I’m preparing what I’ll be talking about for International Women’s Day during the first week of March. And I’ve been thinking a lot about this quote from Gabby Bernstein:
“When the voice of doubt and limitation is holding you back. I challenge you to just go. Take that first action. Make that decision. Make that commitment to move forward in your life.”
“Just go” is a really useful reminder. I’m often quoting Tara Mohr and Playing Big (a book listed in the reading recommendations for How to Own the Room and I mention it a lot). Her version of this is “baby steps” — basically figuring out what it is that you really want to do and taking the smallest, most manageable step towards it. It sounds so basic and yet I think many of us do not take that baby step: we want to see the full picture, the entire vision, the final destination before we will take any steps at all. That’s a great excuse and often a form of self-delusion. Usually your vision of something at the end point is nothing like what the real end point will look like. Anyone who has written a book will tell you this: the finished item is never the exact book that you had in your mind when you started out. And that’s OK. We are not robots headed towards a finishing line. We are idiot humans groping our way towards an outcome whose shape is uncertain.
For more career advice, networking and confidence strategies, I’m speaking at this Allbright Step Forward Summit in London on March 10.
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