I watched this amazing talk by Sue Bryce about confronting fear around a year ago. It’s something that seems to keep coming up with myself and with people that I speak to, and I wanted to share it with you today. It’s a long one, but completely worth taking the time to watch it.

When people talk to me about starting my own business, quite often they mention about how brave this is. Weirdly, its’ not something that I consciously thought about in terms of being a scary thing. I won’t lie to you, starting your own venture is not all sunshine and roses. Honestly, it has been filled with some very late nights, occasional tears, brainwaves at the moment random moments, a bit of not very useful worry and at times, very little sleep. But there’s a flip side. You also get days when people respond to your work, when they cheer you on. The days when you feel like you have hit the nail on the proverbial head. The mornings when you log onto your inbox, to find the nicest feedback from a client. The times when you work out what didn’t work and the bits that did. I feel like the images which I am producing are FINALLY starting to match the intentions I have in my head. And it’s better than I can ever begin to describe.

I have days when I rely on Google maps to get to some unknown back end of the British bundus (see South African translation here). I have days when I don’t feel as motivated, but I just can’t put off doing my admin any longer. Days when I feel intimidated. How does everyone else seem to just KNOW more business stuff than me? Days when I have to swallow my pride and ask all the seemingly ridiculous questions to my accountant. But in the end, I have to say that when I see how much I (and my work) have changed over the past 5 years, I feel pretty darn proud.

I want to be real with you. There are certainly tough days, but these are far outweighed by the days where my heart soars. I want to let you know that it’s ok to be afraid. Or what you think ‘afraid’ is. On the days which aren’t instagram worthy, I want to remind you to get up, keep going, and realise that the little voice inside your head, telling you to sit down and be quiet – you can choose to listen to it. Or not. And realise that the best times are those when you choose to step forward into the unknown, and fly.

So I will leave you with the same quote that Sue Bryce does at the end of this video, by Leonardo Da Vinci: “Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”