How To Beat Your Fear Of Not Being Good Enough

How many times have you considered something and found yourself shrinking away or making excuses for why you can’t do it today, or tomorrow, or any time later?

How many times have you told yourself you need to just learn this other thing, or find some more supporting stats, or look for a block of time in your schedule before you can do that thing?

How many times have you been unable to start, or launch, or press send, because the thought of possibly doing it wrong is just too overwhelming to take that risk?

Everyone suffers from this fear at some point in their life. The fear of being wrong. The fear of not being good enough. The fear of humiliation or embarrassment.

It can be crippling.

Here’s a little secret from a semi-reformed perfectionist: your fear of not being good enough is actually a fear of the unknown.

When something isn’t familiar to us, we tend to be more scared of the outcome. We imagine all the ways we can be judged because we have no way to create context or gauge what’s real, so we assume we will be marked on all the possible things.

In reality, when we put something out into the world, 98% of our audience that we have reached looks upon it with curiosity, and either files it away to check back on later or just decides it’s not their thing and moves on.

Surprisingly (or not), the people we reach are often too busy or distracted to give much thought to whether or not you have been “good enough”. They spend very little time thinking about us, so we are but a blip in their radar.

So, if the fear of not being good enough is actually rooted in the unknown, what can you do to make it less unknown?

Start. Take a small action. Throw a little fishing line out there and see what happens. Find something teeny that feels similar to that big thing and try it out.

There is such a psychological shift once you’ve broken the seal, it’s likely going to enable you to move forward with increasing velocity.

It’s called Action Therapy, and you’ll hear a lot more about it in the near future around here.

Tell me in the comments…

Tell me one thing that’s been causing you some fear, that you can take a small action on tomorrow.