Beginner's Pluck by Liz Forkin Bohannon

Author:Liz Forkin Bohannon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Self-Help;SEL021000;SEL027000;BUS109000
ISBN: 9781493419166
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2019-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

eight

Get Your Steps In

So here I was in Uganda with a brand-spanking-new harebrained idea. From charity to chicken farm, why not strappy sandals next?

I was now on my third attempt at solving this Really Juicy Problem and I have to say, my confidence in this particular idea was pretty low. Manufacture sandals that we can sell in the U.S. that will enable girls to stay in school?

I had NO IDEA where to start.

I Googled it.

FAIL.

I looked around for someone else doing something similar.

FAIL.

None. Nada. Nothing.

At the time, I was staying in a basement “guesthouse.” I paid $7 a night for a room with a bunk bed that, in addition to me, was occupied by a rotating cast of characters traveling through Uganda. I’d stay up too late every night ideating about my Strategic Plan and then I would wake up each morning to the sound of the world’s most obnoxiously loud birds and lie underneath my mosquito net with a truly paralyzing sense of dread.

I still did not have a plan and I had no idea where to start.

I had an entire day to fill, and the emptiness of that day spread out ahead of me every morning was horrifying and daunting because all it did was amplify the fact that I had no idea HOW to take the first step toward making this dream a reality.

So, I’d “think” and “research” and “talk” a little more about my idea and eventually get distracted with the tiny tasks that can so easily fill our days and occupy our minds but never result in much of anything. At the end of every day, as “busy” as I was, I felt like a big, fat failure.

Because here is the thing: we can become so afraid and overwhelmed at not knowing what the Right First Step is that we fall into fear-induced stillness.

I eventually got so fed up at not knowing what the Almighty First Step was that I finally just decided that my first step would simply be . . . getting my steps in. Think about having a Fitbit for your life. Doesn’t actually matter where you’re going, so much as that you get your steps in.

While I can’t give you a map or tell you what your first step should be, I can share with you a deal I made with myself that changed everything.

And while this exact deal didn’t result in a 12-step, foolproof, PowerPoint-worthy strategic plan, it saved my little dream and it propelled me down a path where eventually a fairly decent strategic plan could exist in its rightful place and time and purpose.

Let me be clear: I did not discover The Right First Step, The Right Door, or The Right Connection. This deal just propelled me into movement. And that movement is what saved me. It’s not steps of any kind, in any direction that we should be afraid of. Not even the ones in the exact “wrong” direction. It’s fear-induced stillness we should be wary of. Movement is never fatal.

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