Create Your Impact (Pt 5): The Feeling You're WAiting For

You're going to do it. You've decided.

Once you feel ready.

Once the nerves settle and you're more sure of yourself. Once the confidence shows up.

So the thing waits. The invite sits in your drafts. The idea you haven't quite finished detailing remains half-done. You hesitate to say what you really want to do out loud. 

And you wait right there with it, for a feeling that hasn't come.

Can I tell you something that will change how you see this? It isn't really about the idea.

There's something deeper you're reaching for. A way you want to live. A mark you want to make. A woman you can almost feel yourself becoming, if you could just get there.

 It’s like looking toward a beautiful horizon, the place you're quietly walking toward.

The waiting isn't only holding up the next part of this. It's actually holding you back from becoming the woman who’s brave enough to take you there.

So here’s something your Brave Enough self already knows, and you might think it feels backward, but the certainty you're waiting for will never come first.

So what does come first?

The order we were Taught

Most of us learned it the same way. 

Feel confident, then act. Feel ready, then begin. Believe you can, and then you're allowed to try.

So we wait to feel like the woman who could, before we do the thing only she would do. And the waiting can go on for years.

I know that wait from the inside.

I first felt this right after my divorce when I moved in across the alley from a gym. I had always wanted to be in great shape, but going to a gym is intimidating. You have to be in shape first, right?

Wrong. Think about it. I go to the gym to get into shape, not when I’m already in shape. So, despite my trepidation and body shame, I joined. And I kept going. I learned. I grew. Six months later, I looked and felt better than I ever had.

Fast forward to writing my first book. I set a huge goal: ten books in a series I was calling “The Little Books of Courage”. I was tempted to wait until I felt like a writer to get started. 

But I did the opposite.

I started. I began calling myself an author. I learned as I went. And a few months later I published the first book. Still uncertain? Yes. Still uncertain but with a feeling I can’t describe. Pride, wonder, amazement that I actually did it. 

And feeling more sure that I could do it again. The readiness never arrived while I was waiting. It arrived after I moved.

There's a reason the waiting feels so reasonable.

The voice that keeps you waiting

There's a voice inside you that will tell you it makes sense. Be good at something before you try it. That voice is by design, and its job is to work hard to keep you safe. 

In other words, keep you from falling flat on your face or looking like you’re a pretender who doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing.

I call mine Fred. He’s fear, but not like the big scary monster fear. He shows up in a lot of ways: anxiety, hesitation, imagining the worst-case scenario. I call mine Fred because it shrinks him down from bigger than me to smaller than me.

It helps me see him as a worried protector who has been with me through everything, keeping a careful record of every time something went wrong. And how that felt.

Fred isn't trying to stop your life. He's trying to keep an old hurt from happening again.

So when you reach for the thing, he speaks up. "Not yet. Wait until you're sure. Wait until you feel ready."

Remember, that’s his job. He's just reading from a file he put together a long time ago. So, when you start to feel him talking, it’s the exact moment you get to decide. Do you listen to that fear of what might happen, or do you go ahead anyway?

Feeling anxious or uncertain, or however it comes up for you, won’t ever go away completely. The secret is to feel it, hear what Fred is saying, and move anyway. 

How? Be a little playful. Pretend you’re telling him to climb into the backseat of the car because you know he’ll always come along for the ride, but he’ll never be allowed to drive.

You’re the boss. You make the decisions. Now you start taking the steps.

Belief comes as a result of the walking

Here's what actually happens.

You take the step while you're still unsure. It's small. Your voice might shake. And afterward, something is different.

Not fixed. Not suddenly fearless. But you have one piece of proof now that you didn't have before. You did the thing. You saw it through.

That proof is where confidence comes from. Not from thinking about the step. From taking it. You act your way into believing. Belief is the harvest of the walking, never the ticket you need to start.

This is why the step can be small. Small enough to do while the fear is still in the room. That isn't a lesser kind of brave. It's the whole point of courage.

One small action taken while you're still afraid is a plank, and you lay it down across the distance between who you are now and who you're becoming. You’re building a bridge.

Then, you lay another. And another. Just small steps. That's how the far side gets closer.

Because the impact you're reaching for isn't sitting out there waiting for you to feel ready enough to deserve it. You become the woman who can make that impact by taking the steps to get there. She's built on the walking.

The women I work with every week don't cross by feeling ready first. They take each piece of the strategy they’re following with their hearts pounding. 

They hold webinars, write blog posts, talk on social media, offer their abilities before they're sure that it’s all going to come together, and do it from a place of passion, feeling scared.

On the other side of each step they take is evidence that they can. And observation. What did I learn? What could I have done differently? What’s next? 

The confidence they were waiting for slowly replaces the uncertainty.

OK, it’s your turn. Let’s get you moving more quickly toward the impact you want to make.

One Tiny Brave Step

Think of the thing that's been waiting on you. The one you keep meaning to do once you feel ready.

Pause. Take a breath. Tell yourself: “You don't have to feel ready. You have to make it small enough to do today.”

Then, even if you feel uncertain, ask yourself what the next step would be if you felt certain.

1. Name the smallest piece of that. Not the whole thing. The first inch of it. One email, not the whole campaign. One sentence said out loud, not the whole talk.

2. Let Fred talk, and thank him. (Yes, thank him. He’s trying to protect you.) Notice what he says right before you move. Often some version of wait until you're sure. Tell him you hear him, and that you're going anyway.

3. Take the step today, while it's still uncomfortable. Send it. Say it. Ask it. Don't wait for the nerves to settle first.

Then, write down what you did. Not how it turned out. What you did. That's a step on the bridge toward where you’re going. You did it, and it's yours to keep.

This is how the horizon you've chosen stops being a someday. Not in one brave leap once you finally feel ready. One small step at a time, taken by a woman who moved before she believed. That’s what Brave Enough looks like.

Want more ways to design those steps?  Use this prompt in your favorite AI and let it partner with you to find what could be next: I keep waiting to feel ready before I do this (attach your business plan or big picture vision). Help me find the smallest version of the step I could take today, with the fear still here, without waiting to feel confident first.

And if you want the personal touch, join us in Creative Spaces, a free 90-minute Zoom gathering for women entrepreneurs every other Tuesday. It's a working space where women growing their meaningful work take one real step together. Bring the thing you've been waiting on. You'll learn one thing that grows your courage, and you'll get one thing done.