28 Mar 2016
On my daily sweep through social media I came across the statement – ‘all procrastination is fear’. It’s attributed to the writer Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the bestselling book Eat Pray Love. Gilbert has recently been on my mind as I’ve started reading her latest book Big Magic, it was recommended to me by Lucy Teear the co-founder of the website Life Begins At. Over lunch Lucy and I discussed changing direction in life, of taking a leap of faith, starting afresh, challenging oneself and living without fear. In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert teaches creative living without fear, whether that be writing a book, becoming an artist or starting a new business. Creative living is designing the life we truly wish for.
If you are currently in midlife, between the ages of forty and sixty five, there has probably never been a better time to re-evaluate your life and change direction, but how many of us actually do? There may be many reasons for putting off a change in career, a house move or even emigration, starting a business or learning a new skill, and for many of us experiencing procrastination the reason is fear. Fear of failure, fear of being critiqued by friends, peers and parents, yes, even in midlife we still seek approval of our parents. We find excuses for not making the move yet spend time wondering what our lives would be like if only we took the plunge.
I started Fighting Fifty without fear; I leapt straight in and decided to start the website without really knowing what I had let myself in for. At 51 I had the courage of a teenager and the determination of a toddler learning to walk. I didn’t consider failure, I thought if I worked hard enough and gathered enough good information people would want to read it. But what may come as a surprise is that I fear writing, I procrastinate over every piece that I work on; I am probably my own worse critic and will do practically anything rather than sit down and write. What am I afraid of, failure, not exactly, I’m not sitting an exam, there’s no pass or fail, although there is the worry that anything published on the internet is there indefinitely for all to see. So, why do I find it so hard to put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard and just let the words flow.
It’s the same fear that prevents us from changing jobs, will we be up to expectation, and have we fooled the interviewer into believing we are capable of doing the job. Many women suffer from the Imposter Syndrome, a term coined in 1978 by clinical psychologists Dr Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes for high achieving individuals who have a persistent fear of being exposed as a fraud, despite evidence of their competence; they feel unworthy of the success they have achieved.
Acknowledge the fear and do it anyway is a motto to live by in your fifties and beyond, if not now when? It’s a time for change, to stop procrastinating about the future and embrace it, to make the changes you’ve been thinking about and create the life you want to lead. Take the dance class, paint the picture and challenge yourself like never before, you might just surprise yourself.
What do you fear most in life? Are you putting those fears aside and making changes for the future?
