We are a society of careful planners, most of us buying into the idea of perfect readiness. Many of us wait, meticulously prepare, and put things off until we decide we’re fully ready to allow our desires into our lives.
We’re taught to plan, prepare, and wait so much so that we often never end up doing the living part of life. We’re taught to put things off, figure everything out, and get everything in order before taking any action, not to leap, try, do, or be. We’re taught that thinking and arranging to perfection is responsible, and that leaping and living life in the way we truly desire is irresponsible and reckless.
Attempts to wait until some point you hope to arrive at, where you’re a different person who is completely prepared for whatever may come, end with you actually missing what you’ve been waiting for.
for a time that you may never even arrive at, such as waiting to live until years from now once you’ve retired, lost weight, found the perfect partner, or whatever it is you may use as an excuse to stall, holds no guarantees. If you just keep procrastinating, you may never reach that desire, and never live your life to its fullest, most boundless expression.
Feeling ready might mean being exactly where you desire financially, emotionally, physically, or mentally. Waiting until you’re ready can mean waiting to let a partner into your life, have a child, quit your job, start your own business, travel, or say the words you’ve been yearning to.
Complete readiness is nonsense. It’s possible that your delay is a disguise for procrastinating out of fear. Perhaps you don’t believe you deserve what you desire, or you don’t feel fully qualified or knowledgable. It may be a tool for self sabotage or avoidance, and until you push yourself and jump off the ledge of self doubt, you will stay stuck forever.
Once you leap, you may realize you were ready all along, or you may see that you weren’t, but having done it ended up making you ready. You will never be at that point you imagine where everything is perfect and in place. You can plan for eons, but until you’re actually deep in that thing you’ve been preparing for, you probably won’t feel, or truly be, fully equipped.
For instance, you can learn everything there is to know about something, but once you’re doing it, the experience is so different than the preparation. Of course, appropriate knowledge is necessary for many endeavors, but you learn the most on the job. You may realize you weren’t ready, but now that you have the experience, you are far past ready having already done it. It is doubtful that you’ll feel fully ready until you’re in it.
Once the experience begins, you might find you had been ready for some time, or you might realize there was no way to be fully ready without jumping in and doing. There are certain things that only experience can make you able to do, not preparation.
You must learn on the job, do the best you can, and enjoy the crazy, wild ride. Putting things off may just be a way to feel that you have some control over the way of the world. The process of life will unfold however it must. You can plan forever, but life has its own plans that often overrule your own.
Often, divergence from the plan ends up being so much more beautiful, wild, and joyful than you could’ve imagined, and it often turns out so much better than you’d hoped. Other times, truly awful things happen, which is exactly why waiting isn’t a good idea. Leaping, living, doing, and loving is the only way to guarantee control over your life because then you can rest knowing you’ve lived in the fullest, grandest, most wholehearted way you can. Then, no matter what happens, you didn’t wait too long and end up missing out on so much living, and you don’t feel regretful.
The most magic occurrences that happen in life according to the way of the world are probably not things you thought you were ready for. If the experience is joyful, you can find pleasure knowing good things come whether you’re ready or not, and there was most likely no way to prepare for it. You might realize that you were in fact ready all along.
Naturally you will never be prepared for painful events, leaving you with all the more reason to do the things that would bring you joy right now, so that you can create happiness whether you feel ready or not.
You can plan for retirement, for example, but life comes with no guarantee that you will get there, so take the trip you’ve been longing for. Take the time off and live your life. If you wait, there is no guarantee you’ll get there, and you might just miss it. You can wait until your finances are exactly where you’d like, your mentality is completely set, and your emotions are in check, or you can live. You can take the leap and live your life and let yourself do, have, and be all that you desire.
About the Author
Isabela attended Lewis and Clark College, the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, and Matthew Kenney Culinary Academy. Her interests include ceramics, baking, being outside, poetry, and dancing. Her long term career goal is to do positive and loving work in the world to help people, and to inspire, lift, and spread as much light as possible to other humans.
Website: https://www.instagram.com/izminog/