Everything is scary when risk is involved. Worrying about financial risks can keep you up at night and the realization of how much time is needed to hit a goal and be paralyzing.
If you know the world needs your idea, you’ve got to lean into the fear. That scary feeling in the pit of your stomach makes you feel alive. Fear plays a mental game. It can keep you from getting started or stall you when something doesn’t go right. It takes a great deal of focus. But if you focus on what could go wrong, you won’t allow yourself to imagine what could go right.
I recently attended a Beauty Boost retreat that Julie Wilkes lead. She touched on something that hit me in my soul. To summarize, she said that “our brains over imagine everything that could go wrong and under imagine everything that could go right.” I loved that saying so much that I made it my Christmas card for this year and I keep it close to me to remind me to move past the fear of failure.
Even when I have failed and have fallen flat on my face, I have ended up in a beautiful place. I have made some mistakes, but I have also learned from them. I’m reminded of a professor I had in college who encouraged us to shoot for the moon and if you fall short, you’ll still be among the stars. That stuck with me because it’s true. In our society, we are taught that failure is bad. We spend way too much energy not on figuring out what to do, but how not to fail. We get stuck in a loop of decision paralysis, too afraid to move forward. But failure is good! It is how humans learn.
To combat my own fear and disrupt my negative thinking, I journal. I write out my fears and acknowledge what could go wrong as well as WHAT COULD GO RIGHT. I write down times where I’ve accomplished something similar to my new idea. And after I am done, I work on a plan. It always moves me past the fear.
We all struggle with our own fears, but if you can shift your focus to the positive and work through the things that hold you back, I promise that there are unimaginable new adventures that await you!
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