How long have you been waiting to begin pursuing your goal or dream? Most people are stuck in a perpetual practice of waiting. Perhaps you have been holding off for the exact perfect moment when you’ll feel ready to finally pull the trigger and get started. This is a huge mistake. The perfect time is right now.
Time is more important than timing. Consider focusing on putting the time in rather than on getting the timing just right. The truth is, you (and likely everyone else) will never fully feel like you’re ready. You may be comparing yourself right out of success and not even know it. By comparing your inside feeling with someone else’s outside results, you have judged yourself as still needing to be, do, and have more under your belt in order to step forward.
Don't wait until you're not afraid of something to do it. Do it despite the fear and you'll start to develop a 'fearlessness muscle'.
Consider these ideas to begin moving forward, starting today:
1. You’ll never be ready. If you find yourself procrastinating know that it is simply part of you feeling afraid. It’s natural to feel uncertain, and even afraid of doing things that are outside of our knowing experience. Instead of feeling like you need to know how it will all work out, encourage yourself to just take one step forward.
● Do you know what the first step is? That’s all you need to know. Just do it and you’ll figure out the rest along the way. It’s like walking up the stairs. You only need to see one step at a time to make it to the top.
2. The perfect time will never happen. If this is your reason for holding yourself back, ask yourself what the “perfect time” really means to you. And what makes it perfect? Listen in to where fears show up. Don’t judge this, just be there to listen. Deep down, you may come to realize there will always be opportunities that this “perfect time” is later, down the road, when it’s “safe”. If fear is left to run the show, it will always see the potential dangers, negative outcome, and possibilities for failure.
● Ask yourself why now is the perfect time to take the first step. If fear of timing related obstacles are giving you reasons to hold yourself back, remember that you are free to take as much time as you need to get where you want to be. If you never start, you will never get there. Starting today doesn’t mean you’ll arrive today.
4. Your natural tendency is to wait too long. When is the last time you did something too soon. If there is something that comes to mind, explore it thoroughly and as objectively as you can. It may bring up feelings of regret, anger, mistrust toward yourself. You may find you need to let that go and forgive yourself. Look again at that situation and see what you were able to learn from that experience and how it can help you now to take steps forward.
5. Your natural tendency is to value information too much. When we feel we have to know everything there is to know before we take it is usually coming from a wounded place. Perhaps there was something you didn’t know and it hurt or embarrassed you in the past. It is important to know that we will experience life in unpredictable ways. You know more than enough to get started where you are at today. Let go of the need to know everything as a way to protect yourself from ever feeling uncertain. Uncertainty can create a host of solutions if you tap into your creativity and learn to trust yourself.
6. Much of the success around people you meet are due to their ability to trust themselves to make decisions and give it time to unfold. In opposition, when people experience a lack of success one commonality is that they cannot make up their minds. When you enter into a loop of feeling conflicted for any variety of reasons, primarily fear, it can feel paralyzing. Consider giving yourself a limited time to make a decision and then run with it. While we all want to feel confident all the time, we don’t. If you wait until you are hosting an emotional state that makes you feel ready, you may never get to that emotional state.
● Practice making smaller decisions quickly and moving forward with them. This is a great habit to develop and will lead you to grow into bigger decisions.
7. The sooner you take action, the more you’ll learn. Action leads to results. You learn something each time you get a result. You’re not producing any results while you’re sitting around waiting for the perfect moment to act.
8. Action leads to inspiration. Most people falsely believe that they’ll take action when they feel inspired yet the opposite is actually true. Action leads to inspiration. Inspiration leads to even more action. See how that works?
No matter how many mistakes you make or how slow you progress, you are still way ahead of everyone who isn't trying.
Why are you waiting? The most honest answer is fear. Don’t be the person who simply isn’t trying out of fear. Be the person who is willing to make important mistakes on the journey of success. These can be the most powerful lessons in guiding your next step toward success.
Take a deep breath, let go of your limiting beliefs, and get started today. You’ll never be 100% ready or comfortable, so you may as well begin right now. Now is always the perfect moment to change the way you live to have the life you truly want.
If you want help along the way, I’m here to hold the flashlight while we work through the things that are hindering you from stepping forward. To learn more, jump on my calendar and set up a discovery call to see if you’re ready to let go and move forward.
