I don’t know if this particular demon is genetic or environmental but I can say that the majority of my family suffers from it.  And they all know it too, which doesn’t seem to reduce it’s impact.  If it takes too great a hold you can end up sabotaging yourself in order to avoid the situation you don’t think you can handle perfectly – a new job, a new project, a first date. There’s no worse feeling than seeing that you are the worst barrier to achieving something you really, really want.

I thought I’d been doing pretty well with this one until this week when I sat down to the computer to start actually putting in work on the part-time telecommuting job and found myself procrastinating to avoid starting. I was nervous about not getting it absolutely perfect in the first three hours.  Even knowing how silly that was, particularly for something that doesn’t pay for perfection, didn’t help much, although starting to work did.  And then I battled the demon again as this first craft show approaches and I found myself saying “but I don’t know how to sell” “I’m horrible at selling”, “I’ll be fumbling all over the place” and so on.  But I also know that self-perception is usually pretty skewed and starting at the top is never a good idea because there’s only one direction to go from there.

So several deep breathes and inspirational self-talk later, I’m making progress.  I’ve got the staging ready for the craft show in terms of display and working hard on the products.  I’ve got gist of the online job figured out, and a good sense of where to focus my energy as soon as this craft show is over. I’m even starting to look forward to the holidays.

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