Revelation: Everyone Else Is As Scared As I Am

OK, first things first.  I played a little hooky on the blog last week and  have gone a whole twelve days without posting.  I won’t bore you with the details; suffice it to say that I took on one too many projects and overwhelmed myself a bit.  Oddly enough, it was nice to have so much going on.

It feels like every possible good thing is happening at once: new products are being created (and sold!) over at Great Little Book Publishing, the Motivation 101 Blog was featured in the Sacramento Bee as their “Blog of the Week” last week, and everywhere I turn, projects I’ve been working on are starting to come together better than I ever dreamed they would.  I have a lot to be grateful for, no doubt, and one of the things I’m most grateful for right now in my life is the fact that people are actually interested in reading what I write.

It’s no secret to anyone here that I struggle with feelings of inadequacy from time to time.  What really comes as a surprise to me, though, is how many people I meet who feel the same way.

Just tonight, I was chatting with a friend of mine who has been gearing up to launch a new coaching program that is sure to explode the business of anyone who’s fortunate enough to grab one of the 12 available spots she’ll open up later this year (and yes, that’s real scarcity because she can only work one-on-one with that many people at once).  This is an extremely talented person who has demonstrated her ability to get results time and again, and yet she admitted to me that one of her most difficult challenges has been and continues to be the feeling that she’s not good enough to pull it off.

I was stunned.  This is one of the most outwardly confident people I’ve ever met, and here she was, telling me that she was as nervous as I am.  She feels the same worries and doubts, the same fear and anxiety.  It was good to know I’m not the only one, and it got me thinking about why so many of us walk around with these feelings of self-doubt.  What I realized is that it all comes down to our innate desire to avoid looking stupid in front of our peers.

What if I launch this product and nobody buys it?  What if people think I’m weird for doing this?  What will my friends say if I fail?  These are the questions that stop a lot of us dead in our tracks.  I’m happy to say that my friend isn’t let the fear stop her; she’s going full speed ahead toward her launch, feeling the fear and doing it anyways.

And me?  I found my strength, too, albeit in a place I didn’t expect to find it.  It’s my new anthem, the Weezer song “Pork and Beans”.  I find the chorus insightful, and I take every chance I can get to sing it at the top of my voice.  Although I’m still confused by the lyric about eating candy with pork and beans (that honestly sounds disgusting), the message of being me no matter what anyone else thinks comes through loud and clear:

“I’ma do the things that I wanna do
I ain’t got a thing to prove to you
I eat my candy with the pork and beans
Excuse my manners if I make a scene
I ain’t gonna wear the clothes that you like
I’m fine and dandy with the me inside
One look in the mirror and I’m tickled pink
I don’t give a hoot about what you think!”

It’s a great tune from a great band with a great message: just be yourself, and it’ll all work out in the end.  Oh, and you’ll have a lot more fun along the way.  And for those of you who like that sort of thing, here’s the video: