I shared a recent blog with a dear friend who is an accomplished account planner in the marketing field.  She was very excited.  She’s in the trenches of starting her own company and asked with great enthusiasm if I wanted to join her this year at a blogger’s conference.  I told her, not in these exact words, “That’s the worst idea I have ever heard!”

For me, going to one of the best, most talked about conference on blogging is like one of those dreams where you’re at school, you look down and you realize you’re not wearing pants.  You’re left sitting there for the entire day exposed and being laughed at behind your back because you really have no business being there.

I think one of the greatest inventions of all time is horse blinders.  If you wear them right, you can’t see that you’re “not wearing any pants.” My blinders make me feel safe.  They make me feel like I’m being a good mom and they make the world seem big, open and limitless.

When I worked in advertising, this concept of not working in a vacuum was constantly promoted at the agency.  Meaning, you needed to understand everything that was going on around you, not just in your small space, but in the entire world, in order to be an effective marketer.

But sometimes, a vacuum is the only thing that will clear a dust-ridden path.

If you spend too much time trying to figure out what everyone else is doing and how they’re doing it, you’re often left feeling confused, insecure, uninspired and completely exhausted. After researching your topic to death instead of just jumping in, you’re left with no energy to accomplish what you set out to do in the first place. You’ve killed what started as a great idea or at least you’ve suffocated it enough to where it’s barely breathing. You’re often left with a generic, watered down version of your original inspiration.

That beautiful thing, that inspiration, came to you for a reason.  That beautiful thing was supposed to be exactly the way it was.  That beautiful thing was entrusted to you to be kept safe, to be put out into the world and now that beautiful thing is dead in the water.

When I started Pause, my husband and several other loving friends and family members began sending me articles about meditation and what this company was doing and what that person was doing. A feeling of panic would overwhelm me.  I felt like someone who had just received a bill she couldn’t pay or who was handed an unexpected envelope with the words “you’re busted” scribbled across the front.

It filled me with tremendous anxiety and fear.   What if I read the articles and discovered that what I’m doing isn’t good enough? That what I was doing was wrong.  Or that what I was doing was right but that I’d been copying what someone else was doing all along.  What if I wasn’t unique or special?  What if, what if, what if?

So, I now ignore what I’m sent, reply with a thank you and then hit “delete” with a sigh of relief as if I dodged a bullet.  One evening, my husband asked me if I had read the article he sent me.  As I looked at him for a few seconds in silence, I finally exposed my neurosis.

As a marketing professional for over 25 years, he couldn’t understand why someone running a meditation business wouldn’t want to read articles on meditation.  The look on his face was a combination of “I feel sorry for you,” “I’m a little disappointed,” and “I sort of think you’re being an idiot.”

But I know in my heart of hearts that I wouldn’t be writing this blog nor driving around town with my homemade meditation mats if I wasn’t dumb enough to hit “delete.”  I don’t assume what I’m doing is important to other people but it’s important to me.  Somehow I know that matters.

So strap on those blinders, get comfortable with the “delete” key, and do what you’re meant to do.