Do you ever feel like you have webinars coming out of your ears? You trade your email address to download yet another free report. And your emails stack up. You have hundreds of MP3s, PDFs, factsheets, checklists, reports, podcasts and challenges to take part in - all untouched. All going stagnant in your downloads folder or email pile. You want to do right by your idea. But the fear of getting it wrong freezes you in a terrifying panic. What if you make a start and it doesn’t work? What if you try and your idea fails?
Pssst. I have a secret. It’s your idea for a reason.
You were meant to do this.
You are a limited edition. No one else can create like you can create. Isn’t it time to unravel how we got disconnected from this and move on from our distracting notions of having everything perfectly aligned before we begin?
It’s time to create in a non-wishy-washy-way. It’s time to trust yourself.
Afterall, Harry Potter wouldn’t be with us if J K Rowling hadn’t written through depression and unemployment. It took twelve rejection letters from publishing houses before Bloomsbury gave her a chance.
Steven Spielberg tried and failed to get into USC (Film School), three times.
And Sir James Dyson believed in his idea (to revolutionize vacuum cleaning with a cyclonic separation to achieve a bagless cleaner) with such certainty that he overcame 5,126 failures to make it.
The late great Robin Williams summed things up nicely when he said “No matter what people tell you words and ideas can change the world.”
Ideas surround us.
They nudge us boldly for their attention or they circle shyly around the back of our heads hoping we’ll notice them. If you’re not in touch with your ideas and you don’t love what you do then everything will feel like hard work.
There are 12 big blocks to ideas. Nearly all of them revolve around fear:
- Worrying about what everyone else is doing.
- Being afraid your idea is already out there.
- Being afraid someone will steal your idea.
- Being afraid it’s not (good) enough (or original enough, or bold enough, or … you get the idea)
- Being afraid people will think you’re silly for even trying
- Being afraid people won’t like it, understand it, or want it
- Getting wrapped up in far flung future worries before even exploring it
- Trusting and having the self belief you can do this
- Not sure where to even begin
- Defeatist: “Even if I get a good idea - what am “I” going to do with it?!”
- Distracted: So frantic are you that everyone else will beat you to it, you scramble and clutch at every passing (shiny) thing through the fear of missing out.
- Limiting patterns - not letting yourself think beyond how you’ve always thought (afterall your boundaries, invisible or otherwise, have kept you safe this far haven’t they?)
The fastest way to overcome these blocks is to recognise and salute them. Allow them to move on. Make a promise to yourself that you’ll suspend worrying about them. Just for now. Ask yourself a challenging “…but what if (the opposite)…” whenever you catch yourself retreating back to their angst. It’s simple but it works.
Time is of the essence. Ideas only wait so long.
Who can tell which of your ideas will change our world? There’s no way of knowing unless you break through the fear, take action and reveal your idea to it’s global audience!
Let’s live fearlessly and start from an ideas-rich place filled with hope, promise, imagination and adventure!
If you fall head-over-heels in love with ideas and want them to fuel your soul, be sure to like the Ideas Girl page for more ideas, inspiration and resources or visit my website and feel free to connect!