Have a Big Idea or Goal? Here’s Why You Should Shut Up About It
There’s almost nothing more exhilarating than the rush we feel when we share news of a business idea, new career pursuit, personal growth or profound revelation. Living in the world of imagination and fantasy is fun; full of endless possibilities and outcomes. More importantly, it’s safe. You can project the idea of your future to pitch perfect accuracy because you’re creating it from scratch in your mind alone.
When you report this vision with friends, family or colleagues, they share in the excitement with you, because they care about and want to support you. They’re not being deceptive or dishonest, but they’re also not being given the full picture of what this venture entails. How could they after all? You don’t even know.
When you prematurely divulge too much information about your new-found prospects, it typically comes with it a lot remarks of justification. These remarks usually take the form of starting sentences like, “Well, at least this way I’ll *blank*…” or “I just don’t want to ever *blank* again…” or “I don’t know, I just think *blank*…” This sort of uncertain future talk muddies clarity. Not only for you, but for the people with whom your sharing.
When this happens, folks tend to start asking questions. Questions you may not fully have answers to. This causes doubt, confusion and possibly defensiveness. Now, this nugget of an idea feels like a boulder of burden; far too heavy to possibly carry forward. Your energy depletes and your ego seizes its opportunity to do what it does best—talk you down to a familiar base-reality.
However, let’s say you get past the first trial of reporting, and still find the gumption to move forward. Good for you! You’ve created the website or the social media page, you opened a new email address with a catchy name and taken a great selfie, you’ve reached out to former contacts hoping to gain perspective clients. You’re telling everyone you meet and re-connect with about your exciting new journey!
But nothing is moving. No new clients. No website traffic. Just a bunch of emails from people trying to sell you SEO services.
Soon, the followups start rolling in. “Hey! How’s the new business coming along?!” It’s not. “When’s your next show?!” I don’t have any. “When can I buy your book?!” What fucking book? These bombardments of support can cripple your progress, clarity and spirit. Keep in mind, none of these people are trying to hurt you. They love you tremendously, and want nothing more than to support you at every turn. And much like a heckler at a comedy show, they sincerely think they’re making the situation better.
Over-sharing is a particularly sneaky form of self-sabotage, because the ego gets to use feelings of (temporary) validation, creativity and joy against you. It builds you up and rallies those around you to champion something you haven’t yet built, only to make the fall of failure that much higher and more violent, thus using that fear against you when you’re at your most vulnerable. When you have that many eyes on you, the thought of failure becomes crippling. Always remember that ego’s playing the long game. As Alonzo Harris from “Training Day” says, “This shit’s chess, not checkers!”
Holding things close to the chest is a balancing act. This doesn’t imply you should shut the world off from what you are doing in your life. There are certain people close to you who can and should know what you’re planning, especially if it affects them directly in the long-run. But often we get so excited about our new ideas, and are so desperate for validation, that we unsolicitedly broadcast our goal to those who bring nothing of value to its success, or, its failure. Recognize when you share information about your dreams, whether or not that sharing is constructive, or simply temporarily self-serving.
You have to be okay operating in the shadows while you build your dream. Reduce external noise, distractions and doubt from the equation. Your baby is incubating and extremely fragile at this stage. Nurture and attend to it, don’t pass it around for everyone else to rub their greasy, grimy hands all over. Try to only confide in and report to those who will constructively help you build. In other words, share as much as you can with the engineers, as little as possible with the board of directors, and only what is useful to the customer. With this clarity and unencumbered discipline, you will inevitably feel 100 times better about sharing your first real success, then you ever would sharing any imaginary one.
