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Most leaders I work with would not call it the fear of being a beginner. They would call it getting ready.
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Grow Yourself To Grow Your BusinessSmash through growth ceilings,
The Work You Have Wanted to Start for YearsYou have wanted to do something different for years. A new venture. A different kind of work. A next chapter you can see clearly and still have not stepped into. And every year you tell yourself you are getting ready. You have the time. You have the resources. You are more than capable of it. You have read about it, talked it over with people you trust, and you could probably draw the plan from memory. Yet another year has gone by and you have not begun. At some point the getting ready took over. It became the work, and the starting kept moving to next year.
The Fear of Being a Beginner Is Not a Fear of FailureYou have failed before, plenty of times, and you came through all of it. Some of it shaped you more than the wins did. What holds you back is being new. In the work you know, people see you as the one with the answers. It took you years to get there. To start something different, you would have to go back to not knowing, with people watching. That is a lot to put on the line. So you would not call it fear. You would call it waiting for better timing, wanting more information, wanting a cleaner plan before you begin.
What the Preparing Is Protecting You FromPreparing with no start date feels responsible. It is also keeping you safe from something. So ask yourself, what would it mean about you to start something and be ordinary at it? When I ask leaders this, the answer is usually about how other people would see them if they struggled. And underneath that, how they would see themselves. That fear has been making the decision for you, and it has only been showing you one side.
The Fear of Being a Beginner Has Only Shown You One SideRight now, starting and struggling sits in your mind as pure loss. Embarrassing. Final. A judgement on who you are. That is a one sided perception, and a one sided perception carries a charge that more planning will not shift. So look for the other side, and be specific. What would beginning and struggling give you, in your work, in how you lead, in your family, in how you see yourself? What would the people around you learn from watching you be new at something? Then turn it around. What has staying in the field where you cannot fail cost you in those same areas? You might notice the work you know so well has gone a bit flat, and that part of you has been waiting a long time for you to move. Keep going until you can see as much on one side as the other. Once you can, the charge drops, and the caution you have been leaning on starts to loosen.
Being New Is Not a Verdict on YouOnce the charge drops, there is one belief left to look at. It is the belief that how you do at the start says something about you. Those are two separate things. How you do while you are learning is part of learning, not a measure of you. Once you know that for yourself, being a beginner feels a lot less dangerous. Some leaders even find they enjoy it, because they are growing again.
The Field Where You Cannot FailThe field where you cannot fail is also the field where you stopped growing some time ago. If you have been getting ready for years and the work has not started, the plan is not what needs more work. The preparing is. What would you start this month if you let yourself be new at it? If you are tired of getting ready, book a 15-minute Strategy Call and we will work out a first step you can take this week. To your brilliance, Tanya Cross Industry Leader Coach & The Coaches’ Coach BAppSoSc (Counselling) |
