Nerv-excited

Ivy is quite a talented gymnast and for a while was in the competitive class in our local gymnastics club.

At just 5 years old she was entered in to her first competition (see exhibit one of my cutie back then!)

Despite her generally outgoing nature the prospect of doing her floor routine in front of an audience of parents with all eyes on her, including a panel of judges and the other competitors, was a pretty big deal for her.

As the competition approached she started to get worried, didn't want to go to class, wouldn't practise at home and even talked about giving up the sport.

So I gave her the options -

1. Don't do the competition.

2. Do the competition.

I mean it's pretty simple right?

She thought about it for a couple of weeks and then came to me with her decision.

"I will do the competition Mummy, because if I don't do it this time I will be even more nervous next time and I won't do it that time, and then the time after that I'll be even more nervous and I won't do it that time. So I think I should just do it".

It was at that point that she coined the term "Nerv-excited" to explain the feeling of nerves you get, which could also be excitement, but could easily put you off doing a thing.

Which is a long way of telling you that I'm nerv-excited.

There's a long way to go until we're ready to leave our current life behind us but today I took the first practical steps on the path.

• I got a price for my car, a little A3 convertible that will be no use to us on our travels
• I started making to do lists. A lot of to do lists
• I talked to my accountant. He had a lot of very sensible questions. Questions I don't want to have to think about
• I told more people. This is always a big moment, when vague ideas become real
• I got more deeply in to how my business needs to evolve, what work I want to continue to do, what I want to stop and, importantly, how I want my work to evolve to reflect the journey I'm on
• I got a bit overwhelmed on a coaching call about funnels and go-to-market strategies

I know from my past experiences of change that sometimes the fear stops you doing anything at all.

But sometimes you don't have much fear, until you start doing things. It's then that the scale of the change, the amount there is to do, the real risks and all the things you haven't thought about hit you.

That's me today. On the outside I look like a normal person going about their business. On the inside I'm a mess of ideas and questions and fears and enjoyment. And I've still got to do the normal things like make dinner and put a laundry on.

Change has various stages, the first being The Call to Adventure.  I will write about that in future I'm sure. But just so you know, the second stage is Refusal of the Call to Adventure! It's right there, the opportunity to change. But you could just ignore it, and you do. Ignoring it doesn't necessarily mean running the other way. It might just mean tinkering around the edges of the opportunity but not really committing. And, as you'll notice from my bullet points, I can still back off. I can delay. I can dilute.

At some point though I'm going to take an action that means that turning around is not an option (or at least that it's an expensive or laborious option). Right now, to go back to the gymnastics analogy, I can do the competition or not do the competition. Sometime over the next few days, weeks or months I'm going to be doing the competition.

If I'm nerv-excited right now, I may have to coin a new word to accompany that moment.

Suggestions welcome!