What’s a dream of yours? What’s something you want to accomplish? For me, I always wanted to leave a legacy or have some sort of an impact on the future. Now I have no idea what that looks like but as one of my college professors used to say, “I was pregnant with an idea.” And just like it takes time for a baby to grow and develop, the same is true of our dreams. I wish it had only taken nine months for my dream to grow but it took much longer because God was training and equipping me along the way.
I think part of this issue…ok the whole issue is the fact that I struggle with perfection. Before I do something I have to know or at least believe it will succeed and if there is any chance of failure then I usually will avoid it or keep at it until I perfect it. I recently just took the Enneagram Test and it proved this point because I am a ONE (Moral Perfectionist)…so the thought of starting a blog that had grammar errors or just wasn’t good stressed me out. Thoughts of, “What if know one likes it?” or “What if I can’t come up with new and relevant material?” flooded my mind so for awhile I just stared at an incomplete WordPress overwhelmed with fear.
Can you relate to my struggles? How do you move forward? For me the answer was to just start. For me as a perfectionist, the best thing for growth but also the hardest is to do something in which I know I will fail.
I read the following from Chase Jarvis’s book Creative Calling and it was exactly what I needed to hear to move forward:
“If you know what the outcome will be before you start working or you don’t care what happens either way, where’s the lesson? Where’s the growth? If you never fail to do what you set out to do, you’re not learning and you’re not growing. Mistakes are a sign that you’re pushing yourself to your limits by tackling meaningful challenges.”
Mistakes are ok. They are how we learn. As leaders we will make mistakes but instead of seeing them as detrimental to our leadership we should see them as developmental. Good leaders learn from their mistakes and pass that knowledge onto to their followers so they can avoid the same mistakes.
What’s a dream of yours that you are too scared to begin? Write out the reasons why you are scared. If you are like me you will find that most of the reasons you are scared are really just excuses. So quit making excuses and start! Take one small step this week towards your dream. And then another.