This is something that has been on my mind a great deal lately. It’s the idea that we have all the time in the world to get where we want to be. We don’t.
The older I get, the more I realize that. Days, weeks, even months fly past in the blink of an eye and I wonder what I have achieved in that time.
What’s the antidote to that?
If there is something you want to get done, start right now, today, before you are ready — because you don’t need to be ready. The truth is you have been turning this ‘thing that you want to do’ over in your mind for months, possibly even years. You haven’t acted on it because you think you might fail at it, you might not finish it, or worse you might finish it and then no-one will like it or be interested in it. And then that dream you held inside you for so long will be gone.
I want to reassure you though that if you start, you can’t fail. Everything is a process — so as you begin what you have long thought about, other things will start to happen, synchronicity will materialize, what you started off doing will branch out at a tangent and a whole new concept will come into play, one you didn’t even think about before it happened.
Want to write a book, learn a new skill, start a business, create a blog, or any other number of things? Then take the very first step right now. Not tomorrow morning and not next week. Because if you wait, you will have lost the energy of the moment.
I’ve talked before about what my motivation was to take action to build my business and one of my biggest regrets is not moving forward in lots of other areas in my life much sooner. If you are ever not sure about whether to take action think about the bigger picture, how do you want things to look in your life in six months, a year, five years or even twenty years? Then take the action that’s going to lead to that outcome.
What Does Taking Action Mean?
What it doesn’t mean is throwing everything up in the air and hoping for the best. For example, if you want to add some additional streams of income to your life, don’t just think ‘I’ll go all in’ and walk away from your job. Start a side business now in your spare time and build it up until you can afford to walk away from paid work. The more you focus on it, the quicker your day of freedom will come. If you don’t think you have any spare time, I promise you can find some. Maybe an hour less watching TV, getting up two hours earlier or working into the night. Will it be easy at the start? No. Will it be worth it? Definitely.
I started by building websites and writing about subjects I loved. This was a great way to begin because I learned everything from the ground up. You don’t have to approach things the same way.
Maybe you want to write a book, so you put aside an hour every day to start getting words on paper (or screen) and you read around the subject. Maybe you are creative and you have long thought about turning that into a business — you could either sell what you make or you could write about your process in a blog — or even better you could do both things.
Want Another Reason to Start Right Now?
The path that lies ahead of you is a long one, with lots of twisty-turny bits, a few potholes and maybe even a few tree roots to trip over. However, it’s also going to be a fun adventure and once you start you will realize you want that adventure to go on and on. You want to put your ideas out into the world in whatever shape or form they inhabit. You want to feel alive, you want to stop just living to pay the bills and you want to recapture that feeling you had as a child when everything was new and there was so much to learn.
Therefore, the sooner you start, the more of the adventure you get to experience.
My Final Piece of Advice
So I have told you to start today; I have advised that you take one step at a time; and finally I am going to say don’t take any of it too seriously. I think one of the biggest problems in the world is that we all take everything WAY too seriously (and I’m just as guilty of that).
Instead, have a lighter touch. Be kinder to yourself. If things don’t work the way you expect them to, then pivot, find another way. But don’t stop moving forward, don’t give up and never, ever stop having fun.