Fear of Failure

I don't know if it's hereditary, or if it's merely the inbred voices of 37 years, but in the back of my mind there are whisperings...

You see, I'm slowly but surely putting a new project together - one that's been percolating for a long time, gaining momentum then sitting back to consolidate, exploring and planning, and now coming to fruition. It's not the next big money-making scheme, it's not the next big business deal. But it's something good and something that can make a difference. Big-time.

Or at least I think so.

And that's where the doubt starts to come in. I've been told so many times over the years "you can't do that, you'll never make it, you're a woman - what do you know". I spent a good few years working in a male-dominated environment that ground those kind of opinions into all their female worker's heads. Until you started to believe them....

Inherited come other thoughts, passed down from grandmother to mother to me. That a woman's place is there, not here, doing that, not this. Subservient, self-sacrificing, slave to all, not striding ahead to make big changes on your own - until somehow, some way, you get that spark of confidence that sends you out into success. You suddenly see that you are, in fact, very good at what you want to do. Naysayers be damned. I saw it change my mother, and I've seen it change me.

Yet still back there in the brain lurk the in-pounded observations that you can't actually accomplish your dreams. And now and then they surface, and then you get to beat them down.

I should have learnt by now to reverse those voices, to permanently still them. I've proved that I do, in fact, have a head on my shoulders that can think through things, come up with stuff that works (really well) and make a big success of a project against all odds. In spite of what the general public says.

I guess it's the pattern of self-doubt that comes with starting anything new. Wondering if you're on the right track, if you can ignite the same passion for what you want to do in enough other people to gain momentum, if it will work out how you envisioned it.

And there the trick is simply to dream bigger when the voices come. To imagine more comprehensively, work harder and smarter and better to reach those goals.

Do that, and the voices will quickly be proved very very wrong.