What Happens if You Reach Out for Your Goals and Nobody Notices?

A very dear friend of mine and I were talking yesterday about a new business that she is working on launching.

We have been working on bringing her business forward for some time now and a while back she decided that one thing her new business needs is a blog so that she can let her customers get to know her and her business.

She has sent me a number of trial postings that she has written. These trial postings are all extremely well written; will draw her readers in and make them feel as though she is talking directly with them. I have watched as she has brought her writing style from a very corporate voice to one where she is writing to an old friend.

She sees her progress and is excited each time she emails her latest posting to me. I guess I should tell you that her business will cater to a very specific segment of women and excludes me. None-the-less, I still love reading these postings for the way she brings me into her world.

Now–to the reason I am going into this: When I made a comment about how I really liked them and looked forward to her actually beginning her blog, she seemed to freeze up.

“But… I don’t know if I really want to do that because… what if no one reads them?” Before the words were out of her mouth she realized what she had been dealing with.

Ah-HA!!! There it was, the classic self-doubt “Do you REALLY want to put yourself out there just to get either shot down or even worse–ignored?” Gremlin had been sitting on her shoulder.

This is the not-so-little voice that whispers in our ears that acts like it is just trying to protect us from ourselves, and all the while it is doing nothing but holding us back.

Now, I will tell you that this woman had climbed to the top of the corporate world in a predominately male industry–and to paraphrase an old advertisement–when she talked, people listened. She knows that her writing is incredible but that Gremlin had been trying to hold her back–and it would hold her business back if she had continued to listen to it.

How many times does that little Gremlin sit on your shoulder and keep you from truly and whole-heartedly enjoying life?

“Don’t reach, you may stumble…” We all stumbled a few times when we were learning to walk – what is all that different now? Without those stumbles we never really learn what we are capable of.

Every minute of every day ordinary people are coming up with some of the greatest ideas, inventions, and ways to make this a better world. The truly sad part is that most of those ideas will never see the light of day because the people who have them don't believe in themselves enough to make them real.

And if these people would quit listening to that self-defeating voice and go for it – the world would be theirs for the taking. Yeah, it may take a while to get that first sale, first date after 25 years, that first devoted reader, that first whatever… but until you ignore that voice that’s holding you back and let go, step out, and reach beyond what you think your boundaries are–you are still standing on the sideline watching the game go on without you.

Yeah, at first, it won’t be easy, but when you take that first step, you will realize that you made it – that makes the next step just a bit easier. Before you know it - you will be like the small child who has just learned to walk – you’ll be running everywhere you go.