If You Don't Know How To Make It Happen, Build A Bridge

A few years ago, when I was building this business, my desk was covered in lists.

Plans for the plans. Steps before the steps. Contingencies for things that hadn't happened and mostly never would.

I thought that was the work. I thought if I could just get all the pieces in place, line them up, account for every turn and every surprise, then I'd be allowed to begin.

So I kept asking the same question, over and over.

How.

How do I build this?

How do I make it work? 

How do I make sure it doesn't fall apart on me?

I want to tell you something about that question, because I have watched it quietly stop more capable women than I can count.

The how question feels like diligence. It feels like care. But it can never finish.

The Woman at the Edge

Picture a woman standing at the edge of a deep chasm. On the far side is the work she's meant to do, the life she can almost see, the version of her who isn't quite hidden anymore. 

Between here and there, a bridge. Built one plank at a time.

And she has decided she cannot take a single step until every plank is already laid.

So she stands at the edge, counting. Four hundred and fifty nine planks, give or take, and every one has to be cut and measured and nailed down before her foot is allowed to move.

That was me at my desk.

I have sat with enough women since then, at kitchen tables, on quiet calls, in my Tiny Brave Way Zoom group, to know I was never the only one. 

One woman I worked with said it plainly. She couldn't cross until she'd built the whole thing first. She was exhausted before she'd taken a step, because she was trying to carry a bridge instead of walk across one.

Think about this for a minute: the how question will never account for everything.

It can't. The fog rolls in. A plan you were sure of changes overnight. Someone says no. Life turns in a direction no list of yours predicted.

And if the how is the only thing carrying you, the fog stops you cold. You stand there, planks half cut, waiting for a clarity that was never coming.

Not How. Who.

There's a different question. A quieter one. And it changes which woman crosses.

Not how. Who.

Who am I? 

What am I bringing to the table? 

What is this actually for?

There's a voice that shows up right at the edge, every time you lift your foot. I call him Fred. He’s fear in one form or another.

He's the part of you that learned, somewhere back there, that stepping forward once cost you something. 

So now he stands at the chasm and lists everything that could go wrong. He isn't cruel. He's frightened, and he's trying to protect you with old information.

Fred speaks fluent “how”:

How will you know? 

How can you be sure? 

How will you survive it if this one fails too?

And you cannot “out-how” your Fear-Fred. He will always have one more.

But Fred goes quiet at a different question. Because when you know who you are, the unknowns stop being permission slips you're waiting on.

If you know you're a woman who has decided to go forward anyway, then this is who you'll be no matter what happens. The fog isn't a stop sign anymore. It's just weather.

You still won't know the next plank some mornings. 

You'll lose the how completely. 

But you'll keep the why, and the why sends you looking.

It makes you ask other people. It makes you sense the right thing. 

It keeps your feet pointed toward the woman on the far side, the one who, it turns out, was already you. 

She just hadn't been allowed to the surface yet.

You Only Need the Next One

So you're allowed to put the lists down for a moment.

You don't have to see the whole bridge. You were never meant to build it all before you crossed.

You only need the next plank. The one your foot can actually reach.

So here's a Tiny Brave Step (and it's smaller than your lists will want it to be). 

Today, ask the question underneath the how. 

Not “how do I build this?”. Who am I building it as? 

Then write one sentence. I am a woman who... (doesn’t give up, believes in her purpose, has survived many unknowns before). 

Finish it honestly. That sentence is your first plank. Stand on it.

If you want help finding the next one, the Tiny Brave Steps Generator is built for this exact moment, when you know the direction but not the step. You can paste this straight in:

I keep trying to plan the whole thing before I start. Help me find one small step I can take this week, sized for who I want to be, not for everything I'm afraid of.

And if you're tired of standing at the edge alone, that's what Creative Spaces is. A room of women laying their own planks, one at a time, where nobody has to carry the bridge by herself.

You don't need all the planks.

You need the next one. And you need to know who's crossing.