Inspirational Shorts Vol. 3: Don't Wait Till You're "Ready!"

When I was a teenager, we lived in the south of Spain... we're talking 1970's; we actually lived there during the Franco regime.

We lived there with a small group of other northern European expats, many of them friends of my stepfather's; he'd lived in Spain since the mid-1960's, more than a decade before the hordes of tourists started seeking out the Costa del Sol.

Cherry blossoms in spring

As a rather quiet and serious teen, I made a slightly odd friend in one of my stepdad's golfing buddies. Geoffrey was nearing 80, and a former businessman of some note... but now enjoying his golden years in a golf club community.

Geoffrey would share lots of truisms of life... that probably didn't mean much to me as a 13-year old... but somehow they miraculously seem to have stuck with me for the past 45 years, far better than any conventional schooling I ever had.

The Problem With Being "Ready"

One of Geoffrey's greatest pieces of advice was this:

"Don't wait till you're 'ready' to do something, because you will NEVER be 'ready!'"

Maybe it sounds like an odd piece of advice — after all, we're often taught that "impulsive" decisions tend to end badly — but there is really a lot of sense to it, as he explained it:

You see, when you are always "waiting" till you feel ready to do something; to take some action; to have the necessary skills or something like that... you risk letting opportunities pass you by entirely.

And so often, your "waiting" is really just a veneer over the excuse that you're afraid of jumping out into the unknown. And when you have those fears? You often end up never getting started. Because you never get to a state of readiness; there is never a "right" time.

Red Rocks near Sedona, Arizona

For a very timid young man, this was an important lesson... I always had dozens of reasons lined up to not do things; to not engage with the unknown.

Thanks to Geoffrey's words, I found myself able to seize more opportunities when I only felt "90% ready" and became more adept at figuring out the remaining 10% on the fly.

It stood me in particularly good stead in my working life: Without these words ringing in the back of my head, I would probably not have had the courage to pursue the path of self-employment, having instead chosen the more predictable path of having some mindless hourly job.

So I'll "pay it forward" here... Don't "wait" till you feel perfectly "ready" to do something that seems appealing, or like a great opportunity! Just DO it, and trust yourself to come up with the correct solutions to challenges you don't know... as you go along!

Thanks for reading!

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(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 190214 01:04 PST
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