PhotoCredit: BrightEyed
Last week we met the perfectionist monster - the uninvited guest on our bold adventures into brave new lands. The perfectionist monster also brings its baggage along for the trip. This is not a personalized set of Louis Vuitton cases ala The Darjeeling Limited. (Oh how I love that movie). Less that, more "I can't get out of bed let alone make a decision to save myself" baggage.
Welcome to the stranglehold of anxiety and indecision that accompanies any foray into the unknown.
Rollo May says it best "Because it is possible to create — one has anxiety. One would have no anxiety if there were no possibility whatever."
When we set out to do anything new, anxiety is a byproduct. The act of creating induces anxiety, we are "destroying the status quo, destroying old patterns within oneself, progressively destroying what one has clung to from childhood on, and creating new and original forms and ways of living." - Rollo May
So the change process, the following your bliss process, the doing something new process isn't a comfortable one.
I read this Rollo May quote after exiting my second start-up. In a speech I did around the same time I talked about the low-level of nausea that followed me around where-ever I went. Rollo May helped me understand where that feeling came from. He also helped me understand that, while it wasn't a great feeling, it was a great indicator that I was venturing into creative territory. The bad feeling was a barometer of me doing great work.
That speech was the birth of The Squiggly Life. From that moment on I have attempted to share my learnings of the squiggly life and to be a guide and a friend to those living it. Because it's a lonely, fear-inducing and - in case you missed this - always anxious process.
It's also incredibly rewarding and glorious.
My goal is to normalize the feelings that might otherwise cripple us. To assure you that discomfort is an indicator you are doing it right. Comfort is not going to move you up the mountain.
So that feeling you have. That it might all fall apart any second. That you might not be good enough. That certainly other people are better than you. That this was a bad idea. That you should go back to safer ground. All those feelings mean you are doing exactly the right thing.
Exactly. The. Right. Thing.
Keep doing it. You are among friends.