What If the Good Thing Happens
There is a version of vigilance that stops being protective and starts being a cage. The version that kills an idea before it breathes. The version that mistakes caution for wisdom when really it is just fear with a good argument.
I am an Enneagram 6.
And if you know anything about Type 6, you already know what that means for a woman trying to run a small creative business.
It means I have thought about every possible way this could go wrong.
Not occasionally. Not in moments of self-doubt. Constantly, reflexively, before the idea has even fully formed. The what-if is my default setting, and for most of my life I have aimed it in exactly one direction. What if I don't have what it takes? What if this idea is too big? What if I try and it doesn't work and everyone can see that it didn't work?
I am a big Enneagram nerd. I have spent years using it as a tool for self-awareness and genuine growth and learning why I do what I do, where my patterns come from, what it looks like when I am operating from fear versus from my best self. It has given me a lot. But knowing your patterns and actually rewiring them are two very different things.
Running Anam Cara Clay Goods has made me see my “6ness” more keenly than almost anything else in my life.
Not long ago…
I was talking to a friend about a new business idea. I was doing what I always do, thinking out loud about the possibilities while simultaneously dismantling them. What if I don't have what it takes to pull this off? What if the idea is too big for where I am right now? What if it doesn't work?
She listened. And then, because she is a good friend who knows me well enough to say the thing, she asked a question I wasn't expecting.
But what if the bad thing doesn't happen? What if the good thing happens instead?
It hit me like a ton of bricks for about two seconds. And then my brain did exactly what an Enneagram 6 brain does. It immediately started trying to rationalize the whole thing. Yes but. What about. Have you considered.
The armor went up fast. But later, when it was quiet, the question came back.
And this time it landed differently.
How many ideas have I glossed over because I immediately dismissed them as not working out? How many things did I talk myself out of before I ever gave them a real chance; not because the idea was bad, but because the what-if in my head was louder than the possibility?
That is a hard question to sit with. It is also a necessary one.
Here is what I have come to understand about being a Type 6 and building something: the vigilance, the preparation, the need to feel secure and certain before moving forward, those things are not weaknesses. They have kept me from making genuinely reckless decisions. They have made me thoughtful and careful and thorough in ways that actually serve the business well.
But there is a version of that vigilance that stops being protective and starts being a cage. The version that kills an idea before it breathes. The version that mistakes caution for wisdom when really it is just fear with a good argument.
That is the version I am trying to rewire.
Lately I have been practicing something that does not come naturally to me at all: letting the good what-if in.
What if this offering resonates? What if the right people are out there waiting for exactly this? What if I do have what it takes and I just haven't given myself the chance to find out?
It does not feel effortless. My brain still reaches for the worst-case scenario first. That reflex is deeply grooved after decades of use. But I am learning to notice when it happens, and to pause, and repeat my friend's question before I let the rationalization take over: What if the good thing happens instead?
For a Type 6, that might be the bravest question there is.
The security I have always been looking for, and the certainty that something will work before I commit to it, that is not something any amount of planning can actually give me. I know that intellectually. Learning to live it is the real challenge.
But I am trying. I am choosing to think differently and to embrace more of the good. And I am finding joy instead of scanning for what might go wrong. I remind myself that I am building something real with hands that are still a little uncertain and a heart that is learning, slowly, to let the good what-if take up just as much space as possible.
That feels like growth. It’s messy, ongoing, and not-yet-finished. And I can live with that kind of what-if.