What would you do if you weren’t afraid to try?

Column Post by Laura Hyers

Weekends go by way too quickly at my house. There’s friends and family and chores and church and before you know it, its Sunday night and I’m looking at another long week stretched ahead of me and wondering where all my time went.

You know what I realized this weekend? I am my own worst enemy.  What I mean is, I am really good at sabotaging myself concerning the things that mean the most to me.

Take this community, for example. If you had told me this time last year that I would be sharing weekly with a beautiful bunch of women, given the opportunity to be real and vulnerable and all of the things that come with that, I probably would have laughed at you.

Because it just didn’t seem like it could happen. Writing was something other people did, something I would dream about forever but never really participate in—except in my journals and composition notebooks.

And now? Now I put off my weekly post for as long as humanly possible. It’s probably been at least three weeks since I submitted a post on time, and our lovely site manager Lisa is more than patient with me, because she knows I have a lot going on and I am struggling with my own personal demons.

And because I think she in her wisdom has seen what I have not seen up until this point: I’m a procrastinating perfectionist.

I would rather not do something than do a poor job of it, and every week I wait and wait and wait for the inspiration to strike, to give me the topic, whatever it is, that I will be discussing and baring my soul about. And I want to be relevant, and well received, and all sorts of other things.

Going back to my post from last week, I want you ladies to like me.

So I put off my responsibilities because I don’t want to fail to live up to my expectations, or yours, and in the process I make myself undeserving of my responsibilities. It’s a vicious cycle, and that’s not even considering the guilt that comes with being late on my posts.

I’m a mess. But I’m seeing where the messiness is coming from, and I know it’s only then that I can begin to change.

What are you putting off? What dreams are you delaying because you think you’ll be more ready to deal with them later? Are you purposefully setting yourself up for failure because you think you’ll fail if you try?

Because you have your gifts and passions for a reason, it would be a waste not to use them. But I think it would be even more wasteful to know that you can use them, to dream of using them, and to throw away opportunity after opportunity.

Give it a shot. Whatever it is, let yourself try.  Odds are, you’ll blow yourself away with your abilities.

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P.S. We’d love to know your thoughts, so please be sure to comment below. Each of our commenters will be entered in a drawing for this month’s FREE book giveaway, Mothers & Daughters: Mending a Strained Relationship by author Teena Stewart. 

Laura Hyers is a Tampa native, writer, and the newly wed wife of musician Caleb. She recently graduated from the University of South Florida with a bachelor’s degree in psychology with a concentration in literature and is currently teaching preschool. When not chasing a class of two-year-olds, Laura is writing and fighting fierce bouts of wanderlust. She loves music, reading, being near the ocean, and dreaming big over huge cups of coffee with her best friend Lakin. Laura blogs at http://littlebirdmarie.wordpress.com.

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