The ideas were coming to me so fast I was writing them all down. I was excited, planning a senior model session that was exactly what I wanted to shoot. I was having ideas about video, about locations, and people who were going to help me pull it all together. It was going to be so much fun!

Then I started finding  photos from magazines, scouting around on Pinterest for senior inspiration, and looking for music that might match my video idea. I taped the magazine pages to my office wall. I was getting a good feeling about how this was going to turn out.

Now it was time to set it all in motion and that’s when everything in me shut down.

“I won’t do it.” I thought. It’s too much. Too crazy. Too out of my league.

It’s easier just to have the ideas.

In my last post I told you about how my fears in first grade still haunt me today. It’s true.

Executing my idea means talking to people. That’s as scary as reading aloud in first grade.

Making my idea work means getting other people excited about it too. That’s as scary as making friends in first grade.

Pulling it all together means taking pictures in front of a big group of people. That’s as scary as being in the Homecoming court in first grade.

Fear can shut me and my big ideas down every single time. And a lot of the time it makes me execute (to kill) my ideas instead of execute (to put into effect) them.

In his workshop at Blissdom, The 3 Stages of Every Awesome Idea, Jon Acuff talked about imagining, capturing, and executing. He told us about how easy it is to come up with ideas, but executing, that’s the tricky part.

As he went through his talk, I realized his three stages of every awesome idea was exactly how I tackled my latest idea, without even knowing it.

I knew as I got closer to executing my idea the fear would get stronger. I had to just shut it down (Jon Acuff says to punch fear in the face, but I’m not that bold yet. Instead, I just try to ignore it.) and do the next thing.

When some of my models had to drop out for a softball game, I gave myself five minutes to feel sad and tell myself how stupid I was for even thinking something like this would work for me, then I moved on. I still had five excited models to work with and I still had a great idea I wanted to execute.

I have to tell you that even the smallest detail like what to feed them made me feel ready to shut the whole thing down. And looking back, that fear seems so silly. To think that something as small as ordering a pizza could make me want to put a stop to my idea? Crazy talk, right? But it was there.

Doing the model session was one of the most fun things I have done this year. It was AWESOME.

Watch the video we made here. It’s Awesome too.

(And you know what else is scary? Calling myself awesome.)

And I know now if I do it again next year it won’t be as scary and it may even be more awesome.

What are idea are you going to Start this year?