Two Weeks Ago, I Googled Myself

When the devil whispers a lie to you, it’s not random. It’s intentional. Deliberate.
It’s the exact opposite of the Truth. The specific Truth he is trying to discredit in your life.
It gives you a little insight into his playbook.

Two weeks ago, I googled myself.

It wasn’t out of arrogance, I promise, rather shear curiosity. Barry (my husband) and I were driving around town when he told me about a DJ friend of his from college, “He moved to L.A. and is like a real life, big time DJ. You can google him!”

So naturally I thought, I wonder what happens when you google “Author Rachel Dawn”? So I did. To my surprise, the results were stacked! Google returned my bio, my author page on amazon, my tv interview, youtube clips, my website, my blog… like I was a real life, big time author!

Then it occurred to me that google results are tailored to individuals based on their search and web history, I told myself, this has to be biased. So I tried it from Barry’s phone and asked 3 or 4 of my closest friends to google me and screenshot their results. They all had virtually the same content I saw, but in a different order; some looked more impressive than others.

Later that night, in a back-and-forth text exchange with my sister I told her my results had been “crazy” and made me look “totally legit”. To which she simply replied, “You are legit.”

And then I bawled my eyes out at 1:30 in the morning as I typed out a page long reply to her.

You see, what I feel is the furthest thing from legit.

Some days, I feel like a total fraud.

There’s actually a term for this, it’s called Imposter Syndrome.

Wikipedia defines imposter syndrome as: a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their accomplishments, and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud”.

And a Fast Company article states: The phenomenon reflects a belief that you’re an inadequate and incompetent failure, despite evidence that indicates you’re skilled and quite successful.

Just two days earlier, while in for my weekly appointment, my book came up in discussion with my chiropractor for the first time. Like any genuinely interested person, he asked a few questions, and then came the one question I had been praying wouldn’t come of his mouth, “Are sales going well?”

You guys… It.got.so.weird.

All my confidence was sucked right out from inside me. Immediately my shoulders drooped and I couldn’t look him in the eye. I was so self-conscious thinking about the number of copies sold in my head. My voice trailed off as I rambled on about how reality had not lived up to my expectations for numbers blah blah blah… and I changed the subject as quickly as possible.

I was most embarrassed at my own reaction.

And when that text from my sister came in, the realization of why I felt that way hit me.

I wrote to her: I don’t know when it’s supposed to feel like you “made it” in this [book] world, this segment. But lately I’ve noticed my confidence has been lacking and I think it’s because I feel like I’m just failing. Like I should be way further along. The further away I get from my release date, the more of a failure I feel. But I don’t even know at what point I would stop feeling that. This is the first time I’ve even been able to put those thoughts together in words.

Maybe you have felt like this before? You thought with this degree or that job, you’d be making more money. At this company, you’d be further up the ranks. By this age or with all the work you’ve put in, you’d have more, be more, feel more satisfied…

Compound that with social media feeds parading in front of you the people who started at the same place at the same time, but appear further along and totally fine. Ugh.

She responded with precisely the words I needed to hear, but still struggled to believe:

You know those are lies being whispered to you. You’re successful because of the lives you’ve touched, not the number of books sold. I’m sure you would have written that book just to help a single person, but instead, you’ve helped hundreds…so far, and more to come.

Not many people can say that.

You’re one of the most confident people I know, don’t let the devil steal that God-given trait from you. Maybe the plan is to kill, steal and destroy your confidence so that you won’t keep going, so that you won’t write another book?!

You’re only 33 and you wrote and have published a book. That’s successful.

Everything I’ve ever been taught about success is to set tangible, concrete goals. It’s not enough to just want to “write a book”, you have to set a deadline, and concrete numbers for sales, so you can measure your accomplishment. But so far, that method had only served to send me on an emotional rollercoaster in this endeavor. My expectation was to have sold this many copies during launch week, not almost 2 years later.

I prayed to God that night: tell me what I should be believing for. Should I have a goal with a number attached to it? Or not? Why was this bothering me so much? I asked Him to reveal the depth of what was really going on.

At Least I’m Not Alone

Over the next few days as I marinated on the exchange, I was reminded of a story I heard at the She Speaks conference in 2016. During a workshop titled, Marketing Do-Over: Secrets I Wish I Had Known, Before My First Book Launched, Courtney DeFeo recounted a similar meltdown.

Some time after her book launched, Courtney called her mentor (Lysa Terkeurst) crying hysterically about the [lack of] number of copies she had sold. She expected it to be many more by then. She expected to be further along. And she felt like everything she had done had been wasted effort. She questioned if she really supposed to do this? She wanted to give up. Then, they had this exchange:

Lysa calmly asked her, “Did God ask you to write the book?”

“Yes.”

“Are people being impacted?”

What?

“Do you get letters/emails from people telling you how your book is impacting them?”

“Well, yes.”

“That’s all that matters. Numbers are not the key indicators of your success. Changed lives are.”

I was thankful to have heard that story even before I needed it so I knew I wasn’t alone. But that still didn’t mean I knew how to stop feeling this way or what to do with these feelings.

Subterfuge

What shocked me the most about my early morning meltdown was the fact that I hadn’t realized it was happening.

“Subterfuge” was the word I kept picturing in my imagination. If our minds are the battlefield of our lives (and I believe they are), the enemy had been playing a long, slow game of Guerilla Warfare to which I had been utterly oblivious. I wondered just how long those thoughts had been planted, germinated, and able to take root?

A few days later I was retelling the 1:30-am-text-exchange-breakdown-story to my friend

TaLarrya and in the way that only she can, she listened and then responded, “Ok, so you know that is a lie. So, what truth is the enemy trying to shake your confidence in, that God wants to affirm in you? The two are probably related.”

I’m thankful for friends I can be totally vulnerable with, who can speak Truth back to me in exactly the way I need it.

In that moment, it was like the enemy’s playbook was thrown open in front of my eyes.

When she walked away, I took out my phone and jotted a quick note for myself: What’s the opposite of failure, of “I should be further along than I am right now.”?

I believe there are still many truths God will continue to whisper to me about this, but right away what I heard was, I’m exactly where God wants me, right now.

For reasons beyond my comprehension, I’m supposed to be in this exact this place, at this stage, for this moment, in this season, with this number of books sold.

I don’t know what all of His plans for my future as an author and public speaker look like, how high He will elevate me, what reach and impact He will allow me to have, but He has promised that He does:

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11)

My job is to rest in the trusting of that truth. And to do the next thing He puts in front of me.

Resting & Trusting keep popping up as recurring themes in my life this year…looks like I still have a lot to learn about them both.