Ep 163: Permission to Share Your Gifts Before You're Ready

So many of us think we need to be perfect before we can help anyone. We think our Instagram post needs to be profound, our podcast needs to be polished, or our coaching needs to be life-changing. Because we're waiting for perfection, we never start—or we start and then immediately stop ourselves, second-guessing everything, making it so hard that it's not even fun anymore.

We're afraid we'll put ourselves out there and no one will care, or maybe even worse, that someone will care enough to criticize us. That fear feels protective, but it’s really just keeping us hidden. And the cost of staying safe, but small, is steep: the people who need our help never get it. The world doesn’t receive our gifts because we're waiting for a readiness that probably will never come.

In this episode, I give you permission to share your gifts before you're ready. You don’t have to be at the top of the mountain to help someone who's at the beginning of the trail. Someone out there needs exactly what you have to give. You may not be perfect—no one is—but you have lived, learned, and grown, and that’s more than enough.

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Transcript

Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intentions. My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend.

If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Well, hey there, welcome back to Your Favorite You.

I'm Melissa Parsons, and once again, I'm so grateful that you're here listening with me today. I love it when inspiration for what to bring to you all on the podcast comes naturally to me. And just this morning, I was talking to my friend who is actually also one of my favorite yoga instructors, and she was confessing something that I hear all the time from my clients.

So she wants to grow her Instagram, but every time she goes to post, she stops herself, thinking it's not good enough, it's not perfect enough, what I'm saying isn't deep enough, it's not balanced enough.

And I wanted to tell her, and I want to tell you, that this is what's keeping so many beautiful, brilliant women from helping people, keeping them from spreading their genius all over the world. And we need you.

We need the helpers, the healers, the teachers, the coaches. We need all of you and me putting our goodness out into the world. So today I want to give you permission to share your gifts before you're ready.

Because honestly, you'll probably never feel ready and that's okay. So this is so common amongst us beautiful women. We think we need to be perfect before we can help anyone. We think our Instagram post needs to be profound.

Our podcast needs to be polished. Our yoga class needs to be transformative. Our coaching needs to be life-changing. And because we're waiting for perfect, we never start. Or we start and then we immediately stop ourselves, second-guessing everything, making it so hard that it's not even fun and enjoyable anymore.

Not good enough, not perfect enough, not deep enough, not balanced enough, not smart enough, not experienced enough, not ready enough. Do you hear how many not enoughs there are? They're countless and endless, and we're measuring ourselves against some impossible standard that does not even exist.

So underneath all of those not enoughs, what are we really afraid of? We're afraid people will judge us, of course. We're afraid that we'll look foolish. We're afraid that someone will point out that we've missed something or something we've gotten wrong.

We're afraid we'll put ourselves out there and no one will care, or maybe even worse, that we'll put ourselves out there and that someone will care enough to criticize us. But here's what all that fear costs us.

People who need our help simply don't get it. The world doesn't get our gifts, and we stay small and safe and unfulfilled because we're waiting for a readiness that probably will never come. Here's what I want you to know.

You really only have to be a couple steps or even just one step ahead of someone on their journey in order to help them. You do not have to be at the top of the mountain to help someone who's at the beginning of the trail.

You just have to have walked a bit further than they have. You just have to know what's around the next bend. Whatever you've learned, whatever you've overcome, whatever you've figured out, that's valuable to someone who hasn't learned it quite yet, someone who's still in the middle of it, or someone who's just starting to figure it out.

Your messy, imperfect, still evolving wisdom is exactly what someone else needs to hear because it's real. It's relatable because they can see themselves in your journey. You already have genes to share, not because you're perfect or you have it all figured out, but because you've lived, you've learned, you've grown.

You have experience that someone else doesn't quite have yet. And that's enough. It's really more than enough. You don't have to know everything to teach something. You don't have to be healed completely to help someone else heal.

You don't have to have arrived to guide someone on the path. In fact, sometimes being in the middle of your journey makes you a better guide because you remember what it's like and you're closer to where they are.

This is true in parenting as well. You don't have to have perfect conversations with your kids about big topics. You don't have to know exactly the right thing to say about sex or drugs or politics or death or whatever hard thing they're curious about. If you are not willing to have imperfect conversations with them, they will find the information they're seeking from other sources. And I would much rather they hear it from you, even if it's imperfect, even if you stumble, even if you have to go back later and admit you were wrong about something or that you've changed your mind. An imperfect conversation with you is so much better than no conversation at all, or worse, them getting their information from who knows where because you were waiting until you had the perfect words.

When I started this podcast three years ago, I was frankly terrified. I was worried that I wasn't going to have enough to say, that what I said wouldn't be relevant, that it wouldn't resonate with people.

I thought, who am I to do a podcast? What if I run out of things to talk about after 10 episodes? What if no one listens? What if people think I'm not smart enough or experienced enough or helpful enough?

And you know what I found 163 episodes in? I have not found those fears to be true. Although sometimes I struggle to come up with a topic to talk about, I always do. Always. In that vein, if you have something that you want me to talk about, please email me, DM me, let me know.

I'm happy to help and to try to come up with something around what you're interested in hearing about. I feel like each one of the episodes could be helpful to at least one other human. And that's good enough for me.

Even if one person hears an episode and it shifts something for them, helps them see themselves differently, gives them the permission that they need, that's enough. Initially, of course, I wanted my episodes to be perfect too. I would record an episode and send it off to my podcast production team. And then, of course, my helpful brain would come up with all these other things that I wished I would have, could have, should have said.

I think, oh, no, I forgot to mention that important point, or I should have explained that more clearly, or why didn't I include that story? And I had to be coached by my own coach. She will remember this coaching, that I wasn't going to do that to myself, that I wasn't going to torture myself with everything I didn't say.

And she, of course, helped me see that anything I didn't say in one episode, I could say in the next episode. It would just be more content for me, more opportunities to share with you, more chances to help you.

Nothing was actually lost. Nothing was ruined. It was just imperfect. And imperfect turns out actually to be perfect. Here's the other thing my friend and I talked about this morning. Some of the things I said when I first started the podcast three years ago aren't even what I know to be true at this point in my life.

They're not how I think about the world anymore. I have evolved. I've learned new things. I've changed my mind about things. I've deepened my understanding. I, of course, have had experiences that have shifted my perspective.

And I could drive myself crazy trying to go back and correct everything I said. I could spend all my time editing old episodes, adding disclaimers, explaining how I think about things differently now.

And that would be exhausting. And it would keep me from creating anything new. And it would suggest that there's some final perfect truth that I should have had from the beginning. Spoiler alert, there's not.

So I'm going to just let myself be in evolution. I could know that who I was three years ago is of course different than who I am today. And that's not a problem to fix. That is actually growth to celebrate.

The me from three years ago was doing her best with what she knew then. She was helping people from where she was. And that is valuable. That is enough. You're allowed to change your mind. You're allowed to learn new things and think differently.

You're allowed to look back at your earlier work and cringe a little bit, not because it was bad, but just because you've grown. And that's the whole point. I would suggest that if you're not evolving, you probably are not living.

So the world needs as many people out there right now who are helpers and healers and teachers, putting their goodness out into the world. We need your yoga classes, even if they're not as polished as the teacher who's been doing this for 30 years.

We need your coaching, even if you're still figuring out things yourself. We need your writing, your art, your ideas, your perspective, even if they're imperfect. Because the alternative is that people who need your help might not get it.

The person who resonates with your specific way of explaining things never finds you. The person who needs to hear from someone who's just a few steps ahead, not someone who seems unreachably perfect, might miss out.

No one else has your exact combination of experiences, insights, personality, perspective. No one else can help people exactly the way you can. And if you're waiting until you're perfect to share that, you might be robbing people of something that they need.

Putting your gifts out into the world before you're ready is an act of courage. It's also an act of service. You're saying, I don't have it all figured out. And I'm willing to share what I do know. I'm willing to be imperfect in public. I'm willing to help even though I'm still learning. So if you're looking for it, I want to give you permission to start before you're ready, to create that Instagram post without overthinking it, to launch your podcast, to offer that class, to share your ideas.

You don't have to have it all figured out. You just have to begin. I give you permission to be imperfect, to forget things, to explain things imperfectly, to make mistakes, to fuck it up, to have episodes or posts that aren't your best work. Perfect is boring anyway. It simply does not connect. Imperfect is real and it is what people actually need. I, of course, give you permission to change your mind, to look back at your earlier work and think differently now, to evolve publicly.

You don't have to go back and fix everything you ever said or made. Just keep growing, keep learning, keep sharing from the point you are now. I want to give you permission to help people even though you're figuring it out yourself, even though you're only one step ahead, even though you don't have all the answers.

Your imperfect wisdom is exactly what someone else needs today. And remember, if your share helps even one person, it was worth it. You don't need to go viral for goodness sakes. You don't need thousands of followers.

You don't need to change the world. You just need to help one person. And then if you want to, you get to help the next person and then the next if that calls to you. So here's what I know right now for sure. Waiting until you're ready means never starting. Waiting until you're perfect might mean staying silent. Waiting until you have it all figured out means keeping your gifts to yourself. And the world needs your gifts, messy, imperfect, still evolving gifts, because that's the only kind any of us have.

And so to my yoga teacher friend, you know who you are. And to anyone else listening who's been holding back, please share your genius with the world, not when you're ready, not when it's perfect, now, today, in whatever imperfect form it takes.

And if you need support putting yourself out there, if you need help getting past the perfectionism that's keeping you small, that's exactly something that I can help you with. Let's work together to get your gifts out into the world because becoming a favorite version of you includes sharing your gifts with the world, even before you feel ready, and probably especially before you feel ready.

All right, folks. Thanks for listening again and tuning in again this week. I appreciate it so much. I will be here again next week with my imperfect podcast. Bye.

Hey - It’s still me. Since you are listening to this podcast, you very likely have followed all the rules and ticked off all the boxes but you still feel like something's missing! If you're ready to learn the skills and gain the tools you need to tiptoe into putting yourself first and treating yourself as you would your own best friend, I'm here to support you. As a general life coach for women, I provide a safe space, compassionate guidance, and practical tools to help you navigate life's challenges as you start to get to know and embrace your authentic self.

When we work together, you begin to develop a deeper understanding of your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. You learn effective communication strategies, boundary-setting techniques, and self-care practices that will help you cultivate a more loving and supportive relationship with yourself and others.

While, of course, I can't guarantee specific outcomes, as everyone's journey is brilliantly unique, what I can promise is my unwavering commitment to providing you with the skills, tools, support, and guidance you need to create lasting changes in your life. With humor and a ton of compassion, I'll be available to mentor you as you do the work to become a favorite version of yourself.

You're ready to invest in yourself and embark on this journey, so head over to melissaparsonscoaching.com, go to the work with me page, and book a consultation call. We can chat about all the support I can provide you with as we work together.

I am welcoming one-on-one coaching clients at this time, and, of course, I am also going to be offering the next round of group coaching soon. 

Thanks for tuning in. Go be amazing!