Annie F. Downs on Courage, Calling, and Doing the Thing You Keep Putting Off

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There’s something you keep coming back to: a city, a business, a first appointment, the email you’ve avoided since spring. You’ve explained why it can’t happen for you so many times that the explanation started to sound like wisdom.

In this conversation, Annie F. Downs and I talk about the difference between fear and wisdom, why so many of the nos we live by never came from real evidence, and what it looks like to keep moving when you feel uncertain, discouraged, and not at all sure how the story ends.

If you’ve been telling yourself no for years without ever finding out whether the no is real, this conversation can help you question that no and keep moving forward.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

Why the fear that feels like wisdom is usually just fear, and how community helps you tell the differenceHow to move past the "I could never" story by researching step one instead of panicking about step tenWhat it looks like to keep going, or "plod," when you're discouraged, uncertain, or being criticizedWhy building anything worthwhile takes a healthy relationship with uncertainty, not certaintyHow faith reframes the whole thing: you can't break a woman who gets her strength from God

Timestamps:

(02:34) — The painting at the Met and the moment she realized "you are not a portrait yet"

(08:38) — The lie about herself that died while she was writing

(11:09) — Alli's one regret, and Annie's reminder that "there's a yes available"

(13:52) — The seven-year sabbatical, and why going quiet isn't the same as being forgotten

(15:55) — How New York changed her: stop saying no without doing the research