Start Before You’re Ready
When I was in first grade, I was selected to be the lead in the class play, Dr. Doolittle. Unfortunately, I was too nervous to accept the role, fearing that I wasn’t ready, and instead ended up being one of the monkeys. The following year I was cast as the Pied Piper, accepted the starring role, and crushed the performance. I would love to say that I spent the whole year preparing to be more “ready” for the lead role, but that wasn’t necessarily the case. Sure, I had a little more confidence, but considering it was a first-grade school performance, I probably had the skills to do the same thing the previous year.
I remember when I coached swimming and kids would refuse to swim some of the most difficult events in a meet like the 100-meter butterfly or the 500-meter freestyle. They would claim that they weren’t ready even though they had done far more swimming in practice. I would find myself going into sales mode, negotiating with them, and telling them they could do it before they would grudgingly agree to swim the event in a meet. More often than not, they would have a smile ear to ear after they finished the race, beaming with pride that they had finished something they weren’t sure they could complete.
I was working out last week and as I used my shirt to wipe the sweat off my brow, I noticed an inscription that was printed on the inside of the bottom of the shirt that I hadn’t seen before. It said, “Start before you’re ready.” I immediately thought of the stories above as well as other times in my life that I have used the phrase “I’m not ready yet.” While the experiences above were rooted in times of youth, I’ve noticed this trend continues well into adulthood for many people. We are confronted with a change in life, a challenge, or a new opportunity and we decline because we feel that we “aren’t ready”.
As someone who likes to think about things from a lot of angles and is notoriously slow to make decisions (just ask my wife April), this was a great reminder for me. Sure, preparation is helpful, but when we start before we are ready, we can test and assess our level of preparation. It’s not about blindly jumping into something; it’s about pushing the timeline of what we think is necessary to prepare. Our brains will come up with hundreds of reasons why we’re not ready, trying to protect us from the potential of failure or rejection. However, it is precisely in these times that we need to forge ahead and take that leap.
When we start before we’re ready, we build momentum in the direction we want to go. Sometimes we surprise ourselves with what we are able to do and in the times when we come up short, we gain clarity on how far we have to go. You can take all the time in the world, check all the boxes and it does not guarantee that you will be ready. I mean is anyone ever really ready to have kids???? Sometimes you just have to go through the experience and move forward from there.
Is there something in your life that you’ve always wanted to do but haven’t taken steps in that direction? Have you been working on something for an extended period of time, but haven’t had the courage to put it into play? Whether you’ve been putting it off or felt like you needed more time to prepare, it may be time for you to start before you’re ready!
