If you could go back and talk to the high school version of yourself for 10 minutes, I’ll bet there’s a lot of stuff you’d like to mention to her. In addition to warnings about the boy with the smoldering blue eyes (she wouldn’t listen anyway), I’m pretty sure what you’d tell her would be something along the lines of worrying less about what others think and what might happen.

For many of us, high school is a well-faded memory – for some more faded than others — but that little reminder urging us to “Stop worrying, just try it!” would come in handy right about now, too.

It’s weird. In our many roles as women, we are incredibly competent, we juggle 101 things at once, we just: Get. Shit. Done. And we still second guess our every move. What is up with that?!

SheTeam did a readers survey a few months back, asking what advice they’d give their younger selves and sure enough, a recurring theme was have more confidence, less fear.

That’s what holds us back. Fear.

It’s a thought that holds you back. Doesn’t that seem odd? It’s not a lion or a grizzly. It’s a thought. Abstract, concrete, without form. But we let it stop us from acting. That’s always seemed really crazy to me.

It’s one thing to look before you leap off the diving board to ensure there’s water in the pool. It’s quite another to paralyze yourself evaluating, “How much water is there in the pool?” and “What temperature is the water?” and “I wonder, does the water have the right saturation of chlorine?”

Quit getting in your own way and freakin’ jump already!

Wait! Feel that? It’s your future self patting you on the back. You go, girl.

- Liz Gaige
Market Navigators Consulting

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 11:10 am and is filed under Blog, Get Out of Your Own Way, Liz Gaige - Marketing, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.