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There’s this quiet lie that keeps people stuck longer than they’d like to admit…
It tells you that you need to have your shit completely together before you open your mouth! Even before you share your story, before you try to help someone else, or before you step into anything meaningful.
It sounds responsible on the surface, like you’re just trying to get it right, but underneath that, its fear dressed up as discipline. That keeps you sitting on the sidelines while life keeps moving on without you.
I have lived in that head space where I thought I needed to clean everything up first, be fully healed, fully stable, fully confident before I had any right to speak on someone else’s life. That mindset will keep you in this crazy loop forever because perfection is a moving target that you never actually reach.
Every time you think you‘re close, something else shows up that convinces you that you’re still not ready, still not qualified, and you keep pushing the moment further and further out until you realize you have been hiding behind that excuse the whole time!!
The truth is, nobody is looking for perfect, even if they say they are, because perfect is so distant and impossible to relate to. People don’t connect with polished bullshit that feels like it came out of a textbook. People connect with honesty, with scars, with someone who is still knee deep in the process but refuses to quit. Someone who can say yeah I’m still working through my own mess but I’m not going to sit here and pretend I have nothing to offer…
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Your impact doesn’t come from having all the answers…
It comes from showing up and being real about where you are. There’s something powerful about that because it gives other people permission to stop hiding too. When you speak from the middle of your process instead of waiting for the end of it, you create a bridge for someone else who’s right behind you. Someone who’s dealing with the same thoughts, the same chaos, the same internal battles, and they don’t need a perfect example, they just need a real one.
You’re not disqualified because you still struggle sometimes, and you’re not a fraud because you have bad days.
You’re not out of line for trying to lead or help just because you’re not fully healed yet. That idea is bullshit, and it keeps way too many people quiet who should be speaking up, and others who act invisible should be showing up.
If anything, your willingness to keep going while you’re still figuring things out is exactly what makes you impactful! It proves that growth isn’t some clean, straight path that only works for a select few people. It’s messy, frustrating, uncomfortable, and it’s still all worth it.
So stop waiting for the version of you that has everything perfectly figured out. That version doesn’t exist, and even if it did it wouldn’t be the one people connect with anyway. Show up exactly as you are, do the work you can do today, speak when you have something real to say, and let your impact come from your honesty instead of some fake version of perfection that was never yours to begin with!!
You don’t have to be perfect to matter, and you sure as hell don’t have to be perfect to make a difference. You do however, have to stop hiding behind that excuse if you actually want your life to mean something.
Jeff
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