F%ck It, Just Do It

If you’ve ever felt paralysed by doubt, waiting until you feel more confident, more ready, or more certain before you begin - you’re not alone. In this post, I’m exploring what happens when you stop waiting to feel ready, why fear doesn’t have to hold you back, and how powerful it can be to just get on with it anyway.

Meeting with EU lead neotiator, Michel Barnier, with the presidents of the national students' unions of Ireland, Northern Ireland and the UK

Back in 2019 I got a new job as a senior campaigner for Northern Ireland's student movement. This was a massive leap in pay and responsibility compared to the jobs I'd held before and I was very excited - but I was also nervous about whether I could handle it.

On my first day, my manager gave me my list of responsibilities and tasks for the first few months. And one of them was a BIG, SCARY task that set my heart racing.

I had to plan and run a public affairs trip to Brussels with the presidents of the Irish, UK and Northern Irish students’ unions, to lobby for educational equity in the lead up to the UK’s exit from the EU.

The trip was to take place in a few months time, and I was to secure as many high profile meetings as I could fit into a two to three day trip.

At that point I had no understanding of how the European Parliament worked and only vaguely knew what my organisation wanted in the aftermath of Brexit.

I was given no concrete budget, no relevant handover documents, and only the name of one staff member who “might be able to help a bit”.

Looking back I can see that this was an insanely complicated and ambitious project to hand someone in a new role!

But I was eager to prove myself so I smiled and nodded as my new manager spoke, and agreed to get to work straight away..

From Fear to F%ck It

In just a few months I’d gone from writing newsletters and editing blogs, to managing a multi-organisational international lobbying project around a highly sensitive political matter.

After sitting down to figure out the timescale needed to deliver this project, it was obvious that it should have been started months before. I was going to have to start reaching out for meetings right away if we wanted to have a chance of pulling this off.

I could feel adrenaline coursing through my veins, and a cocktail of panic, doubt, confusion and overwhelm bubbling in my chest.

In my junior roles, these moments of fear would often have led to me having a cry in the toilets and then faffing around at my computer pretending to work, while my inner monologue listed all my faults.

But this time something was different - I didn’t have time to dwell on my doubt.

The clock was ticking. My two choices were to give up now, or just do it.

So despite having no confidence at all that I was going to manage it, I threw myself into it.

This was my “fuck it, just do it.” moment.

Some interesting things happen when you accept the fact that you’re really scared and you have no idea how to achieve your goal, but decide that you’re going to do it anyway.

• I started asking for help - faster, more often, and without considering how it made me look. I sat down at the desk of my new co-worker and admitted “I have no idea where to even start with this, can you help me to think it through?” She helped me to organise my thoughts, and shared useful contacts that I would need throughout the process.

• I stopped criticising myself for what I didn’t already know, and just quickly learned what I needed to know. I watched ‘Intro to the EU Parliament videos’, scoured news articles and asked colleagues to share any relevant and useful documents. Knowledge was a tool, not a measure of my future success.

• I asked for what I wanted without worrying about what the outcome might be. I created a list of politicians and leaders for us to meet with and separated it into a silver, gold and ‘sure we might as well ask’ list - mainly to manage internal expectations. I wrote and sent out my meeting requests right away knowing that at least if they all said no we would know where we stood.

• I prioritised making decisions over making ‘perfectly, correct’ decisions. I created an agenda, drafted briefing papers, organised logistics and gave the other people involved plenty of opportunities to say “no, change this”, rather than trying to work out exactly what they wanted in advance.

You Are More Powerful Than Your Doubt

The trip was a massive success!

Turns out that when you ask for what you want, very often people say yes.

Both of the people on our “sure we might as well ask” list said yes, which meant our group met with the EU’s lead negotiator Michel Barnier, and the Deputy President of the EU Parliament at the time, Irish MEP Mairead McGuinness, both highly influential figures.

I gained a huge amount of insight through the trip, and no doubt would have made significant progress in our campaigning ….. if this hadn’t taken place at the start of March 2020. Most of our follow-up actions were swept away by the demands of the pandemic, so I never got to see what would have happened if the year had proceeded as normal.

But the biggest impact, for me at least, was how this experience grew my confidence in myself.

I did the thing!

Even when I didn’t know where to start. Even when all the voices in my head were telling me this was impossible. Even when I was scared, doubtful and overwhelmed.

I did it anyway.

And this is the big important takeaway:

It’s not the presence of our doubt or fear that determines what happens next. It’s the amount of attention we give to it.

So often we allow these uncomfortable feelings to tell a story about what we’re capable of.

“If I was good enough, I wouldn’t doubt myself.”

“If I had the confidence I need I wouldn’t be scared.”

“If I was meant to do this, I’d already know how and wouldn’t feel so lost.”

But our feelings are just sensations in our body.

Your job is to hone your ability to feel these feelings, and do what you want anyway.

To develop the skill of not giving them the power to slow you down, convince you not to try, or to suck up all your energy so that you have none left to take messy action towards what you want.

I didn’t pull the Brussels trip off because I convinced myself that I could or because I got rid of all my worries before I started. In fact I remember standing in the lobby of the EU parliament shaking with fear as we headed into our most important meeting.

I pulled it off because I did it anyway.

The time constraint made me so focused on taking action that doubt didn’t have the chance to take over. And ever since then, when I’m faced with something big, scary, or seemingly impossible, I come back to that moment.

Amazing things can happen when you stop dwelling on all the ways it could go wrong - and instead, you just begin.

So maybe the question isn’t whether you feel ready, confident, or certain.

Maybe it’s this:

What would happen if you let yourself feel it all - and did it anyway?

“Just Do It” is a 3 month coaching programme where highly sensitive, feminist women finally do the thing that they've been putting off for forever - and feel great along the way! You'll go from feeling stuck, confused and a million miles away from achieving your goal - to feeling grounded in certainty that it's all coming together,  truly enjoying the process of bringing your dream to life, and knowing that you're getting closer every day

Find out more about "Just Do It"