It is so easy to talk about great ideas and lofty goals but it is always harder to put those ideas into action and shoot for those lofty goals when obstacles pop up to block your path. Take this blog, for instance. I probably worked on creating my blog for five weeks before I finally took the plunge and bought a hosting site and domain name. After watching a few videos and reading a few blogs about how to start a blog, I decided it was time to move forward. Even though I felt unprepared, I believed it was best to plow ahead so as not to lose momentum.
For most of my life, I’ve operated under the notion that a project should be as near to perfect as possible before revealing it to the world, but as I’ve spent time shifting to a growth mindset, I realized that imperfect action is better than perfect inaction. As my own past experience has taught me, usually working to get something “perfect” ends up meaning it never gets done at all.
So here I was, setting up my website. Enthusiastic, excited, inspired.
Then, I hit a roadblock. I made a stupid mistake that cost me hours of time. When inputting my information, I listed my email incorrectly on the set-up page of the hosting site. I guess I was tired and not paying attention because I don’t think I’ve ever written my email incorrectly before (but in all fairness, I had just recently set up a new email account).
Three times now, I’ve called the customer service line and three times I’ve chatted online with a customer service representative. Apparently, if you list the incorrect email address and set up a domain name, you cannot activate it. This makes sense because the validation code is sent to the email you listed—and the one I listed was wrong. So I’ve had multiple emails sent to some stranger (hopefully they have simply ignored the emails) with information I need. But each time I try to correct this problem with the hosting site, I’ve run into issues.
Each person I’ve chatted with or spoken to has been very kind, but each time I was told the problem was fixed, I seemed to run into another hiccup because of my dumb mistake.
The reason I am telling this story is because at a few points in the midst of this mess, I considered abandoning my blog project altogether. It sounds silly, but the truth is that sometimes when a wrench gets thrown in our wheel, we fall off our bikes and then simply walk away. We think it is a sign that this is not “meant to be” (I’ve never liked that phrase anyway because it implies that we have no control over our own lives); or else we think that it would just be easier to abandon the project altogether.
For a few days, I got discouraged and thought of all the reasons why I should just abandon this project.
- I don’t know much at all about technology, which means I don’t have the skills to make my website look really good and I won’t have the skills to fix things if they break.
- I might not be able to recover my domain name and could continue to run into difficulties because of my one dumb mistake while setting up the website.
- I still don’t know if I have enough to say on my blog. Will I have the ability to produce good content? Will people be interested in what I have to say?
- Even though I always considered myself a writer, I haven’t written much in years and the reality is, my writing skills need a lot of polishing.
Those were a few of the reasons I almost abandoned this project. But then I tried to counter my own negative thoughts with a way through each problem.
- There are tons of resources out there and even though I don’t know much about technology right now, I can learn. (I also had to remind myself that this blog is themed around learning and growth, after all.)
- If I have to choose a different domain name and start from scratch, it’s not the end of the world. Who knows, maybe I’ll even come up with a better name than the one I current have.
- There is plenty to write about, even if it has been written before (and it most likely has). I just have to focus on making it authentic and remember that if it is relevant to me, it is likely relevant to someone else out there.
- The only way to get better at something is to practice. I can only improve my writing by writing. Even if these first posts are unpolished, I will get better over time.
We should all be careful not to let obstacles stand in the way of taking action. Whether your goal is facing its first obstacle or its tenth, you can do this by reframing the obstacle and looking for solutions. Growth happens when we are willing to do something that scares us, something that takes us out of our comfort zone. So this is me doing something that scares me. Every time I post, I am pushing through the fear that I suck, that I’m not good enough, that I don’t have anything relevant to say. But I am doing it because I believe growth is in progress with every action I take. And the reward for that growth is always fulfilling.
