I’m in favour of awesomeness. (No, really?)
I’ve been pushing myself hard these last few months: getting up at 4:30am to chat, writing and studying every spare moment, abandoning a number of my favourite hobbies, working 14-hour days… you know, stuff I thought I couldn’t do, stuff that was Too Hard for the likes of me.
But it’s not too hard. Do you know why?
Because of you.
Because helping you get unstuck enough to start a website is the best feeling in the world.
Because encouraging you to show your delightful personality to the world makes me proud.
Because every time you tell me that you’re afraid but you’re going to do it anyway, I feel I’ve won a great victory.
Because every time you post something, you’re making the world a tiny bit more awesome.
And as I said, I’m in favour of awesomeness.
The fear and awesomeness tango
I’m also in favour of fear.
Umm.. what?
Fear is our protective parent. It stops us from poking tigers or punching police officers or investing your savings in a “sure-thing” online marketing system. Fear is a damn useful tool…
*caveat alert*
if you can manage it.
If we can manage our fear, then we can have safety and risk, stability and growth, usefulness and delight… and of course a gigantic bucket of awesomeness.
But if we don’t manage our fear, it leads us to perfectionism, procrastination, and many other painful, obstructive behaviours that stop us from rocking it out like the brilliant fascinating rock stars we are.
I know this from experience.
The fears I had to manage to get this far
I can’t learn about websites!
I can’t do design!
I can’t build a business while working a full-time job!
I can’t sell my expertise!
I can’t say that!
I’m going to fail.
I’m going to go broke.
Oh God, what if I succeed?
No-one will listen to me!
I don’t want to offend anyone!
… and a dozen more.
Most of these are reasonable fears: I am putting myself at risk by starting and growing a website. I had to learn how to listen to the sensible parts of my fear (“Do not spend $2,000 you do not have on a training course, you will not be able to pay for it.”) while placating the nonsensical parts (“No-one will actually shun you on the street if you write a bad post.”) This took me three years. Three years in which I talked about starting a website, I planned and daydreamed and what-if’d about starting a website, but I never, ever did anything about it.
Register a domain name? What if I pick the wrong one!
Apply some (any) of the knowledge from the blogs and courses and e-books I ceaselessly read? Oh, but I’m not ready yet!
Luckily, I improved.
After a lot of work I’m now pretty skilled at managing my fear. I still get it wrong sometimes, but I have a website, I post every day, tell people about what I do, sell my advice and skills, and have an achievable plan to quit the Day Job.
More and more as I listen to your comments and talk to you in various media (including the survey, and thank you to everyone who replied to it), I can see I’m not alone in having this balance to manage. And many of you are in a similar place to where I was three years ago: too scared to start a website, or too scared to grow it the way it should be grown.
Do you want some help?
I’m writing a resource to help people who aren’t managing their fear as well as they want to.
It’ll include:
The signs that you’re not managing your fear
Some excellent general strategies to manage your fear better
Some specific website-related fears and how to manage them
And I’m also going to run a special group for people who want one-on-one, customised help.
Are you interested?
It’s live, baby! Learn more about Awesome Fear-Wrangling here.
Any questions? Come tell me in the comments!