The Best Creative Advice, and Why It Won’t Stick

What’s actually happening in your body every time you sit down to start the thing you’ve been longing to make

It’s Nina — thanks for reading! I’ve worked with hundreds of women who want to start something new, whether it’s a business, a newsletter, or a podcast. What stops them is usually not lack of knowledge, but something deeper in the nervous system. Here’s why.

They make it sound so easy, and I’m tired of it.

Oversimplified, one-dimensional advice, particularly advice that starts with the word “just,” has become the bane of my existence.

Like this: Just feel the fear and do it anyway.

Um, the fear is debilitating, and it feels like there’s a literal truck on my chest and I’m going to die, but ok, sure.

I’ve said this a lot when it comes to love. Your nervous system has an agenda of its own, and that agenda is keeping you where things feel familiar, even when familiar is the thing that’s hurting you.

So you read advice that says just stop choosing unavailable men, and while every part of you understands the how and the why of this advice, the very young part of you that was abandoned by your father a long time ago reads an unavailable man as familiar. And that part of you, that lives deep in your nervous system, chooses the comfort and safety of a chaos it already knows over the unfamiliar of someone available and ready for real intimacy.

I use that example because it’s the clearest one I know. But love isn’t the only place this happens. The same young part, the same pull toward what’s familiar, shows up the moment you decide to create something of your own and put a piece of yourself into the world.

I’ve been building and creating my whole career, first as a founder, now as a somatic coach. And the freeze I watch women hit when they want to make something new is the same freeze, wearing different clothes.

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The advice I see here on Substack about creating reads as very one-dimensional to me. It speaks to the mind without speaking to the nervous system. And advice that doesn’t speak to the nervous system isn’t going to stick.

I’ve said it 1,000 times. In a contest between the mind and the nervous system, the nervous system is always going to win. Not because the mind isn’t smart; it is smart. It’s because survival is the nervous system’s only concern. More than being smart, wealthy, or in love.

The advice that says just hit publish, advice you may know to be sound, won’t stick when publishing feels in your body like that truck on your chest, certain to crush you. When you cringe at the thought of people reading your truest thoughts. When you want to disappear when you think about truly showing up.

When you read advice online that tells you to just do something and find this advice difficult if not impossible to implement, please know that this is the reason. Your nervous system is keeping you safe the only way it knows how.

Here’s some advice I saw recently in a round-up of Substack experts. The advice is sound. The problem is that it’s oversimplified and incomplete.

The advice: Start before you’re ready

This is excellent advice because “ready” is a feeling that’s elusive at best. There’s always another course you can take, another expert you can consult with, another framework you can study. But the ventures that succeed are usually the ones where the founder starts, researches, learns, adjusts, tweaks, and keeps going.

In my own business, I started with nothing more than a sketch of a product, long before I was ready to create it or sell it. I then spent 9 months working, researching, and tweaking my original concept, so that the finished product I launched — that sold out in three days — bore little resemblance to the original sketch.

Starting before you’re ready is smart but it’s not always easy, because starting something new is terrifying. When we start something new, we’re putting a piece of ourselves out there, making ourselves vulnerable in front of our family and friends and a million strangers, and taking the risk that we’re going to look silly or misinformed or uninteresting.

Love and belonging are the most basic of needs. The nervous system will do anything in its power to stop you from taking the risk of losing those things. It will throw up roadblocks and obstacles galore.

The advice: Help others solve a problem

Businesses succeed and people make money because they help others solve problems. As a former founder, I can tell you it’s difficult to get people to hand over their money. They need to feel like the trade will be worth it, that they will receive something of equal or greater value for the money they give you.

Here’s what makes this hard: it’s scary to put yourself out there as an expert. It’s scary to show up every day saying your solution is going to help and not knowing whether other people will agree. It’s scary to share your wisdom that you’ve lived and earned through your life experience, not knowing if anyone is even going to appreciate it.

What we call imposter syndrome is often your nervous system trying to protect you from the risk of being seen. It will tell you nobody will want to pay for your expertise. It will tell you there are already plenty of better solutions out there. It will do anything in its power to keep you in familiar territory, as a consumer rather than an expert creator of a product or service, someone who’s actually putting herself out there.

The advice: Trust your voice

Trust yourself. My own mother gave me this advice when I was 27 and walking into my first client meeting as a direct marketing manager for her company. Ironically, she was telling me to trust myself when I’d been working there for less than a week and didn’t actually know a single thing about direct marketing.

Self-trust is the muscle that makes everything else possible. But self-trust when you’re creating something brand new, something with no track record, takes a level of confidence that not many of us have. It’s putting yourself out there. It’s saying, I’m showing up even though I might make a complete fool of myself, but I trust that I’ll figure it out as I go.

The nervous system is going to all-out fight you on this one. It will tell you that you should avoid those situations, that you should keep your mouth shut and listen to other people rather than yourself.

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So, yes to all the advice. Start before you’re ready. Help solve a problem. Trust yourself.

But let go of the oversimplified messaging that’s asking you to ignore the difficult feelings and bypass the hard work of looking inward and facing fears and insecurities that have been living there for decades.

If you want to create, but you’re freezing or bracing or procrastinating, it’s because your nervous system is doing exactly what it was designed to do.

You can move past this, and what it takes is building the inner scaffolding to know you’re safe and lovable and worthy, even if you create something new and no one buys it. Even if you do the thing and no one cares. Even if it feels like no one reads, likes, or subscribes.

The truck you feel on your chest isn’t the actual threat. The real threat is allowing the truck to keep you from creating the thing that’s real and true for you.

xo Nina

P.S. Hit “reply” and let me know what you’re longing to start, grow, and put out into the world. I read every message.