I know what I know and I hate what I don’t. This is a story about my inner demon that has plagued me all my life — my inability to embrace what I don’t know to grow. Let me share some past and recent examples:
>> Mom said I refused to ride my tricycle until one day I jumped on and went careening down the street.
>> I spent hours in the Paris airport letting all the stand-by flights go without me because I couldn’t speak French although I was trying.
>>I rarely line dance or take group aerobics because I’m a terrible follower and mistakes are rampant.
>>I refused to blog for a year because I was afraid about the tech that goes along with it.
>>My twin Gini chastised me in comments last week on Spin Sucks for not having Clicky already up and running on the blog. Meanwhile, Erica Allison is all over it and can’t wait for more scoopage about who’s visiting her blog. (I kinda don’t want to know.)
There, you have it, and not sure whether that was therapeutic or not, but here’s what I’m doing about it:
>>I’m going to Facebook school this month via Social Media Examiner to take nearly two dozen classes Michael Stelzner and faculty have lined up in October for Facebook Success Summit 2011. I bought this class and have watched one pre-course video during which I was furiously taking notes.
>>I whined in comments somewhere about how scary installation of the new timeline was on Facebook and then decided I would master the dang thing and watched a tutorial four times to navigate being an app developer. Lo, my timeline is launched and waiting for live; meanwhile, I was able to walk Erica through her five-minute installation. (I broke my fear pattern and shared that knowledge in this case.)
>>I bought another course from ClickZ on analytics and SEO which was pretty expensive. I asked a client to pay half, and they concurred. I’ve not embarked on this intensive instruction yet, but will after Facebook school in October. (SEO has been the bane of my existence; seriously.)
>>After hearing all about Clicky and then reading this review on Brankica’s blog, I gave her the nod and clicked from her site to launch it on my blog. Heck, I even installed some code on my php footer (or whatever), but I have no idea of I did it right at all. I will see this week!
>>I did try to install PostRank just prior to Google buying it, but rather than go to the website, I somehow installed it direct from my blog via a plug-in. I get rankings in my dashboard for the blog posts, but, alas, the data are likely skewed because I installed it wrong. Whatev.
What’s my takeaway?
>>I have to fight with myself to embrace what I don’t know. I stall, I kvetch, I whine, I ignore, and I stumble only to realize I’m hurting myself.
>>These learnings are hindering my ability to innovate. As a leading-edge PR peep (I made the journey to the marketing blend a very long time ago) who works solo with virtual teams, there is no one to teach me. I have to strive to stay ahead.
>>I am fully aware of my patterns; this behavior has plagued me my entire life. It’s a discomfort, a fear of failure, a fear of looking like a fool, and it’s also my inability to ask for help.
>>As a starter, I need people on my team who can finish and take it to solution with a deeper dive (and thus I’m happy to turn over the analytics to Erica and Gini and Bran) while I generate strategic ideas. (I haven’t remedied this one yet.)
In conclusion…sorry for the first-person post today…don’t like to make a whine out of a piece, but am thinking this is more of an acute observation of obstacles to growth.
Share yours, please?
(image: inspirationonline.com)
