Why Investing in Yourself is so Scary

A Story About Feeling Ready

A couple of weeks ago, I went to an onboarding session for a professional development program I had recently started. It was just me and another professional who had also started her own practice not too long ago. After introducing ourselves, my peer shared that she had been considering the program for a few years before finally deciding to commit. Despite knowing other professionals who had gone through it and spoke highly of their experience, she had repeatedly talked herself out of joining, feeling like it just wasn’t the right time.

The problem was, it never felt like the right time.

I knew exactly what she meant.

I knew that feeling.

When my husband and I began talking about buying a house, it never felt like the right time.

When we started talking about having a baby, it really never felt like the right time. My body was saying, “It’s go time,” while the logical part of my brain—and the logical part of my husband’s brain—was saying, “Sloooooow down.”

We waited and waited to feel that ready feeling, and it never really came.

I’ve been having that feeling again more recently, while I’ve been building this little practice of mine.

So I’ve started to wonder, what even does “ready” feel like? What makes feeling ready so elusive?

Really, the questions I am asking sound more like, “Can we afford this right now?” “Am I ready to sacrifice my time and possibly my sanity?” “Am I ready to take on this new identity?” “Am I ready to make this big of a commitment?”

The questions don’t stop there. Behind each of those questions are more questions—the worst kind—the “what ifs.”

What if we end up losing money, or worse, going bankrupt? What if we end up being terrible parents? What if I hate being a mother? What if we change our minds about where we want to live? What if we screw up and fail and embarrass ourselves? What if we didn’t make the right choices and become stuck?

Feel that anxiety kicking in?

Exactly! 

Maybe what we are actually waiting for isn’t readiness but certainty. Because when we have certainty, we don’t feel the weight of those “what ifs.” Now, certainty, the nasty little bugger, can look like readiness. It can make us feel like we are sure of the future and that we’ve planned for all the things, and we’ve considered all the angles. Does that really make us, “ready?” I’ll tell you, no, it really doesn’t. Because nothing is certain. That’s something we do when we want to sell ourselves something.

But let’s back up just a few steps. Waiting is of course an important part of making carefully thought out decisions. Smart waiting is realizing that maybe we do need to build a nest egg first, maybe we should get some family counseling first, maybe we need more information? What if being “ready” is the ability to ask those questions. The brain is asking these questions because readiness is already taking root.

You might be asking, “Okay, but how does this tie into investing in myself?”

Investment will always involve some amount of risk. The nature of investment is giving resources to something now in the hope that it will grow in the future, without being able to guarantee what that growth will look like.

So when we invest in ourselves, we invest our time, money, energy, and emotions into something and wonder:

Will I grow enough? Will I be successful enough? Will I make enough money? Will I let myself down? Will I fail to thrive?

These are scary questions because the stakes are high.

You know, I spend a lot of money on dirt.

Not just dirt, but all kinds of dirt and decomposed matter.

I buy soil, seeds, fertilizer, planter boxes, tools, pots, plants—just about anything you can think of to enable a garden to grow. And I do so with absolutely no guarantee that any of those seeds will sprout, no guarantee that any of those plants will stay alive.

I am not buying certainty. I am buying opportunity.

When I start to plan a garden and begin to buy or gather supplies, I feel ready when I have the things I need in order to start. Once I start, all I need to do is continue to tend the garden.

Obviously, I can't stop at just planting the seeds and hoping for the best. The garden needs to be watered. It needs the right amount of sun. It needs fertilizing. It needs pruning. Sometimes, the garden has to go through some rough times.

Recently, one of my favorite plants, my Peggy Martin rose, has had some tough days in the long Texas sun. Her leaves have been yellowing.

This does not send me into a whirlwind of catastrophic thinking. This doesn't make me say, “Oh, okay, well, I failed. Time to rip the plant out of the ground and never have faith in myself or Peggy Martin roses ever again.”

But it's surprising how often we use that language on ourselves when we experience a setback or a bit of rough weather.

Here’s what I did: I read some information about roses and talked to some people who know things about gardens. I learned that my Peggy Martin rose wasn’t dying. From what I could tell, she was putting more of her resources into new growth rather than maintaining some of the old growth.

Mind blowing information.

To help her along, I pruned the yellow leaves—not because they were ugly or worthless, but because they weren’t serving Peggy’s growth anymore. They were using resources that could be better used elsewhere. Let me punctuate this moment a little, I acted, not on certainty, but with knowledge and care. I was ready when I had the skills, tools, and knew enough to take a step in the right direction. 

Let me bring this back to humans and investments. When we experience those setbacks, rejections, failures, etc. as proof that we are inadequate, that we are broken, that we were never worth the investment, we've stopped treating those experiences as information and started treating them as a verdict.

What if instead we could say, “Huh, I’m wilting a bit. I wonder what that means. Maybe I could go talk to someone who knows about wilting humans…”

Choosing to talk to a therapist is not admitting that you are broken. It is admitting that you are worth tending. 

Sometimes we treat going to therapy the same way we treat bringing our car to a mechanic. We drop ourselves off, the mechanic gives us a look over, makes some diagnostic decisions, orders parts if necessary, and then fixes the issue.

We are not cars. We are flowers.

We are living things, and we participate in our own growth.

When you invest in counseling, you aren’t investing in a guaranteed “fix” or “cure.” You are investing in your own growth potential and in a partnership with someone who can help teach you how to tend to your needs.

So let’s talk about readiness again. I hear this pretty often when clients and people in the community talk to me about being “ready” for therapy: “I’m just not ready. It’s just not the right time.”

What are you waiting for?

Are you waiting for certainty? Are you waiting until you feel like you can’t fail?

Fail at what?

If you are asking yourself whether you need tending, maybe readiness is already taking root.

Maybe you are asking yourself, “Yeah, okay, but what if…? What if after all that time and money and energy, I still don’t feel better? What if it doesn't work?”

Well, sometimes plants die.

And do you know what I do with dying plants?

I propagate them.

Because there is almost always something worth saving and repotting.

Maybe what survives an investment isn’t the thing you expected. Maybe therapy didn’t produce the outcome you hoped for, but you learned a thing or two about yourself.

You can carry that information with you into your next investment, into your next experience. It isn’t simply a loss. It is a gain in information, a gain in wisdom.

Maybe you learned that you really don’t like a certain type of therapy, or that one particular therapist or style just wasn’t a good fit.

Maybe the business failed, but you developed some new skills and made some new connections. Maybe one of those connections leads to a partnership down the road.

Propagation isn’t pretending the plant didn’t die. It’s taking a step back and asking, “What is still alive here?”

The hope isn’t, “Nothing dies.”

The hope is, “Something remains.”

The hope isn’t, “I’m fixed and worthy.”

The hope is, “I was never broken, and I’ve always been worthy.”