Yesterday I had a moment of self-doubt and I felt very overwhelmed. I felt like there was too much being asked of me, that I couldn’t do it all, and that I would drop one of the many juggling balls I’ve got going on. However! I spoke to my loving partner (through tears), reached out to an amazing friend who has a wealth of experience in business, life, relationships, and basically kicking butt, and they both helped me realise that even though I’m feeling overwhelmed and completely inadequate, I’ll be ok!

So, some context…

I’ve taken on a project at school and whilst at the moment it’s manageable, I look at what I want it to become and I just can’t help feeling terrified of how big and AMAZING it’ll be (no spoilers here until I have something more concrete to share with you all), and that terrifies me! I’m only in my 5th year of teaching, I’m still learning my craft – not that I think that teachers shouldn’t always be learning their craft, but I still feel like I’m learning the big stuff – and I’m being asked to make decisions that I have no clue about, as well as being asked to write proposals and rationales and budgets… it’s huge! It completely freaked me out yesterday afternoon.

On top of my school life, I’m constantly having to make decisions for the gym. Every day our employees and my partner ask me to make a decision about something, and these are more often than not situations that I have no experience in. I’m having to make my own judgements about what’s best, as well as educating and empowering my employees to be able to make their own decisions with confidence so that I can eventually step back a little. Ultimately, I would like our business to run under the guidance of my partner and our employees so that I can go back to focussing on my education career. I know that to get to this point I need to put in the work to make sure that everyone is comfortable within their roles and can do things independently with confidence – the perfectionist in me finds this really difficult!

The thing about making decisions all the time is that it’s exhausting. It takes everything out of you. There is plenty of research out there that says that teaching is already a mentally taxing job because of the amount of willpower you need to exercise daily, and the number of decisions you need to make, so to add another lot of big questions on the end of my day has really started to run me down.

How did I get over my little freak out? As I said earlier, I spoke to my very supportive partner and I reached out to a friend. Remembering that I had people in my corner that believed in me was really helpful. Talking to them about the next steps I’d need to take was also really good because they were able to help me work out a plan. My friend, who is an amazing woman that has risen through the male dominated world of management and technology, gave me some strategies to help me lead and to help me step back to give my employees the chance to take ownership of their responsibilities. My partner helped me with my school project just by getting me to verbalise the why of what I want to do, and reminded me that as long as I hold onto and start with my why, it’ll all work out.

The reason I’m sharing all of this with you is because I want my students, colleagues, friends, acquaintances, and visitors to this blog to know that everyone struggles, everyone feels fear, and everyone is able to take their goals by the horns and smash them. As long as you remember that you have people in your corner fighting for and supporting you, you’ll be ok.