Guest post by by Lisa Dolce, Right-Brain Business Plan® Licensed Facilitator,
Dear highly sensitive entrepreneur:
I get it.
I know first-hand how hard it is to find the sweet spot between your desire for “perfect” and actually sharing your most valuable work.
Because you and I are the kind of people who set the bar really high for ourselves.
Because we’re highly sensitive, we notice subtle details about our ideas and projects. It’s a blessing—but it also can feel like a curse.
Especially when you start working toward your biggest visions, your inner perfectionist rears her head. You start to spend hours upon hours fine-tuning the details. You make tweak after tweak, never pulling the trigger, while your biggest dreams languish and fade.
For almost a year, I’ve been working on a book (which is a lifelong dream of mine). But as my submission deadline approached, I went into analysis paralysis and talked myself out of finishing it.
My perfectionist voice reared its ugly and powerful head.
“This is not good enough!”
“No one will read this!”
“It is going to be an epic fail!”
Fear set in (which quickly turns into overwhelm for us sensitive types).
So I stopped. I abandoned the idea completely…until a friend helped me turn it around.
She said, “What, are you crazy? This can help so many people!” She reminded me this was not about being perfect but showing up and sharing my gifts with the world–gifts that could really make a difference in someone else’s life.
Success can be as simple as showing up.
Once I reconnected with my ability to change another person’s life, my mission-driven, heart-centered side kicked into gear and told my inner perfectionist to step aside. I knew there was important work to be done.
Let your strong sense of mission pull you out of overthinking.
This helped free me from perfectionism long enough to pick up where I left off and get my work out into the world.
With my deadline looming, I adopted an “I’ll just show up and see what happens” attitude. Rather than the perfect “real” book I envisioned, I took one chapter from my book and made a simple little e-book. I launched with no attachment to the outcome other than to sharing the work I believed would be valuable for my fellow heart-centered entrepreneurs.
Nothing needs to be perfect. It just needs to be shared.
Since then, I’ve had lovely notes from people who said the e-book helped them. To my delight they even shared it with their kids and their friends! It also started some great discussions about what it is like to be a highly sensitive entrepreneur, which has been a true gift in all of this.
As heart-centered entrepreneurs, our biggest goal is to connect with others that need us and make an impact in some way. Yes, it is easy to stay in our comfort zone, but we don’t get the rewards of sharing our gifts if we do so.
So I’d love to know: Is your need for perfection holding you back from making a difference in someone’s life? What would you do differently right now, today, if you knew success was as simple as showing up?
Lisa Dolce is a Small Business Coach, Start-Up Mentor and Licensed Facilitator of the Right Brain Business Plan ®. She helps heart-centered entrepreneurs bring together their brilliant ideas and beautiful gifts and talents to design, launch and grow their own profitable business.