I really want to do that, but...

I recently read the book by Tara Mohr, titled Playing Big: Find Your Voice, Your Mission, Your Message. To be frank, I was quite hesitant to start the book as I have a bias against self-help books. I was finally coaxed into by a fellow participant of Homeward Bound. P told me – if nothing else, read the sixth chapter, you wont regret it. I was intrigued as P had so much confidence in the value of the book.

Saturday morning, cup of lemon tea in hand, my blue reflective journal and black pen, I turned to Chapter 6 titled ‘Hiding’. Can you guess whats it about? Tara talks about 6 hiding strategies women often use to downplay their brilliance and miss unleashing their true potential. One of the strategies that resonated deeply with me was ‘This before That’. It refers to the false beliefs that people hold about the order in which things need to happen. “I really want to work in social enterprise in developing country, but first I have to save up enough money to quit my job because no one will give me a paid position with my limited experience” or “I really want to work at a company A but first I need to get a promotion at my current employer because potential recruiters will think I am not good enough if I left before the promotion and wont hire me”. These may seem outlandish to an outsider but to the person holding the beliefs it seems the only way to achieve the goal.

For me personally, it was a whole list of items that needed to happen before I could write this blog or express my views on why I felt strongly about gender diversity. I told myself I needed a website, images and content for atleast 5 blogs before I could publish the first one. I came up with a plethora of things that needed to happen before my blog could be live. Are you also holding assumptions that in order to achieve z, you need to do x and y first? Is it possible for you to get to your goal directly? In most occasions, this is a strategy for us to hide from our fears and not take risks.

In Tara’s words, recognise that there are many possible orders in which steps to our goals can happen and choose the most direct way. In the end, I posted my first blog without the perfect website and took the risk to share my experiences.