Start Before You're Ready

Daniel Handler, who used the pen name of Lemony Snicket and authored the children's book called A Series of Unfortunate Events, once wrote, "If we wait until we're ready, we'll be waiting for the rest of our lives."

This is so true in countless ways. What if everyone waited until they were "ready" financially to get married or to have children? The birth rate and number of marriages would plummet. What if we never traveled anywhere until we felt absolutely certain the weather would be perfect, the traffic would be light, and there would be no unexpected surprises? We'd probably end up staying home for much of our lives.

The fear of the unknown leads to inertia; consequently, we sit around doing nothing. We waste our time "waiting," and we're often not even sure what we're waiting on.

My husband is an English professor, and he tells his writing students to "just get something on the page" (or on the computer screen) without worrying about if it's perfect or even any good. We can always revise and change our words later, but until we have words written down, we're making no progress at all. The same could be said of taking care of our physical health; many doctors say "just start by moving your body" – walking, stretching, riding a bike – movement of any type is better than inaction and inertia. It's also true of our daily jobs in the workplace and our relationships with others. Taking the initiative to "make a move" is always the best choice, as opposed to doing nothing or waiting for a "ready" that may never come.

While my parents worked, I was raised by my grandparents. My grandmother grew up without the opportunity of going to school. For most of her adult life, she did not know how to read or write. One evening, as we sat the kitchen table together, I was practicing writing in cursive. As the little kerosene light flickered, I watched the light in my grandmother's eyes glisten as she mustered the courage to ask her granddaughter, "Essie [as she called me], can you teach me to sign my name in cursive?"

My Ma was the wisest woman I knew, and there she sat asking her 7-year-old granddaughter to teach her to sign her name. We learned cursive together, and we also began reading together. My grandmother taught me so much, one of those lessons being that when it's all said and done, the most important thing is having the courage to take action in order to experience change in your life.

As I'm writing this, I can think of a number of websites and books championing the idea of "start before you're ready." Many of them boil down to a few simple but important reminders. First, taking action is often the best teacher. We've all heard the oddly true saying, "You don't know what you don't know." Only by starting a new process and taking action will we ever really discover new knowledge, and mistakes along the way can lead to valuable moments of learning.

Second, movement creates momentum. Remember that science class in high school where we learned about Newton's First Law of Motion? This scientific principle says that a body at rest will stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. And likewise, once a body is in motion, it will tend to stay in motion. This principle has profound implications for our lives – professionally, creatively, physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually. Once we make a move and take action, it's very likely we'll continue taking even more action as we see the results and are encouraged.

So, start before you're ready. Don't allow limitations to stand in your way or prevent you from action, and maybe, like my grandmother, a whole new world will open to you. You may be pleasantly surprised!