We’re three days into a New Year – that’s juuust enough time to make a few glorious resolutions, break those resolutions ingloriously, and feel like a glorious failure.
Ah, tradition.
I spent a few days last week prepping for this inevitable dance – writing, scrapping, then rewriting my list of 2,017 or so things to do/not do in the New Year.
I then proceeded to not do/do all those things preeeeetty much as soon as the clock struck midnight.
Yesterday, I had a meeting with my business priest, er, mentor Raven Delana, where I confessed all my “sins” and waited for her to assign me a few dozen Seth Godins and a Vaynerchuk or two to atone.
She didn’t absolve me. Instead, she asked me what was really getting in the way of me following through with my goals. I ran a few laps around my usual excuses and then blurted it out:
“I feel so much self doubt.”
This is the part of the New Year’s pity party where I am showered in praise and compliments until I’m soaked to the bone with self esteem, right?!
Wrong. Raven took a few seconds to let me simmer in my self doubt before saying:
“I think you should continue to doubt yourself AND do these three things.”
The three things were the only goals out of the 2,017 that we had determined were actually designed to move me and my business forward. The rest was gloriously inglorious fluff.
Notice how she didn’t try to talk me out of my self doubt. Not even a little.
And, let’s be real – deep down, I knew that had she tried, she wouldn’t succeed. Instead, she gave me the only advice you can give a business owner who feels like an inglorious failure.
Doubt yourself all you want, but keep doing stuff, anyway.
I could spend days, weeks, months trying to whack-a-mole every last I can’t and I shouldn’t before realizing that the year is over and I just wasted 365 opportunities to reach my goals.
There simply aren’t enough hours in the day to chase down my self doubt every time it shows up and build my business, serve my clients, live my glorious liiiiiiiiiiife, dammit! It’s exhausting. It’s expensive. And it’s been done before.
This year, I’m giving my self doubt a free pass to do its thing, so I can do mine.
I know that there will be moments — manyyyyy moments — this year when I will feel embarrassed, afraid, and downright sh*tty about myself.
I choose to sit with those feelings while doing the work I’ve set out to do. And I also choose to believe that:
Doing slays doubt.
This year, when those glorious resolutions of yours shapeshift into a neat list of your shortcomings, taunting you into submission, begging you to give up on yourself…
Keep doing.
