How many times have you put off doing something because you weren’t convinced you were skilled enough, or you didn’t feel ready?

I can happily say that when I started blogging I didn’t really know what I was doing. So I made it up as I went along, and I enjoyed it.

But even though I’d made a start I was afraid I wasn’t doing a good enough job. I thought I should find out all I could about the art of blogging, to make myself more skilled and professional. I’ve found many different theories about what to blog, when to blog, how to blog, what length an article should be, what readers to target, etc. etc. etc. What I’ve learned from these theories is that they all say something different and rarely agree. The more I’ve learned, the less I know…

Worse, I became so convinced I was doing everything wrong, that I ended up in a state of analysis paralysis. Also, writing began to feel like a chore. And it didn’t feel genuine. So I ended up writing nothing at all – that is nothing that you’ll find on my website. I started various articles, tried out different formulas. But each time I felt less and less inspired, so my efforts ended up in the bin. Because I’m pretty sure it’s stuff you wouldn’t want to read.

Now I have thrown the rule books out of the window and decided to go back to writing from the heart: what I feel, when I’m feeling it, however I feel like it, and to whoever gets it, which won’t be everybody but that’s OK. The topics will be a bit random and the posts will all be different lengths, but that’s OK too as long as somebody somewhere feels better for having read them.

 

Why am I telling you this?

Because sometimes you can try too hard. Sometimes it’s better to blunder along following your nose than have a perfectly formed plan which allows no room for how you feel, no room for what inspires you. In other words, it’s OK to fly by the seat of your pants.

It’s OK not to know what you’re doing. It’s better to make an honest hash of something you care about than to be too afraid to try.

As a small child you never consider failure. You see all around you people doing things that are beyond your ability, and have no doubt that you can learn to do them too. Think about to learning to walk. How many times does a child fall before he or she can stand up, balance and successfully put one foot in front of the other?

Every new endeavour is the same, when you’re challenging yourself, creating, starting something new, taking on things you’ve never done before, getting out of your comfort zone. This could be anything from parenting, to setting up a business, changing career, losing weight, trying out a new sport or language, getting over a fear of public speaking, giving up smoking, taking on a leadership role, learning to parallel park, building a website…

What all these things have in common is that they require some staying power.

Expect to fall. Don’t expect to run before you can walk. But do keep on getting up, knowing that you will learn to stand, walk and hold your own in that new thing you’re learning how to do.

 

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison

 

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Comments welcome below…

 

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