You are reading my first blog post. It took me forever to sit down and write this blog post. Why? Because I didn’t feel I was ready!
But the thing is, with my perfectionism, I was never going to be ready, so one day I just decided this was the day I was going to start – before I am ready. I “jumped into the deep pool” like we say in Iceland and wrote my first blog post.
The weird thing is that it is so easy once you have decided to start. It is just a single click in your head and then you are ready to go and do whatever you couldn’t do before you made that decision. I know this and you know this and still we beat ourselves up and postpone things that seem so difficult from afar but are then so easy once you decide to tackle them.
A clock designed by my dear friend Olafur Thordarson – Thordarson Design Co in New York. A very fitting image for today’s blog post – a clock is good reminder of starting before we are ready.
[tweetshareinline tweet=”Start before you’re ready. You just have to decide to start.” username=”sigruncom”]
When do you “jump into the deep end”?
When I look back and think about the jobs, studies and projects I have taken on in my life – for most of them I’ve “jumped into the deep end” and it always worked out. The big difference I have noticed in working for myself is the critic in my head – the lizard brain as Seth Godin calls it or the resistance as Steven Pressfield refers to it – has much more leverage and tries even harder to hold you back. I like calling it the lizard brain. By giving it a distasteful name I feel more in control and can even imagine what it looks like, this voice that tells you all kind of BS to keep you from doing what you were meant to do.
[easy-tweet tweet=”You can control that critic inside your head. The lizard brain doesn’t have to win.” user=”sigruncom”]
What does it take to “start before you are ready”?
When I started my business, I thought I needed a cool logo, fantastic website, awesome portfolio, fantastic offerings – the list goes on and on. For a while I worked on all of these things while also coming up with a ton of great ideas for blog posts, things that I felt I needed to share with the world.
At some point I realized that I, maybe more than the lizard brain, was holding myself back, and what I actually needed to do was to start to write my blog posts and everything else would follow. So two days ago I sat down and made a list of the things I wanted to do before starting to blog and gave myself 2 days to get them done. Last night I had gotten most of these things done – some things I couldn’t figure out despite my programming knowledge and I am waiting for technical support – but more importantly I decided not to let these little things stop me.
[tweetshareinline tweet=”Remove all excuses and just start before you’re ready!” username=”sigruncom”]
Today I had no more excuses – the lizard brain was quiet! In hindsight the hard part is not the actual writing I’m doing now but the decision I made two days ago to accept that things will never be perfect and that anything I felt needed to get done first will not stop you from taking the next step.
So now I have started before I am ready and it just feels great! It is like a huge weight has been lifted off my chest and I am already excited about my next blog posts. Meanwhile, I continue to work on all my other projects and when everything is “perfect” my content will be there too. That is why starting before you are ready is the only way.
Do you have something you have postponed for a while? What are you going to do about it now? Are you going to start before you are ready? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.