This weekend I took my kids to the play park.
This one has a couple of high slides that my youngest likes to go on. The older one, not so much.
You see my older daughter has a fear of heights. So great that she even feared going over a 6-foot flight of stairs once.
It has gotten better over time, but it still bothers her. And this time it did.
To get to the high slide, she had to climb a staircase about 20 to 25 feet high. As you can guess, she couldn’t do it.
But she wanted to so badly.
She tried, climbing up timidly.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six… Five, four, three, two, one.
Back on the ground again.
She tried and tried again. She made it halfway once but never made it to the top.
My heart broke seeing her trying so hard but unable to overcome her fear.
My heart broke because I know exactly how she feels.
Oh! How I feel the same way.
I feel the same way when it comes to running my business.
I want to make my business a success, but yet I am unable to conquer the fears of failure and rejection. Even if it means that ultimately I will fail.
The fear is real. The self-doubt is real. The shame is real.
Is it a self-confidence thing? Is it a resilience thing?
I am self-confident. I am resilient.
If it’s one thing, I am persistent. I will keep trying no matter what.
My daughter is the same. Persistent.
But that does not mean we conquer.
We have our good days when it feels like we can do anything. Then we have our days when the fears seem insurmountable.
It feels like the days the fears seem insurmountable outweighs the days when we are able to conquer it.
How long would an army last if we had such odds?
How long are we then able to last when faced with that?
I often ask myself (these days more that ever) if I had made the right choice starting this business.
I don’t think I made the wrong choice.
But the feelings that I get make me wonder. Especially these fearful feelings.
If this was really what I wanted to do, I would be able to overcome those fearful feelings right?
Or perhaps it’s because this is really what I want to do that I am unable to overcome?
The fear that if this does not work out then my dreams were deceptive all along. That I’ve been an imposter all this time, and my true self will now be revealed, and I won’t like what I see.
That I may reject my own self.
Or perhaps not.
Perhaps it’s just some irrational fear that’s messing with me that I’ve just got to figure out somehow.
While I have been making progress moving ahead and doing things that I fear, how long before those fears are once again insurmountable?
What I really need is a way to overcome my fears once and for all.
And if I figure out how to do that, then perhaps there will be a chance that my daughter can finally go down that high slide without any fears.