PhotoCredit: Scary
If you do nothing else today, go check out this awesome collection of Monster drawings. I have the best time finding images for my weekly musings. The links are always at the top of each post titled "Photo Credit".
The perfectionist monster that lurks in us all is much less cute than today's cover photo. Starting something new is seemingly the equivalent of feeding the monster after dark. Or getting it wet. I vaguely remember the Gremlin rules. The biggest thing that stands between you and your dreams is likely a perfectionist monster with the midnight munchies.
It makes sense. We dream up these elaborate ideas of future-us doing something really awesome and really well. In a flash we go from Paris Hilton's assistant* to being a mega-mogul household name that eclipses Paris's star (permanently it seems). All the hard stuff in between is overlooked. We get the big job, we leap straight to a million followers, we breeze through our classes as we retrain for that new career.
Then perfectionist monster paralyses you. It says no. Hold the phone. It's going to be way harder than that. It shines the light into the dark corners of that dream and shows you all the things that will be hard. All of the things that might go wrong.
So, best not to start right? Best to stay safe and not step out too far on the ledge.
Sure, that's one option. The other option is you do it anyway. You saw that coming right? You do it anyway because it's like this for everyone. It's never perfect. It's never linear. Not for anyone. Ever. My favorite example is Ryan ToysReview (now Ryan's World). At 10 years old, with over 32 million subscribers, over 50 billion views, earning a reported USD26Million from YouTube in 2019 - it's easy to see nothing but success. But the early videos were so rough and even the name of the channel wasn't grammatically correct. They clearly started with no idea what they were doing and they have slowly built up this success over 7 years. Mistake by mistake.
I could fill a book with other examples. I need to fill a book with examples. No one, I promise you, starts with a clue what the finish line will look like.
Just. Start. Celebrate your mistakes as you go. I know you can do it because plenty others just as capable as you have. Maybe even less capable. So why shouldn't you have your shot?
Dream boldly. Fail bravely. Laugh loudly.