Twitter has been bugging out on me this week. I started wondering – is it just me… ? So I sent out a tweet asking if anyone else was having issues. For some reason I thought it would be reassuring to know that there were more people experiencing the same frustrations.

Guess what? There were. This got me thinking – why did I feel like it was just me? Why did I want to know if others were in the same boat?

These last four weeks have been more challenging than I’d like. More setbacks than I’m used to. More uncertainty than I’m comfortable with. It’s been tough.  We’ve all been there.

So here’s the thing – we can all experience fear, we are all unsure of ourselves at times, we all get nervous, we all have doubts, we are all capable of bigger and better, we are all competent when we focus, we are all able to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down and move on knowing more about what not to do next time round.

There are two words that I think go really well together – fear and excitement. I do my best to keep them as balanced as possible. Fear tells me I’m doing something new and excitement keeps me moving forward so I can see what it looks like on the other side. When one of these words starts to dominate the other, we become stagnant or too mainstream. I find the middle is a good place to be.

So regardless of where you’re at or what you’re experiencing – there’s a whole world of people thinking, feeling and experiencing the very same thing.

Some tips to keep your perspective:

1. Focus. What do you want or where exactly are you going. Everything else measures up against this and it either supports your efforts or will hinder it.

2. Find people who are already doing that thing you want to do or in that place you want to be – connect with them (see my post on networking to make sure you get it right), learn from them, surround yourself with people just like them. You cannot help but become part of what you’re around.

3. Recognize the tape recorder playing in your head may just be that… a tape recorder. Not fact. Not gospel. Just a bunch of gibberish you bought into once upon a time but no longer applies.

4. Find a cause bigger than you and enable it. Something you’re passionate about. Something that makes a difference. Something that allows you to give back.

5. Learn. Make mistakes. Learn again. Make more mistakes and then when you’ve learned more – fall down. It’s ok. It’s all part of the plan. Falling down is absolutely part of the process… what really matters is what you do when you’re down there. Embrace the pity party… or as Sinatra suggests… pick yourself up and get back in the race. HAH!

photo credit: alexkess