Fear

I’ve been reading a lot and thinking a lot about fear lately.

I read this on this blog post:

A third of the female population would start a business if it wasn’t for the fear of failure, a London Business School study suggests (“Global Entrepreneurship Monitor”, 2003).

Additionally, the Wall Street Journal reports that roughly 34% of U.S. women who saw opportunities to start a new business said that fear of failure would keep them from doing so, compared with only 25.6% of men.

I also recently bought an e-book on boutique school photography (i.e. doing daycare and school photography in an amazingly beautiful way versus blue backgrounds and laser beams) and the author, Michelle L Morris, wrote something to the effect that she was scared to take the next step because she knew that there would be people who would not like her work and it made her afraid.

I thought about this a lot.

First off, I think fear is good.  Running your own business is hard and the numbers are grim.  We always hear about amazing success stories but the fact is that most of the time it doesn’t work out.  I think we all need a certain amount of fear to make us step back, take a hard look at the numbers, what we can afford, what is realistic and what will work.  But when you become confident in those numbers the fear will lessen.

I do think that there is too much fear and those numbers about men being more fearless doesn’t surprise me.  There are ways to take baby steps towards your goals that are achievable and I don’t think enough women take those steps.

And then there is the fear of the inevitable – that people just won’t like what you do.  And that frankly is just going to happen.  Not everyone reads this blog, not everyone is going to like my photography.  Heck, even if they like my photography they make not like certain pictures.  Some people will change photographers, or unsubscribe from my newsletters or leave nasty comments.

I have to remind myself that this is just a part of life and this is definitely NOT something that should be feared.  If you want everyone to like you and what you do then you will never live up to that standard.

What do you think?

Points if you know where this image was taken!

ps oh and if you want to have nicer photos at your kid’s daycare… let’s talk.