What if I Don’t Have What it Takes?

Colleen Kimball
3 min readSep 6, 2017

Have you ever felt like you’re slamming into a wall over and over again? And so you get really frustrated — which leads to bottling up emotions, confusion, and a whole other mess of things — until you feel like you could burst?

I have.

Have you ever reached the height of that point at lunch rush in one of the most popular restaurants in your city while you’re happily munching on a tomato melt and hummus?

I did.

Have you met the realization by experiencing an emotional gut punch and salty tears leaking from your eyes?

Yep — Just today.

It’s probably not fair for me to blame Jon Acuff for the scene that occurred above, but I’m going to anyway. You see, I was ignorantly trudging through the last couple of weeks knowing that I was a bit “off”, but not enough to do anything about it.

Maybe it’s my approaching 30th birthday or maybe it’s the internal pressure I put on myself to do something extraordinary with my life, but either way, the following headline triggered all of the things I’ve stuffed deep down inside me lately.

“What if I don’t have what it takes?” (Jon Acuff, Do Over)

Gah! The very words I uttered to my friend, Jordan, just days ago. How dare Jon Acuff make me deal with my buried fears and frustrations! I mean, it’s okay if I voice them, but it shouldn’t mean I have to relive them while I’m consuming the best hummus on earth!

In fairness, Acuff goes on to explain why that idea is a bad one and totally unravels any argument I had to support such a belief in my own life. Coincidentally, Jordan did the same thing to me when I spoke those words to her (thanks, JLew).

It’s fear that fuels such a false self-belief. Fear of failure, fear of never trying, fear of an uncertain future, fear of a lack of passion. As Acuff points out though, fear never goes away, so we just have to learn to overcome it every single day. And having what “it” takes is the most vague form of existence alive. I make my own rules and cut my own path.

I don’t want to just survive — I want to fly.

So, back to this tomato melt and hummus. I did finish most of my food without too much added salt, but more importantly, I began to understand what I deal with daily on a personal level. If we know our enemy, we can conquer it, or at least know what kind of armor we need.

You all have different beasts to slay if you want to fly, so find yourself some hummus, a trendy restaurant, and maybe Jon Acuff can force you into some self-realization too. (If not, I’m sure a hipster coffee joint and some self-help blogs will work.)

Either way, I hope you soar.

-CK

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Colleen Kimball

Founder of Colleen Kimball: Billing & Practice Management