Personal development is the clue, the effort is the excuse.
“Fully prepared for what you are going to do”, that’s the meaning of ready according to the Oxford Dictionary, and ironically getting ready is what holds back most of us from achieving our goals, developing our crazy ideas and having any aspirations in life. It’s what I just defined as the “never ready enough symptom” Yeah, I know, I’m affirming something kind of weird and you might be asking where did I get this idea? Basically, life it self and some digging on the internet.
Ready… steady… GO!
Think about this, when a race starts, you have three-seconds to get ready and start running, there is no way back. However, when it depends on us to decide if we are ready or not is when we dive fully into the task of preparation…
Time consumes our motivation, our crave for the new and even our hopes for dreams to come true. And, yes, I know getting ready takes time. Seems nothing else but irony that what is supposed to help us achieve our craziest challenges, our thrilling dreams and the biggest of our ideas, ultimately turns into the drug of procrastination, negativity or just laziness.
Personal development and fighting excuses
So, Am I saying that you should go and climb the Everest without training first? No, that’s not the matter here, I know preparing is important and sometimes crucial. No one runs a marathon without good training, no surfer has learned to ride at Jaws and you can’t become an astronaut before studying. There’s a lot of stuff to do in order to aim at that big dream you want to make a reality. But if you’re doing all that stuff, you’re in the right path.
The problem comes earlier in the process when we say: “let’s get ready!”. Just when excitement takes control and you start planning all you are going to do (yes “planning”), everything turns overwhelming. –– This is going to be big you know, so big that it has become impossible, unaffordable and let me tell you what; life is not that bad as it is to complicated with all this. –– The excuse usually sounds like this: “People who succeeded had to work very hard and that’s not for everybody… It’s too late for a career change… or; I better watch a movie, and, besides, with work, I don’t have time…” –– Sorry for the terrible interpretation, but that’s basically what happens, am I right? –– It is not a matter of difficulty or effort but more of personal development.
Do you want to change your life? Dream big, start small
It’s hard to visualise without an example but this doesn’t only apply to big dreams like someone wanting to climb the Everest. Dreams can be more simple and we forget about them anyway, new career ideas are the most common example. This often happens when we can’t see that it’s possible to start working on little things that don’t completely change our lives and enjoy the process without worrying about what the outcome will be.
When you focus on the outcome, it’s hard to see where is the start, what are the small steps to reach the podium. The excitement for the price, for success, it’s a source of motivation but also of dizziness and negativity. How do we go from nothing to the top? How can we reach our goal fast and effortless? Because we can’t wait for that sweat celebration that moved us from the beginning. We want to be professional athletes, not amateurs who train all day to become something.
Nothing is built from the top, and it’s hard to start from the bottom when we are just looking at the outcome. The secret is starting from the small things, getting a sense of what is needed, investing the small time that won’t suppose an effort, start enjoying and visualise the strategy in the long term.
Enforcing our commitment must be something that comes naturally and gradually as we start overcoming the difficulties and increasing the amount of work invested. This will happen as we find ourselves closer to the outcome.
Overcome “THE NEVER READY ENOUGH SYMPTOM” fast, bad and wrong
Starting from the small things that will ultimately take us where we want to be is one way to overcome THE NEVER READY ENOUGH SYMPTOM (sorry I just made up this term). Another way to overcome the overwhelming task of getting things done is by giving it a try first. Matt Trinetti, a writer specialised on career change advice wrote a very interesting post “Fast, Bad And Wrong: A Mantra For Creating The New And Impossible” – about the methodology used by Physicist and author Safi Bahcall to write his book “Long Shots”.
FBR consists of doing everything fast, bad and wrong to get somewhere near to what you want to achieve. And, from there, start improving the result. This is a personal development technique very effective in order to avoid the sense of overwhelmingness when we start working on something from scratch. It goes without saying that it cannot be applied in every case. Please don’t do things fast, bad and wrong if your goal is building something, investing all your money or simply doing anything risky…
Also, be aware that when following FBR is easy to pivot from the initial idea of what you planned. Matt Trinetti mentions an example from Mark Maples . 93 per cent of the startups where Maples invested pivoted from their initial idea, he said: “Should we even care what the initial idea is?”. Well, in my opinion if these startups where sticking to what they had initially planned, they wouldn’t have taken the plunge in the first place.
To wrap up, just follow Nike’s slogan “Just do it”, act impulsively and go for that dream of yours without expecting big changes. Starting from anything you feel ready to take and see how things go. Doesn’t matter if you start from the basic or you jump to the fast, bad and wrong strategy, just do something. Not everybody lives from dreams, but that doesn’t mean that you have to leave always awake. Let dreams be part of your life.
–– I just applied the FBR writing this post ––
I guess if you got to this point of my messy writting, is because you had the same experience. Don’t hesitate to share what holds you back from feeling ready for your big projects and how you plan to overcome it! I may share my own on the next post.
Diego Banks :) 