The Three Things You Need To Reach Your Dreams
One of my most favorite sayings is, "With God and Google, we can do anything.”
As women, we live in the most exciting time! We have doors of opportunity flung wide open for us. With God on our side and all the knowledge in the world at our fingertips (thanks to Google) our opportunities are endless!
I've met so many women like me over the years, women sitting on the edge of an exciting future, with so many doors of opportunity open to them, but terrified to take the leap and go for their dreams.
I write about one of those women in my newest book, "Fierce Faith." She hired me as a business coach a few years ago. She'd had a pretty devastating setback in her career, and was frozen in fear, unable to take another step forward. She had a great idea for starting her own business, and the timing certainly seemed right for her to get started (especially considering that her former employer was going to become her first client). But she couldn't do it. She just could not start. She needed someone to give her some sound advice and help her see that she absolutely had what it took to be successful.
I am so often blessed to have the opportunity to help women reach their goals. With each of them, I always start with these three primary pieces of wisdom.
1. Find community.
You need a mentor or a coach to give you wisdom and strategy, but also to strengthen you when things feel scary or difficult (because trust me, things WILL feel scary and difficult).
2. Create a flexible plan.
I'm not talking about an old school business plan here, but at the very least you'll want to create a document that lists out what steps you're going to take and when you're going to take them. This is necessary because if you have no written plan, how do you know if you're making progress?
3. Understand that fear is normal.
Fear is normal. God gave us fear to keep us safe. Interestingly enough, our fear-fighting system, called the fight or flight response, is designed to tell us when to run away and when to stand and fight.
When we feel afraid, we mistakenly take that as a sign that we are supposed stop. We think that just because things are hard, or scary, that we aren’t in our calling.
I’m telling you today that is not true! Pushing through the difficulty and the fear is a normal part of our progress!
Understanding that fear is normal (and being reminded of that often) helps us push through and keeps us moving toward the life that we meant to live.
Don't let fear stop you in your tracks. Push through it, surround yourself with smart people, learn everything you can, and then go for it!
Alli Worthington
This is an excerpt from Fierce Faith: A Woman’s Guide to Fighting Fear, Wrestling Worry, and Overcoming Anxiety. Alli Worthington is a mom of five sons, wife to Mark, and the Executive Director of Propel Women. She is also the author of Breaking Busy: How to Find Peace and Purpose in a World of Crazy.
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