4 reasons why you are waiting to feel ready to launch

Today, I'm talking about some of the reasons why you are waiting until you feel like you're ready to launch, because it can be this really interesting thing that goes on where we say that we want to launch, and we know that we want to launch, but we feel like we keep coming up against this brick wall of, “Oh, I'm not quite ready just yet. I can't do it just yet.”

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4 things holding you back from launching

It can be so frustrating when you know you want to launch and you want to do it more than anything else, but you just can't. And there's a couple of reason why we might do this.

 

#1. Fear of change

Our brains are wired to resist change. There's a part of our brain that equates change with danger and that associates comfort and familiarity with survival. And that's the really primal part of your brain. And it's only job is to keep you alive. It's not concerned with achievement and thriving. It's just there to keep you alive. Yeah, your brain is actually wired to resist this. Even if the change is a positive change or something that we think we want, it still feels uncomfortable. We'll self-sabotage back to what feels comfortable. We're programmed to seek that thing that feels comfortable to us, because to that reptilian brain of ours, that means survival.

 

#2. Fear of failure

Another reason why you might be waiting until you're “ready” to launch is the fear of failure. This is quite a common one that I see amongst my students. They've equated this fear of failure with what it might mean about them if they failed. It's like, “If I fail, it means that I'm a failure.” Or, “If I fail, then I have to go to a job, or I have to do this, or I have to do that.” And most of the time, the thing that we're afraid of is that worst-case scenario, and it's not actually what ends up happening.

I think back to my own failed launch, just over two years ago, when my webinar crashed and my entire launch went belly-up, and that was the absolute worst-case scenario that it could have been for me, and I survived. And I learned so much from that launch, that my business would not be where it is now two years later had that launch not failed. Generally, the thing that we're actually afraid of doesn't end up happening. And we even try to plan, and we try to beat fear to the finish line, where we're trying to imagine the worst case that can actually happen. And usually, we just are so far off the mark.

 

#3. Fear of success

The other fear that can creep in is fear of success. And again, remember, like I said, the brain is wired to resist change. And when we succeed, that's a big change in some way, whether that's a change in how we're showing up for our business, whether that's a change in how we're showing up as a human, whether that's a change in even our belief systems. If you are constantly believing that you don't have a real business, and then you succeed, suddenly you have to step up, you have to start believing that you have a real business. And that feels scary.

Yeah, fear of success can be a big thing that keeps us stuck where we are. And for me personally, I had a really big fear around success last year. It started to creep in when my business grew last year, where I started thinking like, “Oh, if I'm successful, if my business grows, then I'll have all the responsibility of a leader. I'll have to manage my team better. I can't just take random days off in the middle of the week.” I'd created all of these stories in my head about what success meant. And of course, I was going to be afraid of it, and funnily enough, none of my stories ended up being true.

 

#4. There will never be a perfect time

The other thing that might get in the way when you are wanting to launch, and you're sitting around waiting to feel ready to launch is that you're never going to feel completely ready to do anything that is a growth thing. When I've talked to my friends who have kids, all of them have said like, “I never felt ready to become a parent.” It's exactly the same. When I quit my corporate job to go all in on my business, I never felt 100% ready to. And in fact, the only reason I quit when I did was because I was in a really dire situation at work, and I was in a really unhappy environment. If that hadn't happened, I possibly would've still been in my corporate job.

You'll never feel ready to do something that's going to cause you to step out of your comfort zone and grow, so then we end up planning. We end up thinking, “Well, if I just do this, this, and this, then I'll be ready to quit my job, not my business. And let me just plan a little bit more, and then I'll be ready to launch.” But the problem is planning at some point becomes procrastination, and planning becomes that substitute for taking action.

I really encourage you, if you're in that planning stage of launching, to take a really good look at yourself and what you're doing, and ask, “Is this planning becoming a substitute for taking action? Am I possibly planning a little bit too much here? Could I maybe just take some action and let the rest of the planning figure itself out along the way?” We spend a lot of time planning because it feels safe. It doesn't require that discomfort of change. It doesn't require the discomfort that taking action would create.

I'm going to leave you with a little thing to ponder, a little question to ponder. Is it more important that you only launch when you are ready, when you feel like everything's absolutely perfectly aligned, or is it more important that you get out there, and get your product out there, and start helping people sooner rather than waiting around forever?

 

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