Do you ever feel like you have no idea what you’re doing?
It could be with respect to what’s next for your business, what strategic priorities you should be focused on, what you should be selling, or who you should be selling to. Or, perhaps it’s discerning what the next step is on your life’s journey.
I get it! In fact, I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing almost every day on some level.
This reminds me of one of our very first Dream Team meetings in the fall of 2017. We were sitting outside, in a circle, watching a beautiful sunset. Somehow, the cat jumped right out of the bag when I was supposed to be leading the meeting – “Sometimes, I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing,” I admitted, shakily. Then, a beautiful thing happened. Each woman, one by one around the circle, acknowledged she felt the exact same thing. By the time we made it all the way around the circle, there was a collective sigh of relief. Choruses of “Wow, you, too?!!” and “I’m not the only one?!” There were even a few tears.
Admitting this secret that we’d held in for so long freed something within us. It released us from a trap we’d been living in – a trap that held us back and kept us living small. Soon, we were smiling and laughing, feeling connected by our shared vulnerability.
Most of us are trained to keep the “I don’t know what I’m doing” jammed down, deep inside, especially as we grow into adulthood and the world of business. So, we pretend to have this business thing figured out. After all, if we don’t know what we’re doing all the time, who will want what we’re selling? We dutifully stuff our truth away, put on our mask, and exhaust ourselves, trying to look like we know exactly what we’re doing.
What a tragedy. What are we, and the world, missing out on when we pretend and hide behind a mask?
The truth is, as entrepreneurs, we’re not supposed to know what we’re doing all the time. We’re making it up as we go. Isn’t that the point of entrepreneurship?
Most of us started a business to free ourselves from confining, old ways of doing business – to create more freedom and fulfilment on our own terms. To truly embrace this freedom, we must throw whatever blueprints we have (which are someone else’s anyway) out the window. We must commit to designing our own creation from scratch. Is it easy? Of course not. At times, it’s harder than we imagined it could be. Yet, isn’t that also the fun of it? Isn’t the space of “I don’t know what I’m doing” where creativity and innovation blossom, where we learn, where we grow…where possibility and magic await?
Next time you have that feeling of “I don’t know what I’m doing” (which will probably be later today or tomorrow for me!), what might be possible if you lean into it…if you embrace this beautiful truth and let it lead you to the next step?
With deep love and gratitude,
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