Your fears of the consequences of bold action are way out of proportion to reality, in fact the consequences of timidity are worse. Your value is lowered and you create a self-fulfilling cycle of doubt and disaster.
- Robert Greene in The 48 Laws of Power
I’m not going to lie, when I found this quote, it made me a little scared. Probably because it describes the struggle for me. The tension between wanting to create, to put something out there, but at the same time crippled by inaction and frustration at myself. It has been a grind, a process that started for me in 2015.
Having children helped. Having less time forced me to spend more time on the things that were important. A week after my daughter was born, for example, I wrote 500 words every day (almost) for 30 days. Their arrival also produced another fear in me, one that likely hasn’t taken up space in their minds, but was ever present in mine: What would my children think of me if I hadn’t tried?
As Greene writes, inaction and timidity lead to disaster. It’s brutal reading, but often the truth is harsh. We can be stuck in a never-ending cycle of frustration and self doubt. We want to contribute and add more value to our world but feel like we can’t. How do we avoid such disaster?
By taking the smallest step…
But even that is hard, because, we’re being tricked.
We are convinced that those we admire are exceptionally talented from the beginning. It’s as if everything fell into place within a seven minute movie montage. Such perceptions are false, and what we rarely see is what’s underneath the output, the hours of dedication invested to achieve the high level that we love seeing them at.
We think everything began for them there. The truth is, at some point in their lives, they chose to take the smallest step, to start. That takes courage. It takes bold action.
At risk of being pretentious, starting this blog is mild piece of bold action. It has taken me over a week to write this post because I’ve run the whole gamut of excuses not to press that ‘Publish’ button. I already know it’s not going to be great, so what’s the worst that could happen? People pan it. That’s it. Nothing else.
I have always feared what those closest to me would think of such work. But since that time of 2015, I have found that they actually care the least. They already know you, in their minds, there is no need to ‘publicly’ know you too. But there’s plenty more who could be interested.
Since that time, I have tried (and failed) with a few business ideas, taken up a second job and started two podcasts. I even tried doing a vlog for a while which, I can assure you, left a lot to be desired. None of these endeavours could be described as a ‘success’. But the success lies in learning to consistently work on something that matters, and, critically, putting it out into the world.
We say to ourselves maybe tomorrow? But it shouldn’t be about what you could lose. Instead it’s about what could be gained…