When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.
African Proverb
How much education do you really need to do your job well? Do you believe it is more important to either receive knowledge or apply knowledge? Is knowledge truly powerful? These are some of the questions that ran through my mind as I contemplated purchasing yet another course that promised to make me a 6-7 figure super awesome business maven and read yet another book on living my best life. I have 3 degrees and more certificates than I can count, but I question whether my life actually correlates with all that knowledge I have received. Then it hit me. I am a knowledge hoarder!
In this article, a knowledge hoarder is defined as someone who is on a perpetual treadmill of collecting information before taking significant action to utilize the collected information.
I am a collector of knowledge but share and apply only a very small portion of it. If I am truly honest I only apply the part of my knowledge that tends to allow me to stay in my comfort zone. For example, I understand the basics of marketing very well and know that I need to be consistent with whatever strategy I use. But I still tend to say to myself, "Oh I don't want to be a pest to people". "If I just send out an email once a month or every other month or shoot out a few tweets here and there, they will still remember my business, because I am respecting their inbox and I am soo genuine." Everyone with any sort of business sense knows that is a strategy for failure, but somehow I try to blame my failed marketing strategy on lack of knowledge and seek out yet another course on marketing. Or I have been apart of enough weight watchers groups and read on various diet trends to know a little bit about nutrition. Yet I still will eat an entire block of cheese with crackers or a basket of cheddar bay biscuits when I want to "treat" myself. When these "treats" add up and I am 5 to 10 pounds heavier on the scale, I run to next diet fad or some other thing that is outside of myself.
Once I was able to be honest with myself and admitted that I am a knowledge hoarder, I had to face a hard truth.I was using my knowledge seeking as a tool to procrastinate on doing the necessary things that needed to be done in my business or life. Then I had to face the harder truth that I had not done some of necessary inner work prior to taking the leap into entrepreneurship. The reality is that I have been procrastinating and hoarding knowledge because I do not truly feel worthy enough to request payment for my skill set or even write consistent blog posts with my knowledge. I keep telling myself, if I just get this certificate or that certificate I will finally have all that I need to really advertise my business and charge what I am worth. Well finally I am saying enough is enough! No more hoarding! Now its all about applying what I already know. The dress rehearsal is over.
Will you join me? Its time that we clear out any mental and physical clutter that has been holding us back. It doesn't matter if you are starting out as an entrepreneur or parent or both, there is probably some mental or physical junk that you can get rid of. Let's do this together.
For the next six weeks I am going to share my journey to believing and knowing that I am already enough to share my gifts and that I am worthy to receive every good thing that comes to me. This is a series I am calling "Love work to make the dream work." This series is where I will finally start to consistently share and apply the knowledge that I already possess. I will not only share my breakthroughs but also the tools that I am using, so you can have your own breakthroughs as well. Use the hashtag #LovingMeFirst so we can interact with each other while on this journey.
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