I shared a recent blog post with a dear friend who is an accomplished brand researcher in the marketing field.  She’s in the trenches of starting her own company and asked me, with great enthusiasm, if I wanted to join her this year at a blogger’s conference.  My response was an absolute no.

For me, going to a national conference on blogging is like having one of those dreams where I’m at school and realize I’m not wearing any pants.  I’m left sitting there for the entire day, exposed and laughed at behind my back.

Enter, horse blinders. One of life’s greatest inventions.  If you wear them properly, you can’t see that you’re not wearing any pants. Blinders allow me to feel safe. They validate my feelings of being a good mom, and they make my world seem big, open and limitless.

When I worked in advertising, one of the many golden rules was not to live in a vacuum. Meaning, you had to learn and understand all facets of the world around you, not just the small space you occupied, 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’ll be left feeling confused, insecure, and uninspired. Researching a topic to death will leave you with limited 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. Too much outside information can leave you with a generic, watered-down version of your original inspiration.

That beautiful idea came to YOU for a reason.  That beautiful idea was supposed to be exactly the way it was.  That beautiful idea was entrusted to you, to be kept safe and put out into the world.

When I started my meditation business, my husband and friends began sending me articles about meditation and what other companies and people were doing. Upon receiving these emails, a feeling of panic rushed through my body.  It felt like I just got a bill I couldn’t pay, or like a stranger handing me an envelope with the words “you’re busted” scribbled across the front.

These articles filled me with anxiety and fear because what if I read them and discovered that what I’m doing isn’t good enough, or that what I’m doing is wrong, or that it’s right and someone else is already doing the same thing. What if, what if, what if.

Now, I ignore what I’m sent, reply with a thank you, then hit delete, with a sigh of relief as if I dodged a bullet.

One evening, my husband asked if I had read the article he sent. I looked at him for a few seconds and finally exposed my neurosis. I know with absolute conviction 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 that what I’m doing is important to other people, but it’s important to me, and somehow, I know that matters.

Dont let your ideas die. Put on your blinders, find your “delete” key, and do what you’re meant to do.