The surprising risk I decided to take

and how our community helped

I started a new experiment this month of declaring a theme connected to it’s not too late and inviting you to share how you might take that theme on in your life. This month’s theme is Take A Risk, Make A Leap and oh my gosh, the thoughts you all shared (feel free to join in at any time - comment on this post!) were beyond my wildest dreams. So much courage, truth, and support for each other. Awesome!

The next part of my experiment was inviting a guest to offer their take on the theme and wow, did

Anne Boyd

deliver. Her post inspired so many of you, and it really got me thinking too. Just what I hoped for all of us.

Now it’s my turn.

I commented on that first post:

I made some friendship “moves” and that was all feeling good and then I read this comment from wonderful brave Martina…

And her words rattled something deep inside me. I knew it wasn’t that I wanted to rest more — I have a pretty restful life as is and I’m in the process of slowing my business way down, taking far fewer clients, leading fewer retreats (registration is open for 2025!), and spending more time writing my novel — all good.

But what was it about Martina’s risk that got me thinking? I mused on it until a few days later, on a run in my neighborhood in the golden fall light, it came to me with a full-body shiver that made my dog stare at me…

My risk is to stop caring if I’m good enough.

Like many people, I’ve often felt not good enough. Not smart enough, not talented enough, not literary enough, not attractive enough, not whatever enough.

Common story.

And there were plenty of times in my life I wasn’t good enough at something and I had to learn — to write, to speak, to teach, to coach, to lead retreats. We all have to learn and grow to flourish. Yay for being human!

What I became aware of because of Martina’s comment was that I experience a low-level dread of failing to be good enough that now has little basis in reality, and far less basis in what I desire for myself.

I’m most aware of this dread when writing my novel. I’m doing this thing that I’ve wanted for so long, I’m making this fun moving story, and any time I hit a snag, I immediately think, “You’re not good enough, you can’t do this.”

YET I KNOW writing is like building a house — I can tear out the door that doesn’t hang straight, I can and WILL repaint a lot of walls, and I can jackhammer out an entire bathroom floor if I ordered the wrong tile.

Writing is revision, I KNOW this.

Yet the old ghost of failure wiggles into my mind to try and hijack my joy. My pleasure.

That ghost shows up writing this post — it’s not good enough, I’m not capturing the real feeling clearly, nobody will get what I mean, blah blah blah.

What if I risked turning my back on being good enough?

What if I decided that I don’t care if I am or not?

Whoa. That feels very risky. The good girl inside me just said, “Excuse me? What are you just going to do whatever you want?”

Good girl, that’s not a bad idea but what’s going to happen, I think, is when I let go of being “good enough” I am freer to trust myself to do what needs to be done, according to what I value and not some arbitrary and often imaginary standard.

I’m ready to risk not being good enough so I can be immersed in creating. And living!

But how will you do this, how will you let go of caring about being good enough?

No idea!

My fixation on being good enough isn’t going to disappear because I say boo, go away.

But declaring this publicly, like all the women declared what they want to risk or how they want to leap, feels like a solid first step.

I’m sure it will involve muttering to myself a lot, “Why do you care if you are good enough at this? What would good enough look like? Who gets to decide if you reach it?”

And plenty of calming my jittery little nervous system, a lot of saying “hi” to the thoughts and fears of failure and screwing up when they arise. “Hi there, I see you. Welcome.”

A lot of self-compassion for the parts of me that still live in the stanky shame basement of creative failures and public embarrassments.

It might help to go back and use my tool Conditions of Enoughness. I wrote about that in Why Bother? Decide what is enough for me — whether that’s my teaching for the day or my writing or a meeting with a client. Or maybe I will simply trust myself to know, moment by moment. That sounds so good!

Being in this risk feels so rebellious and freeing and good.

Thank you so much for reading! I’ll be off next week but if you’d like to get my book recommendations and an update on my novel process, sign up for that newsletter here. It’s free and comes out at the end of every month.

Love,

Jen

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