Starting in the face of fear and perfectionism

Here’s a post mostly for my counselor friends who are building their practice or platform. But it’ll apply to anyone wanting to start something, like my blogging and writing friends, and my friends who are on the verge of making a change or procrastinating.

Here’s a pic of my blog stats for the past few months.

Didn’t really know what to expect. I said a little bit about what I’ve learned in the audio blog this past week.
The first month I had 155 visitors. In June, 293. And so far in July, 613. So doubling each month. I’m not sure that’ll continue but it’s encouraging.

One thing that surprised me: in the six years I’ve been on Facebook, I’ve never had anything I’ve written or posted be shared more than 4-5 times. And I post a lot! But in the past three months I’ve blogged about 25 times and half of those posts have been shared at least 10 times. A few have even been shared more than 40 times. What I blog about isn’t much different than what those FB posts were but I guess blogging and blog reading is different. My daughter says one reason is FB readers are just quickly scrolling through their feed at different places and times of the day where they may not have the time to read, engage or share. That makes sense.

I’ve also learned this since starting:

You can’t grow, learn, improve, achieve what you want, get to where you want to go unless or until you start.
So you might as well begin.

Just start.

Starting before you’re ready is a great antidote to perfectionism because it exposes the lies perfectionism fills your mind with.
The lies that something bad will happen, that you’ll be rejected, criticized, embarrasses.
Maybe you will feel that little but what I’ve learned is that you’ll survive; the flaws and mistakes, imperfections, won’t kill you.
And people are more encouraging and supportive than you imagined.

Thanks for reading my blog so far.
If you are a baby counselor or aspiring writer like me, I hope you are building your platform and encourage you to start your own blog.
I’m also drawing inspiration from this workbook and am thinking about forming a monthly Google Hangout group to work through it together. Let me know if you are interested in joining.