Do you ever feel like there’s only ONE way to do something? Does confidence and fear get in the way of your ability to be creative and move forward?
This past weekend, I happened to get caught up with a friend and our catch up led to a rich conversation on playing it safe, fear, confidence and timing to name just a few of the things we touched on.
We started off catching up on our respective Euro trips that we both took separately at the end of the summer, exchanging stories and laughs and sharing our most memorable moments. We then switched gears to talking about our realities and she shared she was on a quest to figuring out what to do next in her job.
She’s spent a considerable amount of her career with one company where she’s progressed but had reached a plateau and was feeling like she was consistently getting overlooked for promotions. She was ready to get to the next level and was feeling like not only was she being looked over, but she wasn’t provided a clear path on what she needed to do to get there and time was ticking. At this point, her confidence has begun to be affected, self worth, and her own capabilities, were just some of the things she started to doubt within herself.
She’s always had a curiosity on how people identified their passions and what leads them to being so jazzed about it whether it be their careers, or a hobby and it was clear she was struggling to identify this within herself. When you’ve only known one company, one industry for most of your career, it’s easy to forget or lose site of your own identify, your own passions, your own interests. While we were sipping our Pinot Grigio ?, she was picking my brain and asking all sorts of questions on what led me to figuring out I wanted to help people and their business’s through coaching until I had to ask, what’s really the issue here?
The underlying truth of our conversation was she was being held back by fear and lacked confidence in her abilities to take the next step or actually – A step in order to move forward. She felt she needed all this time to “figure it out” and decide what to do next.
The “figuring it out” meant, over-analyzing and overthinking and going through questions and beliefs that went something like this:
I need to update my resume; how would I brand myself? I’ve done the same thing for 15 + years…
Do I really have what it takes to get to the next level?
Who’s gonna be attracted to my background when all I know is one industry?
I need to make sure I have enough money saved up in case I can’t find something that pays me enough and I have to take a lower paying job…
I would love something that still was marketing focused, but a different part of marketing… but I don’t have agency experience and I only have marketing experience with a manufacturer…
These were just a few of the thoughts and questions she had that she felt she needed a year plus to get comfortable with before making a choice. Until she felt SAFE to take a step forward. She ultimately recognized that this was fear talking, lack of confidence and lack of creativity.
My question for you is – what choice or decision do you have to make where you feel there’s ALL these things that need to happen first before you do X?
Where are you in your business as a leader / entrepreneur / employee where perhaps you feel as though there’s only ONE way to do something? There’s only one possibility/method/process/solution? Where you need to have A before you can get to B? Where fear of doing something new holds you back from trying anything at all?
Here’s the scoop:
- Creative solutions are those that YOU deem are right for YOU and they’re possible when you believe that they’re always opportunities, options and choices at your disposable. The simplest of choices can yield big shifts and different results.
- What’s the underlying reason that’s holding you back from – a choice, a decision, making that move, leaving that job, etc. whatever you’re faced with. Get to the bottom of it to first create awareness, then make a change. Decide to make a change or not that is.
- The time is NOW. No better time then the present. Don’t take or wait a year before you decide to make a change. If you’re at a point where nothing really has changed in your environment/situation and you’re on cruise control, do you really need 12 months to “figure it out”?
My Friday night catch up with a friend inspired me to writing about what I know so many of you struggle with when faced with making a decision and hold us ALL back from doing anything at all. For this, I have to say THANK YOU to my friend for being vulnerable and trusting me enough to share her experience with me.
If you have a friend in a similar situation, what advice would you give them?
With so much appreciation and my unlimited light, ?
Lisa❤