Getting past fear to reach your goals.

After taking Seth Godin’s AltMBA program, an important takeaway I had was that pushing is hard work, it is exhausting, stressful and creates significant discomfort. Most of us tend to be creatures of habit. Fear is our co-conspirator and keeps us managed. This defense mechanism is built in from the early days when we needed to protect ourselves from predators. In the digital age, we’ve become our own predators and often allow fear to keep us from pushing ourselves to fulfill our goals.

I frequently feel fear when I think of starting any new project. Here are a few thoughts running wild in my mind when I considered keeping up a blog/journal. I ask myself any of these questions or think these thoughts, and bam – no work gets done.

What do I have to offer?

I’m not a writer/artist/designer.

Who would be interested in reading my posts?

What if I say something people won’t like?

My spelling is awful. Will I be judged?

I don’t know enough on the subject. What if I make a mistake?

I don’t have the time!

What if I bare my soul and look like a fool?

Is my insight shared on my blog good enough?

By embracing tension and pushing myself through the fear, a goal isn’t just another dream taking up space in my head, it becomes my success.

It is important to visualize each goal and use paper to describe it in detail. What is the desired outcome? Work through that tension. Trust the process of feeling uncomfortable. It’s hard work to write these, it is. It requires analysis, time, and much effort. It’s hard work to do anything.

Ask yourself: Why is this important to me?

To move past my fear, I had to ask myself “why is this important to me?” To have a goal of simply writing a blog/journal was much too vague. My brain had a fear-filled field day with that very vague goal. But when I framed my goal to answer what specifically was important to me, it helped the fear dissipate and my goal “To write a journal and increase my output by two per week because I want my voice to finally be heard.”  to become reachable.

A clear path

Well, now that I know why this goal is important to me, it means I must commit to writing a journal entry two times a week so that I can voice my thoughts and opinions. This clear goal path means it will be necessary to organize my thoughts, research my material, and pull it all together for my blog/journal entries. Is that hard work? Yes, absolutely. Is it doable? If I can do it for Seth Godin’s altMBA program, I can do it for my own website and continue to create and live my dream.

Fear had allowed me to waste time. Imagine… this last month I wrote 15 blog posts, commented in depth on 70 blogs and followed up with comments for each of my 15 blog/journal entries.

When I feel fearful thoughts creeping, I ask myself, “What is the price I’d pay if I allow fear in?” The answer is I wouldn’t have the opportunity to connect with you. So what if my writing isn’t perfect. At least I am here, sharing what I love and working to make deeper connections… I’m doing it.