This week I finally achieved something that has been on my list of ‘things to do’ for years. I ran a live webinar (which for anyone who doesn’t know, is a live training session delivered over the internet). Why hadn’t I run one before? Well here are all the excuses I’ve been making for years:
– I’m too busy
– I don’t have the right software
– I don’t know how to do it
– I don’t know if anyone will attend my session
– I’ve got other things that I am working on
– I don’t know anything about delivering training in this way
– I will get round to it when my diary is quieter
– It might cost me loads of money
– It might be a waste of time
– I don’t know if I can do it
– And so on and so forth…
What is your reaction to my list of excuses? (Note I am using the word ‘excuses’ deliberately here!). I hope you are reading this and thinking ‘this is a really poor list of reasons Miranda! And you being a business coach too! Pa!’
So what on earth has really been stopping me? I often hear my clients talking about lack of confidence as an inhibitor – and I really do think that whatever they are labeling as ‘lack of confidence’ is really paralyzing. I am increasingly thinking, however, that confidence isn’t really the thing that is the issue. I could have veiled all those ‘excuses’ above with a blanket ‘I don’t feel confident enough’, but in actual fact, when I actually ran the live webinar, I felt anything but confident. I was a nervous wreck! But I still went on and did it, and enjoyed it, and received some fab feedback, so now I want to do it again!
Lack of confidence doesn’t necessarily need to stop us.
We can do the things we really want to do despite lack of confidence. But there are other things that will stop us if we let them. In my example, it was a lack of time management, poor prioritization, failure to learn new methods and approaches, resistance, fear and so on. In fact, the things that were actually stopping me are much easier to deal with one by one than this subjective feeling-based issue of confidence.
Wouldn’t it be a crime to not achieve all the wonderful things that are on your wish list? All because you have not really understood what is stopping you. If you take the time to really pinpoint what is stopping you instead of calling it a ‘confidence issue’ , then maybe, just maybe you will take huge strides forward and achieve those amazing things that you’ve always wanted to achieve!