You are reading my first blog post. It took me forever to sit down and write this blog post. Why? Because I didn't feel I was ready! This taught me an important lesson – the idea of “ready” is false. There is no perfect time. If you want to create a blog a blog for your online business, start before you are ready.
This is a common problem with perfectionism. There is always a reason to wait when action is more important. So, I “jumped into the deep pool” as we say in Iceland, and I wrote my first blog post.
The weird thing is that it is so easy once you have decided to start. It is just a single click in your head. Then you are ready to go and do whatever you couldn't do before you made that decision. I know this and you know this. And yet, still we beat ourselves up and postpone things that seem so difficult from afar. Invariably, these tasks become easy once you decide to tackle them.
When do you “jump into the deep end”?
When I look back and think about the jobs, studies and projects I have taken on in my life – for most of them I've “jumped into the deep end” and it always worked out. The big difference I have noticed in working for myself is the critic in my head – the lizard brain as Seth Godin calls it or the resistance as Steven Pressfield refers to it – has much more leverage and tries even harder to hold you back. I like calling it the lizard brain. By giving it a distasteful name, I retook control and can even imagine what it looks like, this voice that tells you all kinds of BS to keep you from doing what you were meant to do.
You can control that critic inside your head. The lizard brain doesn't have to win.
What does it take to “start before you are ready”?
When I started my business, I thought I needed a cool logo, fantastic website, awesome portfolio, fantastic offerings – the list goes on and on. For a while I worked on all of these things while also coming up with a ton of great ideas for blog posts, things that I felt I needed to share with the world.
At some point I realized that I, maybe more than the lizard brain, was holding myself back, and what I actually needed to do was to start to write my blog posts and everything else would follow. So two days ago I sat down and made a list of the things I wanted to do before starting to blog and gave myself 2 days to get them done. Last night I had gotten most of these things done – some things I couldn't figure out despite my programming knowledge and I am waiting for technical support – but more importantly I decided not to let these little things stop me.
Remove all excuses and just start before you're ready!Say goodbye to excuses
Today I had no more excuses – the lizard brain was quiet! In hindsight the hard part is not the actual writing I'm doing now. I made a decision two days ago: accepting that things will never be perfect, and recognizing that needing to accomplish something first won’t hinder me from taking the next step.
So, I started before I was ready, and it just feels great! My chest feels much lighter now – a weight is lifted. In fact, I am already excited about my next blog post. Meanwhile, I continue to work on all my other projects. When everything is “perfect” my content will be there too. That is why starting before you are ready is the only way.
Do you have something you have postponed for a while? What are you going to do about it now? Are you going to start before you are ready?