Create Your Impact (Pt 8): Stay On Your Own Bridge

Other women have figured something out that I haven't.

You see her everywhere.

The woman whose post has three hundred comments. The one who launched her program and filled it in a month. The one who seems to know exactly where her people are.

And you scroll past with a quiet ache you don't say out loud.

So you do what she does.

You post when the experts say to post. You follow the plan that worked for everyone else. You build your week around someone else's rhythm.

And when it doesn't work for you, you don't question the plan.

You question yourself.

Let's pause here and breathe. No, you haven't fallen behind. You've been trying to walk a bridge that was never built for your feet.

I'm in this one with you

This week I looked at my LinkedIn numbers. I've been posting three times a week (sometimes more), because that's what I was told works.

Out of the thousands on LinkedIn, a couple of hundred people saw my posts, and I caught myself asking whether my women are even there.

I caught myself wanting to check out where this guru was posting, what they were saying, what someone else was doing.

But then I realized that I'm here. In this spot. At this time. And I need to trust the process.

Two bridges at once

Let's say "X" marks the spot of where you are right now. Over there in the distance, along with the mountains and sunset on the horizon, is where you want to be.

It feels like a long way, doesn't it? As if there's a gap, a chasm, between here and there.

All normal. There is a gap. But that doesn't mean you can't close it. Because you are, right now, building a bridge over it.

Every step is like a plank you nail to the bridge. See them as Tiny Brave Steps. The smaller the step, the easier you make it on yourself.

The beautiful thing here is that this bridge is yours. Just as the horizon on the far side, and the pace you walk it.

All yours.

Comparison tempts you off your bridge. It turns your head. Suddenly you're watching her planks and her pace, trying to lay your next step where she laid hers, and you're no longer on your own bridge.

You're on hers. Her planks were built for her life. Her energy, her money, her history, her people.

Not yours.

And honestly? That's why it feels so hard. You're not failing as you cross. You're trying to speed things up by doing what she's doing.

When the path isn't mine

A while ago, someone I respect deeply saw a path for my work. A good path. A smart one. For a long time I tried to make my bridge look like it.

There's a voice in me I call 'Fred'. He's fear, the protective kind, and he's been with me through every hard thing I've lived. He keeps a thick file of every time I trusted myself and got hurt.

When I started wondering whether that path was really mine, Fred had plenty to say. She knows more than you. That's how it's done. You'll throw away a good plan and be left with nothing.

He wasn't trying to trick me. He was afraid for me.

This year, I set that path aside.

My horizon hasn't moved. I still want this work in the hands of ten thousand women who stop trying to "be enough" and, instead, become Brave Enough.

What changed was the shape I thought it had to take.

When your horizon changes shape, it doesn't mean you walked wrong. It means you're paying attention.

What you can carry

Staying on your own bridge doesn't mean walking it with your fingers in your ears.

Learn from that woman you admire. Ask how she did it. Take what fits and leave the rest on her bridge.

You can borrow her information. You don't have to hand her your direction.

One question helps me more than any other here. Who tells me who I am? 

When another woman's success starts telling you that you're slow, or late, or not cut out for this, you've handed her a job that was never hers.

When women bring their bridges to me, I've noticed they rarely step off at the hard part. They step off the moment they look across at someone else's.

Back to your own planks

So the next time that sinking feeling arrives mid-scroll, stop. Give it about ninety seconds. Let yourself feel it. Then let it settle and ask yourself what you're letting it mean.

Now, turn around. Look back across your own bridge instead of over at hers.

Write down three planks you've laid the past 3 months, each measured in Tiny Brave Steps. Look at how far you've come, not how far she's gone.

This is all about you. Your steps. Your pace.

Ask, Who do I want to be here?  Maybe, I'm a woman who walks her own bridge at her own pace.

Now, be decisive. Take a step as the woman you want to be, not the woman who's afraid she might not be where someone else is.

Choose one comparison to set down this week. It might be:

• Unsubscribe from one account.

• Close one tab.

• Let go of one plan that was never yours.

There. Steps can be small, a little stretching, but all yours. Moving you toward your horizon.

The far bank

The horizon, over there on the far bank, has a name. It's "Create Your Impact."

It's where you stop following someone else's map and bring what's yours into the world.

In the weeks ahead, I want to sit with some of the questions women carry across this bridge, the ones I hear again and again. Maybe one of them (or more) will be yours.

Never stop learning.

If you'd like a thinking partner, paste this into your favorite AI. Attach your business plan and a personality assessment you've taken, so it knows who you are:

"I keep measuring my business against [describe her or it]. Help me notice what I'm comparing myself to that doesn't belong to my horizon. Then ask me about my own horizon, my own pace and what feels right to me, one question at a time, and help me choose one next step that's mine."

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And if you're building on your own and want company while you do it, join us in Creative Spaces on Tuesday, October 13, from 9:30 to 11:00 a.m. Mountain Time.

It's a free 90-minute Zoom gathering for solopreneurs who want to keep taking Tiny Brave Steps forward. Bring one task. You'll leave with a little more courage and one real thing done.