A letter to my friend

So you have a secret goal and  you are so afraid you will mess it up that you haven't told anyone? 

You asked for my advice and I know what you are really asking is how to make sure you succeed and rule out any possibility of failing. 

I know you are filled with self-doubt and are not feeling confident, so you don’t want to put it out there and tell anyone you are doing it.  I know the fear well. 

This is what I can tell you. You are missing out on the best part of the experience and the biggest gift possible in the entire experience by not allowing others to sit next to you and say "me too." 

There is never a race I have done that I didn’t want to find a way out.  Shit, I have contemplated throwing myself in front of a car because after all, no one would expect me to race with multiple broken bones.

 Even if it is a race I have done before, I hear this bitchy voice in my head saying “who do you think you are?”  I go to get my packet and as I look around I think everyone must be looking at me thinking “what is she doing here?”  They are the athletes and I am the imposter, about to be busted and exposed.   I take this fear along on every race I do.  I have gotten better at muting her voice, but have yet to find a way to shut her up completely.

So you signed up for this huge thing!   Congratulations.  That is a big step.  

You had the courage to have the dream, you had the courage to sign up for it.

If you are waiting to feel confident enough,  you will have to wait until the lights go down at midnight. No matter where you are on that course, if you are at the finish line or still running your way toward it, when it is over is when the self-doubt will finally silence itself.

Courage means you do it because it’s your dream and your life.  And even when you aren’t certain about the outcome, you put your ass out there and you step into it anyway.  Every time you do that, you give yourself and every woman out there permission to  also step into something even when they are afraid.

I had always thought that being a DNF for Ironman would be the worst thing possible and I would feel like a failure.  It turns out that wasn’t true at all.   

I sat there with the bike and swim behind me, and the course official telling me I was done, and I realized the worst thing possible would be to quit.  It turns out I didn’t care if I was an Ironman by anyone else’s standards, it only mattered to me that I did the 140.6 I had set out to do.  I believe this shift was the reason I loved every single second of the marathon. I felt amazing and everything that had hurt all day stopped hurting, the chatter in my head was gone and I was experiencing the moments as they were happening in a whole new way.   When I stopped worrying about failing, that was the moment I was finally courageous enough to love the experience. 

For every bit of imperfection, fear and self- doubt we hide and keep tucked away, we rob ourselves of the support we could be getting and we also rob others of what we could be sharing with them. 

The difference between confidence and courage is huge, so move forward with courage my friend, and stop waiting to feel confident.

So the second step is a bit more scary.  Let every flaw, every fear and every failure shine brightly and know that the authenticity that comes with that will give you a sense of freedom you can only imagine.

Thank you for telling me you are doing this big scary thing and I will support your decision to keep it a secret or to go big with it, whatever you choose.   But my best piece of advice is don’t keep it to yourself, stop rehearsing all the ways you can fail, stop giving yourself a silent arena to back out of, and stop playing small.  If this is your dream then live it out loud and live it big.