A close friend, who recently published a book, described the experience as feeling like she’d put a piece of herself out for the whole world to critique. I understand that emotion.
I kick-started a new project yesterday (will debut here on Sunday – do look out for more details). As I sent out the first emails, I felt the usual emotion of fear rise. I’ve experienced this fear every time I’ve started a new project. Even blog posts that talk about a sore failure on this blog give rise to that emotion. I’ve learnt that it’s normal. While it has been debilitating early in the “ALearningaDay” journey, nowadays, it is a signal that I’m attempting to do the right thing. You only face the resistance when you’re doing something that is making you grow.
2 learnings after many projects and many failures –
1. Courage is not the absence of fear. It’s acknowledging there are things more important than fear.
2. You fail.. So what? It’s really no big deal. I had a lot of good feedback and some critical feedback thanks to a mistake I identified a bit late. It’s all good as it helped me get better. I’ll work on delivering better content in the coming weeks. The prospective failure always seems worse in our head.
You’re never going to stop failing. My suggestion would be to just make it a process you’re used to. All projects come with a “this might not work” tag. Isn’t that the best part?
A Learning a Day 