You Wont Know Unless You Try!

There are a lot of baby birds at the moment, I’ve seen several this week in my garden. They are very cute and fluffy and it’s truly amazing to watch them learn how to bird! They follow their instincts and copy their parents until they are ready to leave the nest and learn to fly. Some just go for it and keep trying, others hold back and are unsure if they should. But like us learning to walk as babies, they work at it until they can fly successfully.

Imagine a baby bird didn’t follow its instinct or it’s parents and decided it was going to stay in the nest as it was too scared to leave? Well, it wouldn’t survive long without food or perhaps it jumped out the nest, couldn’t fly first time and then fear set it so it didn’t try again. The likelihood is it would be killed by predators.

However, pretend little Bert the Blue Tit lived a long bird life on the ground, it did all the things birds do, apart from fly, as he was just to scared to. This sounds like a children’s book and it may very well be. But if a bird didn’t follow it’s instinct to fly because of fear, there likely wouldn’t be many birds. Birds fly, so a bird deciding not too, (I’m not talking about those that can’t fly here, i.e. Penguins) would be very strange. They push past fear and get on with it, likely not remember they did so. Like a baby learning to walk, I have no recollection of doing so, and you probably won’t either, but whatever fear was there after we fell for the nth time, we kept pushing on and got there in the end.

What fear is holding you back from doing something you love or jumping in with two feet? Lets talk through a few.

Failure

Well this is a huge one, we all want to be successful and achieve great things, sometimes they work out first time and other times they don’t. But with each failure, we learn, we grow and we try something different. Failure can lead to greatness and new paths, which may open doors. Fear of failure is common, you’re not alone and it is scary but it can often be the push we need to try something new. Failure leads to success, it may be different to what you thought success would look like, but the key is not to give up, give it time and a good go! Talk to people, get their help if you get stuck and go with what your gut says, if you are enjoying what you are doing and the fear of failure has pushed you to succeed or even just given you the push to try, then you are already a success. Keep going and success could well be just around the corner. If you stop enjoying what you are doing then maybe it’s time to change the path, but remember, just because you tried and it either didn’t work out or you didn’t enjoy it, it isn’t a failure, after all, you learnt what you don’t like and what doesn’t work for you.

Financial security

Financial security is another huge fear we have. If you want to quit your job and set up your own business or travel the world indefinitely or take on the house project you are desperate to do. Fear of losing that security of a regular income is a challenge, you’ll never know unless you try, so give yourself a buffer. How long can you afford to live without earning money whilst your venture takes off. How many months money have you got saved which gives you time to earn with no pressure? What can you cut back on? Could you forgo the monthly membership you have on gin or you cut back on your Amazon shopping. You want to make sure you can live comfortably without stress until the money starts coming in. Use the fear to spur you on, if you are setting up a business then work out how much you want to earn and then split that down into the amount of work you need to pull in each week. You will have likely done this before you are at this point. But save some money

Letting people down

This could be your partner, family, friends or even you. It’s about the faith they have put in you becoming a success or doing what you set out to do. The chances are they will be supportive and pleased you’ve tried and started doing something you love and if it doesn’t work out, then they’ll know you put your all into it. You can’t let the fear of letting them down, stop yourself from following the path you are so keen to be on. Don’t be hard on yourself either, you’ve taken a big step and you should be proud of yourself whatever the outcome! You will not let yourself down if you try.

This is a small snapshot into fears of jumping into the unknown. There are many reasons to be afraid, but at the same time many reasons to do it! And what happens if you did and it was the best decision you ever made. You won’t know unless you try so be confident, take a risk on you and know that no matter what happens, you will be ok. Things have a funny way of working out!

Have a great week, take that risk and look after you!

Emma