#Blog4Biz Day 11: What's your deepest fear?

The Living BRAVE blog re-launches on Aug 1, 2013. During July, however, I accepted the #Blog4Biz daily business blogging challenge. The challenge is designed to help business owners focus on certain aspects of blogging that will expand their skill, boost creativity, and focus their message. Initially, I wasn't going to publicly share my posts, but as I started writing these posts, I saw the value in sharing...and some of this stuff is really good!  If you want to join the challenge, click here.

Today's challenge asks a very intimate question. What are you afraid of? This Marianne Williamson's quote has been one of my favorite quotes on fear for sometime. It perfectly highlights my fear when it comes to my business.

I am afraid of succeeding!

On one hand I want BRAVE to be successful...but there is always a price to success, right? What's the price of success? Am I willing to pay it?

Once people become successful, all of sudden you are not your own. People want a piece of you. What a wonderful thing to inspire someone. But on the flip side of that, now people want your time. They think you have some magic formula for success and they want you to tell them.

What is success going to cost my marriage? My kids? My mental health?

Since we are getting deep, let me give you an insight into my background. I know this fear started in childhood so let's psychoanalyze me for a minute.

As a child, I was expected to succeed. No one ever said to me, "you'll never make it." In fact, the opposite was true. I was told, "you are going to be the one who makes it."

As a child, I learned that success had a price. I was teased for getting good grades. Somehow being smart wasn't "cool". I was teased for my diction. I was accused of "talking white" more times than I can count. I didn't get in much trouble so I was teased for being a "goodie two shoes". I kept to myself and was called "boushy" [pronounced boo-zhee] and "stuck up".

You see from an early age, my experiences taught me that being "successful" had a price. It cost me relationships. The people who mattered the most to me as a kid, either knowingly or ignorantly taught me that success brought isolation and loneliness.

So what was my response to all of this? I tried to down play all my accomplishments so as not to be different. As the quote says, "it was my light, not my darkness that frightened me most." I never thought myself better than anybody, but I lived in constant fear that someone might think I thought that way. I tried to hide any light I produced.

Starting my company was my act of rebellion against all of this fear. I had to be BRAVE enough to follow my dream despite the potential downside of "success" my past dictated could result. The last line in the quote asks "who am I not to be?" My playing small so that others don't feel bad, helps no one.

I still fear the unknown but my drive is greater than my fear so I must keep going. I have a gift, talent, and skill in my business area. I am not going to apologize for it anymore. I am going to let my light shine. Williamson goes on to observe that: 

"As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same".

I am willing to do the work to become successful, liberating myself, and YOU in the process. That is a price I am willing to pay.

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