I was catching up with a friend a couple of weeks ago over coffee. As the conversation progressed, I checked in with her and asked her about some of the goals she talked about wanting to pursue the past year. One of them, was starting her own business. She mentioned she was still excited about the idea but didn’t want to take any steps toward it until she felt she was in the perfect position to do so. I asked her what the perfect position meant to her? She mentioned she wanted to move to a new apartment first, decide the colors of her business for branding and improve some skills she felt she was lacking to fully reach her “personal” potential.
As I was talking to her, I realized this is something that happens to all of us. When I first wanted to start this blog, I thought about it for months, trying to perfect the color scheme, my writing and even topics to write about. I spent all this time in the planning phase instead of the action phase and in a way wasted months of time where I could have been evolving the blog.
Not much happens in the planning phase….
Some of us love planning, Im guilty of it. I have notes on top of notes on my iPhone app, I use notebooks, planners, I love the process of putting things into the universe and seeing that I have a plan. As great as it is to plan, some of us get caught up in this process. The high of seeing a list of tasks is less scary than actually taking action. But planning is nearly the beginning and too much planning can even be counter productive.
Figure it out as you go….
The big thing some of us do is we want to wait until everything is perfect. What if we start a design company and a client wants something you haven’t done before? well guess what, when that time comes, you’ll figure it out. A smart man once said, figure it out as you go. Instead of waiting for the perfect day, time, weather or when you feel ready, you need to start now and do what you can now. Build on things overtime, that’s where growth and real success happens.
For a recent venture I wanted to start, I knew what I wanted to do, but I was stuck in what I was missing. I kept telling myself, I don’t know how to do certain tasks that might come up, what if this, what if that. That kept me from taking action.
Start with what you’ve got….
I decide to start with what I had. Take everything day by day and make progress slowly. Whether you want to start an online store, and you’ve done enough research to start but still have fears of the unknown, start right now. Buy a domain, start writing, overtime you’ll gain momentum and make progress. This progress builds your confidence and overtime helps to accomplish any task that comes your way.
Understand you’ll make mistakes….
Someone once said to me, “you know why they call it practicing law, right?” is because lawyers gain more and more proficiency in their career overtime. The laws are constantly changing, technology is changing and one does not have the answer to everything. The best you can do is work on a goal and improve overtime, get better an better and put behind the fear of wanting to know everything about a subject matter before getting stared.
