A short one this week. Just to share a word of encouragement for anyone who has self-doubt creeping in
If I could go back in time – to my early training as a Psychologist, as a mother and even 5 years ago as a shiny new entrepreneur, a word I wish I’d said more often is ‘yet’.
I don’t know how to help people with trauma
YET
I don’t know how do go from managing one child to two
YET
I don’t know how to even start with writing a book or creating an online course
YET
I’ve since figured out how to do these things (mostly!). I’ve then cemented my confidence by teaching other people.
Learning something new is clunky, frustrating and embarrassing. In my experience at least, you’ll spend a lot of time in tears hating every second that you assume you are failing.
And yet, failing is the only way to learn, so embrace failing fast.
If you’re learning to surf, you’ll fall a thousand times before your brain figures out how to stop from you falling. You need to fall in order to learn not to fall (and P.S. learning to surf is on my bucket list, but I live nowhere near the ocean!)
The other way that the word ‘yet’ is helpful is to reframe perceived failure and struggle like this:
“I don’t feel like I can do this”
….and YET, I’m here doing it. Being here in this moment, this day, this time minute I’m doing it because I’m showing up”
It might not be perfect or look the way you want but in those micro moments of just showing up you are parenting. You are learning to manage anxiety. You are an author or doing therapy or creating a course or whatever it is you think you can’t do yet.
