Take that leap

My friend has just opened a store in the Dandenong ranges and I have been there with her through almost every step of the process.

She lost her mother less than two months ago then fell violently ill for a couple of weeks. As she was coming out of the illness she had to supervise renovations to the store and devise a business plan as well as setting up infrastructure for this venture.

She has done an amazing job and whilst in the setup phase, simply put one foot in front of the other. She thought about all the aspects of the store, everything from programs for sales through to making curtains for her two dressing rooms.

As the soft opening date approached, I noticed she was fretting about whether she would attract enough stall holders to fill her indoor market and whether she would make enough from the venture to pay the rent each month.

"What if no one wants to be part of the store?" she worried, "And even if I get enough business partners, what if no one wants to shop there?"

These are fair questions, given the current financial climate. World-wide it seems we are experiencing a winter in the areas of trade, income and expenses. After so many interest rate hikes, my friend was concerned that people might not have the discretionary income to be able to buy from a shop like hers.

But, and it's a big but, the store is in a great location. In the heart of a little village that sees loads of tourist activity. It's right opposite the local bakery which townsfolk and visitors alike seem to frequent with alacrity.

As she worried, I remembered instances in my life when I looked to make my own leaps of faith. I recalled interviewing with nine hundred other people for one of eighteen positions at a sports plaza in Japan. I thought about my husband of the time and I moving from Bancroft Nebraska to Portland Oregon to pursue his dream of editing and writing comic books and my own leap from Resources Coordinator at Monash Biomedical Imaging (MBI) to self-employment as a writer, trainer and consultant.

In every last one of those ventures I was afraid. I couldn't see the road beyond the journey I was currently on. I remember interviewing for positions just before I left MBI, not being able to even begin to envisage a life beyond full time employment. A life where I had the freedom to work part time. To write my novels, short stories and any other projects that cried for a life on the page inside my busy, busy mind.

And yet here I am.

What each of those adventures required before they began was a leap of faith, a jump headlong into what felt like the thin air of potential.

"Jump and the net will appear," I remember telling my husband before our move to Portland, even though I was seriously doubtful that it would. But every time, it did just that.

Things had a habit of working out. I met my American husband whilst working and having the time of my life in Japan, I landed a job managing the apartment complex we had moved into in Portland two days before the rent was due. I was offered work after leaving MBI with another friend I adore and admire tremendously. And here we are two years later, still in business together.

When she wrote, "Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway," I think Susan Jeffers was onto something. Unfamiliar territory is always going to arouse our fears and it's only by pushing through those fears that we accomplish anything truly worthwhile. As Jeffers says in her book, "Pushing through fear is far less frightening than living with the underlying fear that comes with feeling helpless."

I have been kack-my-pants fearful a number of times in my life, especially when it comes to work and business. A steady paycheck does a lot to alleviate feelings of fear but in my journeying, I have found that a steady paycheck tends not to force me to grow. It's the risks and the disasters that do that.

As a writer and a human being, somewhere along the way I've become comfortable with living in that risk-taking space. It's a place where everything is possible. More importantly, it makes me feel alive.

"Why don't you just enjoy the process?" I asked my store-owning friend. I mean, she was doing absolutely everything possible to make sure her venture would fly. She's smart, motivated and dedicated to creating something far more than a store.

Sure enough, the Emerald Bazaar has opened and is doing a roaring trade. Not only has my friend come alive after the loss of her mother, but she has made a place where many people who have come in have looked around and said, "It feels wonderful in here."

I still feel afraid every time I submit a story for a competition, send a novel off to a publisher or write another blog, putting it out there for public scrutiny. But the sirens of potentiality sing their enticing songs to me on a regular basis now. And whether I be smashed on the rocks of disappointment or carried on that magical seventh wave to the shores of success it doesn't actually matter. That place of risk, of daring to venture forth is a blossoming space on Yggdrassill, the tree of life.

Happy leaping my friends.

Credit: image courtesy of Tracey Roberts, Artesyn store, available at Emerald Bazaar.

https://www.amazon.com/Feel-Fear-Do-Anyway/dp/0345487427