Recently, I was in a session with someone who said something that stuck with me:
“I don’t have enough experience to…”
The rest of the sentence almost didn’t matter.
Because how many of us have said some version of that to ourselves?
I don’t have enough experience.
I’m not ready yet.
I don’t know enough.
Someone else would be better at this.
What if I put myself out there and fail?
What if people judge me?
What if I embarrass myself?
We can be incredibly good at coming up with reasons not to do the things that scare us.
And the tricky part is that those reasons often sound perfectly logical.
Maybe I should get more experience first.
Maybe I should wait until I’m more prepared.
Maybe I should learn a little more before I put myself out there.
Sometimes that’s true.
But sometimes those thoughts aren’t protecting us from making a bad decision. They’re protecting us from being uncomfortable.
From embarrassment.
From rejection.
From disappointment.
From failure.
From finding out that maybe we aren’t immediately good at something.
And that made me wonder:
How do we get experience if we don’t try?
How do we become good at something if we’re unwilling to be a beginner?
How do we succeed if we refuse to risk failure?
We tend to think of confidence as something we need before we act. But so often, confidence comes from acting. From trying something we weren’t sure we could do. From figuring things out as we go. From discovering that even when things don’t go exactly as planned, we can handle it.
And yes—sometimes we will fail.
So what happens then?
Maybe we’re disappointed.
Maybe we’re embarrassed.
Maybe someone does judge us.
Maybe we have to pick ourselves up, figure out what didn’t work, and decide what we want to do differently next time.
None of those things are particularly fun.
But they are survivable.
And somewhere along the way, we gain the very thing we thought we needed before we started:
Experience.
The bigger risk may be allowing fear to make our decisions for us.
Because every time we automatically choose the safer path, we may also be choosing to miss an opportunity—to learn something, meet someone, discover something about ourselves, or experience a part of life we wouldn’t have encountered otherwise.
Fear loves to ask:
What if I try and fail?
But maybe that isn’t the only question worth asking.
What if I try and succeed?
What if I try and fail—but learn something that leads me somewhere better?
What if I discover I’m more capable than I thought?
And perhaps the most important question:
What if I don’t try?
What opportunity might I miss?
What experience will I never gain?
What part of my life might remain unexplored simply because I was afraid of what could happen?
We don’t have to stop being afraid before we move forward.
Sometimes courage is simply deciding that the possibility of failure isn’t a good enough reason to miss the possibility of something more.
So the next time you hear yourself saying, “I don’t have enough experience,” or “I’m not ready,” get curious.
Is that really true?
Or is fear trying to protect you from the discomfort that comes with trying?
Because maybe the question isn’t:
What if I fail?
Maybe it’s:
What if I never give myself the chance to find out?