Don’t Fear the Egg

This week has been cold and rainy and a little grey. And this is the week that Annie, our giant chicken, laid her first egg. It was a little alarming for her and her chicken friend, Lucy and they clucked the whole time.

And I sympathize with them.

I have a personal project that I’m trying to launch .. and it’s scary. And alarming. I just picked it up recently after putting it away for months. I love this project but I allowed fear to sideline it. Keeping a positive mindset a business can be challenging.

Fucking First Times (FFTs)

Being the creator of a business is hard and even alarming at times; I’ve had so many firsts that sometimes I feel really inept and bad at my business. Brené Brown calls them FFTs (fucking first times) and she says that it’s common to get stuck in the strangeness of these awkward, imperfect first times. Bad feelings are normal when we’re trying something we’ve never done before and we’re not going to be good at it right away.

There are three things we can do to work through them and it’s not about muscling through it and faking it till you make it.

First, Normalize it. Recognize that you’re in one – name it and feel it. Whatever you’re feeling: shame, uncertainty, awkwardness, failure — name it, journal it, talk it out.

Second, put it in perspective. It’s just a passing phase and you’ll be awkward at this for a while. It’s just expected.

And, finally, reality check expectations. It’s not forever and it doesn’t mean you’re a failure at life.

I’m being called to gentleness and compassion towards myself and I think that perhaps recognizing my FFTs is one great place to begin.

The sun is shining outside after the storms of the last couple days and the air is cutting and cold, even in the sun. The rabbits have their greens and the chickens have had their scratch and I hear my kids in the other room, playing guitar and singing. I’m so thankful for all of the blessings of my life, including you guys here.

Go forth and boldly lay your eggs!

You can listen to Brené Brown’s Unlocking Us FFT podcast here. It’s a good one!

Click here if you’d like a little more about Loving Yourself.

Wendy Hunt is an artist, illustrator, free-range thinker, musician, and writer living in the Mojave Desert. She loves the playful element of designing and developing brands, websites, and marketing goodies. Wendy has always loved maps and speculates that we can visually map our interior landscape the same way we map our physical world.