The Exhilaration and Exhaustion of Brand New Things

Goodness gracious, there's nothing quite like doing brand new things. They are exhilarating -- "look at me, I'm doing this brand new thing!" -- and exhausting -- "well, I thought I knew how to do this, but I realized I was wrong" -- all at the same time.  

I've been doing a lot of brand new things lately. I started a business while I had a full-time job, which I knew would be hard, but I didn't know. Then I quit my full-time job to run my business, which was different kinds of hard. Again, I thought I knew. Alas.

For the control freak over here, I think the thing that prompts the most exhaustion for me is working on checklists but not knowing how long they are... or how to complete several of the steps. For example, I'm participating in a pop-up market this weekend (St. Louis people, please come!), and it's easy to get lost in the figuring (wait, I need to get a tent?!), the doing (print cards, inventory cards, box up cards, put the rest in filing folders...), and the stepping-back-to-make-sure-I-didn't-forget-things (queue a last-minute order of envelopes and clear retail sleeves). Deep breaths, we're going to make it.

Thank goodness there's the exhilaration. I'm super excited to get these cards out into the wider world and see what people think of them. I'm thrilled with publishing some new Mother's Day designs (May 8, people, don't forget!) and didn't realize how much I'd enjoy designing before I started this creative venture. I'm grateful for my sister for spending her Sunday afternoon running the pop-up shop with me (for no real benefit to herself... except a celebratory dinner the following week). It's going to be great.

In case you're working through your own brand new things, I've been leaning into Brené Brown's concept of and coaching around effing first times from this podcast all about them:

1. Normalize it: “Oh, this is exactly how new is supposed to feel. This is uncomfortable because brave is uncomfortable.”
2. Put it in perspective: “This feeling is not permanent, and it doesn’t mean I suck at everything. It means I’m in the middle of an FFT around this one thing.”
3. Check my expectations: “This is going to suck for a while. I’m not going to crush this right away.”

Awareness doesn't take away the exhilaration or exhaustion, but at least it allows us to zoom out and put the FFT in perspective along with the rest of life and work.