Hey. Can I be honest with you for a moment? I know we all talk about the things that we want to become and the things we want to do. No one talks about the fear that tries to creep in when your best idea comes knocking on your front door. I don't just mean the fear of how to fund your dream. I mean the fear of believing that you could actually accomplish it. The fear of seeing yourself in a light brighter than where you are right now. The type of fear that stops you dead in your tracks before you even attempt to write the idea down on paper. For those of you who can relate, let me know in the comments that I am not alone.
Fear will cause you to stop before you even get started.
This time last year, I had half-written a few pieces that could have turned into several books, but I didn't have the energy to finish. I was not sure if anyone would actually read what I wrote, so I chose not to write or publish any of it at all. Life had been taking a toll on me the whole year so fighting against fear at that time felt out of the question. It was not until I decided to get a coach to help me out. As we talked about some of my goals and plans that had been on pause the idea of creating a blog had bee
n born. The idea of a blog was not new to me, but I had never fully gone down that route. Instead, it was an idea that sat there while I decided on how to move forward.
In less than a month, Living Simply Jess was set to launch and I would officially be able to call myself a blogger. The hard work was not creating the blog although finding the right platform for me took some time. The real work was believing that I could and believing that my voice was assigned to the ears of others who needed to hear what I had to say. I had to push out of my own way and just do it. Once my research on platforms, audience and content was done, I was pretty much good to go on the physical level.
Yet, fear and doubt were still trying to get the best of me. I'll never forget the day before the launch, on July 5, 2021 contemplating whether I should really do this or not. I had written a few articles and none of them seemed to convey what I wanted in the way that I wanted it to. I kept starting over unsure if what I wrote would e
ven be read or if people would truly care. Fear had taken up so much space that it didn't even matter that I had been promoting the launch of this blog all week or that I had spent endless hours getting everything in order on the website. The fear I was feeling was crushing my spirit and I felt like I was alone in this.
Your why must be strong enough to push fear aside.
Then I remembered my why. Why this blog was needed and why it had to be written. I remembered the story behind it and knew that I had a duty to encourage other parents. There was a weight to this assignment and I knew that if I didn't fulfill it, many would not get the words that needed to be heard. So I stayed up and wrote one more blog post and used that as my initial post to the blog. I knew that if God allowed me through it, then there was a bigger purpose behind everything that we had endured. The blog was just another stop on the journey.
I had already released the date of its launch and promoted content for it and you would have thought I was ready. The night before, I almost didn't do it. I almost quit. I almost let FEAR beat me. But I didn't. I silenced the fear that had been raging in my head over the last month. I knew that the story I was sharing was far too valuable and important not to be shared. I also knew that if I didn't share, I would always wonder "what if". I couldn't live with that.
This is what happened when I pushed fear out of the way:
I reached people in 23 countries in less than a year.
I created my podcast show, "Living Simply with Jessica Harris."
My Podcast show Living Simply with Jessica Harris became internationally streamed in the first three months.
I created my first journal, Live a Life of Gratitude.
All of these were done within 6 months of me launching my blog. When you move past fear, everything is possible. Nothing, but God allowed me to make moves like this.
It's your turn.
What is fear keeping you from accomplishing? What purpose is fear pulling you away from? Is the fear of what might happen bigger or stronger than the reason why you want to do it? If you have some questions regarding this, feel free to jump on a strategy call with me and let's get fear out of your head so you can start working on your purpose.
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