you ride it. Because that swing? That movement? That’s the rhythm of a life fully lived.

So go out there and pick the thing you’ve been sitting on because you're afraid of what might happen. And do it anyway.

Not because you’re fearless, but because you finally understand that to get the good, you have to be willing to risk the bad. Not just tolerate it. Welcome it.

Only then do you start to live. Only then do you make something that matters.

What do you think?

What about you? I’d love to hear your thoughts:

1. What’s something you’ve been holding back from sharing because you were afraid of how people might respond?

2. Have you ever taken a creative risk that led to both incredible support and backlash? How did you handle it?

3. Where is your emotional pendulum right now—swinging toward fear or toward possibility?

Let me know in the comments.

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Photo by Artem Beliaikin on Unsplash