What I’m about to say is so important that I’m going to make a big deal about it through the magic of typographic emphasis:

The best way to convince people that you are capable of helping them is to demonstrate that you understand their pain.

If you truly want to help your right people (and of course you do), they need to trust that you understand what they’re going through.

All their hurt. All their fear. All their resistance.

I’ll let you in on a secret. People don’t come to you for expertise.

Like, if you really just wanted to know about blogging, you would not be reading this right now.

Because you know what? I’ve only been blogging for six months.

Let’s pretend that you have to have an awkward, uncomfortable conversation or confrontation or something else that begins with “con” coming up.

And I’ll just go ahead and assume that you’re totally not looking forward to it.

Anyway, even if that’s not what’s going on for you right now, it will be the case at some point, because relationships between people? Sometimes hard and messy.

Just play along with me.

There are two ways we get support. Or anything, for that matter.

We have internal resources (thoughts, emotions, strengths, energy, ideas, epiphanies, concepts, reassurances, trust) …

… and we also have external resources (people we know, experts, authorities, information, even a higher power — if you believe in one — could be considered an external resource).

We had some pretty intense discussion happening in the comments section of last week’s talking truth to fear post.

And not intense in a bad way. The opposite, in fact. Really good points being brought up, people showing up and respectfully debating ideas and, in some cases, respectfully disagreeing. I’m loving it.

These intelligent, compassionate conversations have been continuing in email exchanges and on other people’s blogs, and it was really cool to see how my thoughts inspired a ton of other blog posts which work with these concepts and take them in different directions.

One of the weirder things that’s coming up, though, is that several people have been writing in to thank me for getting them to face their fears.

And: the truth about fear.

A few years ago I took a course with some semi-famous biggified chick on getting over the fear of cold calling.

To be honest, I could not care less about cold calling. I was there for the fear.

Okay, so one of the big themes on this blog is biggification — the art of putting yourself out there and growing that cool thing you do (or want to do) — and how to do that mindfully.

And one of the scariest parts of mindful biggification is pricing.

Pricing as in: choosing or recognizing what you want to charge for the things you offer, and feeling okay with it. Or maybe even good about it.

It’s all about the hating.

Some people hate incredibly tacky Christmas decorations. Some people hate cherry Coke. Or, you know, things like racism and war.

Me? I hate charades. Not “people pretending to be something they aren’t”, though I’m willing to concede that this could also be pretty annoying. The game.

There’s this thing — yes, a thing, don’t make me get all specific — that invariably comes up when you talk to people about habits and how their habits work.

And this thing annoys the pants off of pretty much everybody.

Here’s what happens.

You work really, really, really hard to establish a habit. A new, healthy, good-for-you, good-for-your-life habit. Eventually, with effort, patience, and god knows what else, you reach the hooray point where it’s actually kind of happening.

But then … something happens.

There’s this funny thing that’s actually not funny at all that happens when you write a blog. You start writing posts in your head.

All the time.

It’s not you. No, no. Not you. It’s just that all sorts of semi-random concepts, incidents and overheard sentences start winking at you lasciviously with knowing come-hither smiles.

Or worse, they pout that if you don’t write a post about them, oh, they will be so sad.

Before you know it, you’re digging around in your bag for the cellphone you never use so you can Jott yourself six post ideas before they disappear into the ether..