A couple of week’s ago, I was talking to a life coach I’d met at an event I had gone to. During her presentation, she spoke about the her life, and her career before she started walking in her purpose.. while she was speaking, I felt like I had written down my story and she just stood there and read it for me. I felt so connected to her that afterwards, I knew I had to talk to her. During our conversation, I told her that I had been wanting to go into Professional Development and Executive Coaching for a while. I told her how everyone else thought it was a great idea.. and I had been talking about to everyone.. all the time… But something was still keeping me from acting on it..

So, she looked at me, and said you’re afraid to try because you’re afraid to fail. You’re scrared to death that you’re going to jump out there and you’ll fail. Then she looked at me and said “You need to fail… you need to go out there try it, and fall flat on your face!” I’m sorry, what?? Clearly she didnt know me well. Because if she somehow thought I was going to try something thinking that I could fail at it, she was terribly mistaken.

See, failing was something I did not take lightly.. I was always the smart one…. the girl in the honors programs, the Gifted & Talented classes, and the magnet schools. I always had good grades, and I pretty much did well in anything I tried to. When I went to work after college, I always got the great annual reviews, and the promotions.. So, maybe she was right, for once in my life, I needed to fail and… fail big time.

I thought about the conversation she & I had for a while, and the more I thought about it, the more, I wasn’t so sure if failure was actually what I was afraid of. After a while, I realized that I was more afraid of success than I was of failure.. See, I could close my eyes and invision my success.. I could see me doing everything I wanted to do.. But.. could I handle that? Could I really handle all the success and reward that I was asking for? What would happen if I couldnt handle it? Worse, if I couldn’t sustain it? I was worried sick about being a ‘has been’ before I even ‘made it’! It wasn’t failure, I was afraid of, it was the success!

Either way, I knew it was somethihg I had to get over! If I didnt get over it, I would end up being a ‘nobody’.. which is worse than being a has been! So, next time you have your dream all mapped out, you find yourself talking about it all the time… yet you havent taken steps to make it happen, ask yourself- ‘What Am I Afraid Of!’. And once you’ve done that, GET OVER IT! Because no one ever gets remembered for what they hoped they did! – JW