Why didn’t I do this sooner?

If you ask anyone close to me, they will without a doubt tell you I have a lot of irrational fears and just crazy things that make me uncomfortable. Short of the intense fears I have like heights, flying, space, the ocean, skyscrapers, etc. (I know, you think I’m nuts already) I also have a lot of stupid things that make me uncomfortable. I’ve been a member at my gym for a year now. For a year I agonized over wanting to take Pilates and Yoga. For a year I told myself, I’m going to try it next week. For a year, I let my fear take over and prevent me from doing something I wanted to do so badly. Crazy thoughts like “what if I suck?”, “what if I look stupid?”, etc always led me to making excuses to not go.

I’ve been reading the 4 Hour Work Week and there’s a small, tiny part in there where the author talks about imagining the worst case scenario for if he left to go on vacation. And he told us this ridiculous story about basically the business crashing down. And then he went anyway. Somehow that got to me, more than the “just go” and “you’ll love it”. The worst thing that could happen is that I could be terrible, everyone would laugh at me and I would leave crying. With that reality staring me in the face, I got over it. I realized that the chances of that happen are slim, so slim and it is so dumb to not do something for fear of the worse case scenario, especially when in this case all it is is a little (ok traumatizing) embarrassment.

So I went to Pilates on Wednesday. And I did pretty well. And I’m sitting writing this on Friday morning still unable to cough or laugh because my ad muscles got such a good workout. And I’m going again next week, for reals.

Then there’s the fact that I’ve been putting off and putting of hiring help for Kintage and getting a “real” model aka not myself. “What if they come to my house and think I’m a slob?”, “What if it’s awkward to have someone working in my office with me and I hate it?”, “What if I don’t make enough money one month to pay them”, the unknowns kept piling up. But I finally pulled the trigger and hired someone who will start on Tuesday. And yesterday? I had a very sweet, sweet girl come in and model for me. You bet the minutes counting down to 10am I was like “What if this is super awkward?” “What if she’s terrible or I’m terrible at taking her photos?”, “Maybe she won’t show up and I won’t have to feel so much anxiety”. And then she showed up and within 5 minutes I was fine and though I could tell she was a bit nervous, she was absolutely amazing.

And you know the first thing that crossed my mind as soon as I was done conquering both of those fears? “Why didn’t I do this sooner?”