Nicola Bird

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Who Are We Really?

The mind does everything it can to avoid the idea of enough.

After all, if I choose to no longer be a high-achieving, constantly growing, successful-by-the-numbers entrepreneur - and that is how I have defined myself for decades - who would I be?

It's always terrifying to consider letting go of an idea of who we think we are.

If you ask me to describe myself, no doubt I'll weave all my accomplishments and achievements into my answer - like fancy clothes onto a naked body, it feels as though they differentiate me from the other.

Especially if I've worked long hard hours for those clothes or consider myself to have been particularly clever in attaining them.

I describe the clothes as if they are who I am. I fiercely hug them to myself even more if you are curious about what is underneath them.

And now, with this concept of 'enough', I'm asking myself to shed them.

To drop whole chunks of the identity of being 'My Mum, the brilliant entrepreneur, who will be earning a million this time next year!' (that's what I like to think they think anyway).

To stop being 'My friend, the crazy woman who's always on the go and builds these brilliant businesses - I have no idea how she does it!'

To drop the idea of being a 'super-successful' wife, coach to others, sister, daughter or author.

Instead to be ordinary - my mind shudders at the thought.

And yet, here we are.

Exploring this very thing anyway.

Despite the fear.

BECAUSE of the fear in fact.

If I stop actively growing my business because I see it is already enough, what will I DO all day? Will I instead pick up a new identity of 'one who is smug and superior about her enough-ness and judges all the go-getters'? Will the whole business I have created fall to bits? Will I lose the respect of my entrepreneurial peers? Will my family resent the lack of holidays they might have imagined they were going to get?

And on and on the fearful questions go.

Because this is a journey into the unknown - this journey of exploring 'enough'.

And we are so very invested in staying with what we think we know.

Here's to the exploring.

Every messy scary bit of it.

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