Start before you're ready!
Last week we were talking about the cost of perfectionism to our happiness and confidence. My desire to be perfect meant:
I held back from things I really wanted to do.
Things that should be fun lost their enjoyment.
I was in a state of self-induced fear far too often.
My anxiety levels were high all of the time – anxiety had become a habit – my go to emotion.
I felt guilty about things that just didn’t matter.
I didn’t recognise or celebrate my successes because they were never quite good enough!
I didn’t believe I was good enough.
All of which resulted in my confidence being far lower than it should have been.
I’ve stopped striving for perfection and one of the really helpful methods I used to do this was to make “Start before you’re ready” my new motto.
So what does this mean?
It means starting before you have everything worked out.
It means knowing and accepting that the first time doing anything feels hard.
It means accepting that we learn and grow through doing, not from planning endlessly.
It means accepting that action is needed to move us forward.
It means learning and improving as we go along.
How does someone become a great public speaker?
By doing it again and again and again and learning from the things that went well and the things that didn’t go so well! Not by waiting to be perfect before they start!
How does someone launch a successful business?
By launching and learning. By seeing what works and what doesn’t and tweaking and pivoting and trying again! Not by waiting until they know everything they could possible know before they even start!
By my nature I would plan and plan and then plan some more until every possible scenario had been thought of, every i dotted and every t crossed and then checked and double checked and then checked again.I'm exhausted just reading that! I now know I can’t afford to let myself do that. It halts progress because there’s always one more bit of planning you could do before actually starting!
So now, I start before I’m ready. Because the fact is, I am ready. Once the initial planning and preparation is done I can start.
I did this with my website, my launch of my coaching business, my launch of my grow your confidence challenges and my group coaching programme! All of which worked and not only worked but went well, in fact better than well. However, if I wasn't prepared to start before I'm ready I could easily still be writing and rewriting my group coaching programme instead of having run it successfully twice by now!
Right now I’m working on my podcast launch. There is so much to learn but I’ve set myself a December launch date and it will be out in the world before the end of 2020!. My word for this year is adventure and this feels like the right way to finish the year with the launch of my very own podcast so that I can help even more women to unlock their confidence, clarity and courage!
Watch this space for more details coming soon!
Where in your life do you need to start before you’re ready right now? Have a think about it and be honest of yourself. What are you putting off by telling yourself that you have to do just a little bit more work, a little more prep?
As I shared last week I’m running a masterclass – Free Yourself from the Burden of Perfectionism on Monday 30th November at 10am GMT hosted by the wonderful women in the Ladies Life Lounge. You don’t have to be a member to watch it. They’re offering you the chance to join the masterclass and have access to a recording for just £7! Here’s the link you need https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_cunGw5uAQKaqcVe1Hr8EZw
I’ll be giving you plenty more ideas in the masterclass of ways that you can let go of perfectionism and stop it ruling your life. I’d love you to join me.
