Are You Talking Yourself Out of Your Greatness?

Are you talking yourself out of your greatness?

That’s a very important question. I can only address it from my own experience, and the answer for a long time was yes.

Yes, because I didn’t believe in myself enough.

Yes, because I believed in myself too much, but didn’t do anything with that belief.

Yes, because I quit before I started, or started and quit, or started but didn’t quit and just never finished.

Your business, your idea, your dream…it needs that time before you start. It needs a start. And it needs a finish.

Anything else is just playing around or goofing off. Sure, you might be doing great work, but if you don’t finish, no one will ever know.

I outlined my book, Conquer the Entrepreneur’s Kryptonite on June 14th, 2010 (with a very different title!). I used Michael Hyatt’s book proposal e-book* to structure the content and what I wanted to say. From that point, I had a book inside my head. I knew the content. I had a concept of the layout and design and the stories I would tell. Yet no one could read it.

Fast forward one year and I had about 15,000 words written. And no one had read them.

Fast forward two years and I had about 25,000 words written. And no one had read them.

And on the day before the three year anniversary of starting, I had exactly 44,006 words. It was formatted, edited, a cover was in place and it was submitted for shipment. It was finished, except…it wasn’t.

It was finished in the sense that the book was on its way to the printers, and hundreds of copies both digital and physical would be on the way to readers.

It wasn’t finished in the sense that there was more I wanted to do. In that moment, I was done in the same way that I believe a great painter is done–knowing there’s always more that you could do. Was the Mona Lisa’s smile just right, or did Leonardo da Vinci ponder its completion? Was the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel perfect, or did Michelangelo just decide he couldn’t paint over his head after more than four years?

Your idea and your dream are the same. Start something. Finish it. Maybe it’ll be done, maybe not.

But that’s what second editions are for.

I’d love to hear your thoughts…just comment below and let me know!