Pretty Lynne Writes

I’ve been sitting in the dark for the last half an hour or so, frozen. I have a bunch of things to do, some of which are work and some of which are fun, but I can’t move. 

Tomorrow I am going to do a very big thing. It doesn’t really matter what it is. What matters is that it is a very big thing to me. 

I’m feeling all of the feelings that you have before you do something big. Anxiety. Excitement. My mind has been spinning through the possibilities of what might happen next. I have tried to envision the future, positive and negative, and again and again I come back to what I know: I can’t know what will happen. 

I’m not ready. I don’t feel ready. I want to call the whole thing off until I am ready.

But I also know myself well enough to know that I never feel ready. I have literally never felt ready for any big decision in my life. I have known that if I want to grow in any way, I must push myself through the discomfort and do the thing without this mythical “I’m ready” feeling I hear others speak of. 

I’m afraid. I’m afraid that I won’t be enough, won’t be up to the task. Maybe I should wait until some conditions are different. 

I’ve been bothering a friend all day with my mind-spirals. My friend has been exactly what you hope from friends: steady, consistent, insistent.

“You are doing this,” my friend says. 

Okay. So, I take a deep breath and talk to myself a little. 

I have taken many big steps in the last year. I’m a big believer in learning by experience, and I preach that there are no wasted experiences in your life. Because even if the thing didn’t work out, you learned something about yourself or the world, so it wasn’t a waste of time. 

I am a competent person. I can do this thing. 

Sometimes it helps to think through the worst thing that can happen, so I do that. If this all goes badly wrong, I’m really not out that much. I’ll have some new stories, but that is likely all. 

What if it goes really well? Can I manage that? It’s true that many of us recovering perfectionists actually fear success, because we set a new bar for ourselves that we expect ourselves to be able to leap over in the future. If this goes well, does it change everything? 

No. No, it does not. It may make some things better, but even then it will come with challenges. 

And challenges are part of life. Discomfort is part of life. But one thing I know is that everything changes. No feeling is final. 

I take a few deep breaths. I tell myself that I have this. That I have my own back while I do this big thing.

I’m scared, it’s true. And I’m going to do it anyway.