The *Number One* Thing That Has Been Holding You Back

As it did me — time and time again

“Indecision is the thief of opportunity. If you’re going to have a destiny worth pursuing, you’ve got to get out of neutral.”~Dr. Alan Zimmerman

Easier said than done for a lot of us, Dr. Zimmerman.

But oh, so true, isn’t it? I mean, like most cliches, who can argue with “nothing ventured, nothing gained”?

I have personally spent many, many years in Indecision Land, which I’ve otherwise referred to as the Land of Doubt, or the Fear Frontier. The road behind me is heavily littered with cast-off dreams and untried ideas.

I wasn’t always that way. Uncertainty and vacillation were traits I acquired with age.

After a while, when I did make decisions, I mostly made safe ones. I moved back to my hometown after college and never left; in fact, I currently live only a mile or so from where I grew up. I clung to safe jobs with steady paychecks and benefits. I took safe vacations.

But my dreams continued to take more adventurous paths. I journaled about them, followed the lives of others who made leaps of faith similar to the ones I yearned to take, and filled my bookshelves with titles like Life is a Verb and Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow and Awaken Your Strongest Self.

I tried to rediscover the Mary Anne of my youth by buying volume after volume of “shelf-help,” most of which I barely cracked. Maybe I thought I’d absorb their contents by osmosis by just owning them.

I also sought inspiration from various coaches over the years. While I won’t say that the time and money I spent on them were wasted, I did tend to snap back to my pre-coached self after our times together had ended.

I remember tremulously sharing some of my dreams and ideas with one of those coaches — via e-mail, because I was too uncertain about them to say them aloud to anyone. And she immediately wrote back, “Oh, Mary Anne, you are sitting on goldmines…”

Yet even with this awesome validation, this unfettered encouragement, I failed to act, and the dreams slipped away, unrealized.

“Not to decide is to decide.” — Harvey Cox

Does this strike a chord with you? Have you toyed with ideas, lost yourself in daydreams, or maybe even taken the first tentative steps towards looking into whether or not a concept of yours has potential — but failed to follow through?

Or have you ever wistfully and enviously discovered that someone else has wrapped their arms around the exact same vision that you’ve been passively considering, and rocketed it to the moon and beyond while you’ve remained mired in uncertainty?

If so, there’s a reason for this. Like many human frailties, indecision has at its core an element of self-preservation. What if we make the wrong choice? What if we screw it up? What if we fall flat on our faces? What about the financial impact of taking a risk? Will our family or friends think we’ve gone off the deep end for pursuing a cockamamie scheme?

Fear of failure. Perfectionism. Paralysis by analysis. Any or all of these can keep us stuck.

No matter how many lists of pros and cons that you write, even if you come up with more pros, even if you suspect that following that dream will set your heart free and let your soul soar…you continue to remain safely on the shore as it sails away over the horizon and out of sight.

Part of you feels relief for letting it go. And part of you feels a vague sense of sadness. But at least you still have that steady paycheck.

Now here I go again I see the crystal visions I keep my visions to myself

Dreams — Stevie Nicks ©1977

But here’s what I’ve learned.

If you’re anything like me, your dream returns to you again and again, waiting for you to join it on a grand adventure.

You can ignore it, write your fresh list of pros and cons, promise to pursue it “someday,” when certain elements are in place (when you’ve saved enough money, when the kids are grown, when you’ve found the right coach or taken the right course, etc., etc.) or you can watch it slip away without you again.

The choice is yours.

Dreams keep tugging at you for a reason. They need you in order to become real. Deep down you know this, as well as the fact that you already have the ability to make it a reality. You really don’t have to wait until after you’ve taken your next course, read another book, joined another coaching program.

You need only to take the first step, followed by the second, and then the third.

It may not be easy, but it’s that simple.

Maybe you’ll trip now and then, or need to make tweaks, or find that it takes longer to accomplish than you would like. Know that all of these are okay…and go for it.

So, have you been sitting on goldmines? Then maybe it’s time to mine them.

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