At what point are we ready to start? This question could pertain to almost anything, but here I’m talking about starting a new career. We are taught to make sure we have completed all the requirements before we can begin things all of the time. You finish 12 grades before you can graduate high school. You finish 8 semesters before you can graduate from college. We make sure we have all of our degrees and licensures before we apply for a specific job. But when starting a new business on your own, where the requirements are less concrete, how do you know when you are ready to begin? Where is the line between being impulsive and unprepared versus becoming overqualified and making excuses?
If you read my first blog, you know that I am attempting to change careers in my forties. I laugh even as I type this that I have to qualify it as “attempting” – still giving myself every safety net available to ease in without having the courage to just jump in and say “I’m doing this!” I tend to be an anxious person, and I am always worried about what other people will think and how they will judge me. Not only if I am successful, but am I doing it right? Although there are many ways to do most everything, in this day of social media (which I try to avoid as much as possible) we are all too familiar with the fact that everyone has an opinion, and that the negative opinions usually have the loudest voices, or at least the most haunting words. But sometimes wanting to be sure there is nothing someone can hurt you with leaves you paralyzed because there is a seemingly endless supply of things people can say about you. I find myself spending so much time preparing, dotting my “i”‘s and crossing my “t”s, that my foot is still hovering in the air, mid-first-step, afraid to come down and plant itself on the ground.
It can feel like navigating a haunted house, with a parade of people hidden, ready to pop out at any time, with a critique. Maybe it’s former colleagues still wondering why you needed the change, maybe it’s mentors along the way whose approval you want but whose disappointment is expected and feared, maybe it’s other people in this new field who already have the experience to look down on you and all the beginners mistakes you could make, and maybe it’s even your own parents who you want to make proud but fear you may not. In my case I find myself always looking for just one more certification that would quiet any possible voice who might question me on those topics. I know there are varied levels of expertise within people doing the same job, and I know that I was always tolerant and supportive when I was the one with more experience. But I am always expecting that others will not be so accepting and patient while I’m the one on this end of things. Thanks to that, it feels like being in a constant state of up-hill roller-coaster, with your stomach ready to brace for the drop as soon as the hill plummets far and fast in front of you.
I daydream about staying in my house until I’ve been doing this new endeavor for enough years that it all sounds good when someone questions me on it. Like when people wish they could jump ahead into the secure part of a stable relationship and bypass all the nerve-racking unknowns that tornado though the beginning of dating someone new. I guess that’s a big difference in personality types – some who like the excitement of the unknown, and others, like me, who like to know what to expect. I’m not a fan of that roller-coaster – I’d much prefer the calm and safety of sitting at home knowing my chair wont surprise me by dropping out from under me at 100 mph. In the meantime, maybe I’ll look for just one more certification….. just in case.