There are nights when I just can’t get to sleep. I lie there trying and then the panic starts to set in, because I know what it feels like the next morning when I don’t get to sleep till after midnight. It sucks – I don’t do well on less than minimum 7 hours sleep.
Most nights I read for far too long, yes because I love, love, LOVE reading, but also because I think I’m afraid to try to get to sleep in case it’s one of those nights. I’m afraid of FAILING at sleeping! It sounds so silly, but I really do think that’s why I keep reading past a sensible time.
It occurred to me recently that this happens in other areas of our lives (I’m no exception), the fear of failure!
We’re afraid we won’t do the work 100% right so we procrastinate before even starting.
We’re afraid we won’t have the ideas for the newsletter or social media posts, so we don’t even sit down to write any content.
We’re afraid we won’t have anything interesting to say or we’ll be too nervous, so we don’t sign up to the networking event that, really, we would quite like to go to.
I’ve worked on these things over the years and really the only thing to do is dive in! I’m not sure there’s any magic way to ‘fix’ it. What I tend to do is just push myself to sign up for things, just START writing or finding a bit of the work that excites me and then I’ll start to make inroads.