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Oh My! Handmade

Oh My! Handmade

Making a good life since 2010

Clean Out Those Closets & Air Out Your Fears

Tuesday, April 5, 2011 by Jessika Hepburn

small business help, clean out the closet & air out your fears, handmade helpWe’re off to a great start with our Spring Cleaning theme so far and there are so many great posts yet to come. Lots of this months content will be about concrete ways you can clean up your business & get organized. So today I want to talk about what I think is the most important spring cleaning, the stuff that needs to be organized & looked at inside ourselves.

We all have monsters & skeletons in our closets. Fears, insecurities and doubts that need to be challenged in order to move forward. For some people their monsters are a bunch of little things and for others one or two big baddies, but all of us have them. We know what happens when we sweep dust under the rug or shove things in the hall closet-the mess just multiplies until it is overwhelming to deal with.

So while we are setting goals, planning for the future, and looking forward-it is also important to open up our dusty closets and air out our fears. Go ahead open the door!

small business help, clean out the closet & air out your fears, handmade helpSee-those monsters are actually kind of cute once you get to know them. Our biggest fears and insecurities can also be our biggest motivators, we just need to get to know them first.

Well I can’t really expect you to go checking into your own dark closets without giving you a look at mine! So, what have I learned from my own monsters?

1. That I am not a superhero. I cannot do everything, be everything, handle everything all by myself. Sometimes I will mess up & sometimes I will drop balls or need to take off one of my hats. And that’s OKAY. I used to want to fix everything or take care of it all, saying that I couldn’t do something was just not an option and I pushed myself way too hard. When I looked at that monster in the face I realized it needed to have a place in my life but not be driving me.

2. That I need to be kinder to myself. We can be so mean to ourselves! We can give to others but giving to ourselves can be really hard. By looking at how I was not taking time to be kind to myself or give myself what I needed I was able to take a step back and start changing. I still struggle with this but I get better at it the more I make myself a priority.

3. That I need to believe in my own ability. I think most of us question ourselves too much & doubt our own power. When I worked with youth I used to lead workshops on self-confidence and while I projected being very confident I was also very unsure of my own ability. Calling myself out when I start to question whether I am good enough to do something has changed the way I work and live. I am a very confident & capable person but that doesn’t mean I still don’t have insecurities!

I have made you all a little mountains into molehills worksheet and I went ahead and filled it out for myself too-I have mine pasted above my desk to remind me of what I need to work on. Here is my copy & you can download your own blank one too:

small business help, clean out the closet & air out your fears, handmade helpDownload your own Mountains into Molehills worksheet here!

So, what monsters do you have lurking in your closets? Are they keeping you from achieving your creative dreams? How do you keep your fears in check? I would love to know! When we talk about what we are afraid of and what is holding us back it is so much easier to let it go and move forward.

All Oh My! Handmade Goodness printables and free downloads are for non-commercial, personal use only please. Copyright is owned by the designer unless otherwise stated.  If you have a commercial inquiry please contact the designer or email the editor. Please don’t host the PDF on your own site, we love sharing but link to the original post for the download, thanks!

Filed Under: Editor, Entrepreneurship, For the Head, For the Heart, Resources

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