The Main Reason You Should Start Before You’re Ready

Are you failing to start? Are you sitting on the sidelines waiting for permission to get in the game? Well, can I infuse a truth into your life today? You’ll never be fully ready. The only solution is to start before you’re ready.

I know that’s painful to hear. I know that means you may not put your best foot forward.

Let me give you a personal example. I just recently got back from a trip to Tennessee where I had the opportunity to sit and be interviewed on set with Michael Hyatt for the Platform University members (see pic). 

Immediately after the interview here’s all the thoughts that were going on in my head:

• I thought of all the good answers I should have given in the interview
• I thought about the stupid answers I did give
• I wished I’d worn a different shirt
• I wished I had sat a different way

But here’s the truth: success cannot be summed up into a single event.

Success is found in a series of small steps, to which you learn and grow, and it’s no different with you today.

You are putting all of your hope and dreams into that single one event that you think is going to make everything perfect. The truth is success is a series of small steps and you have to start before you’re ready so that you can learn and grow in order to improve along the way.

I first learned this truth at a John Maxwell’s writer conference. He was holding this one-day event for writers, which was actually the very first time he’d done a single event just for aspiring writers. Every single person that day got a copy of his first book.

It wasn’t till the end of the day that he shared with us why he gave us a copy of his first book.

He said: “I gave you a copy of my very first book to encourage you. Once you read my first book, you’ll be encouraged because you’ll see how bad my writing was when I first got started.”

What helped to make John Maxwell great wasn’t his first book. It was the fact that he started before he was ready. Each book he learned something new and improved. The same can be said of you.

In the book Turning Pro from Steven Pressfield, he makes a powerful statement that is sure to challenge all of us.

“The sure sign of an amateur is he has a million plans and they all start tomorrow.”

Are you like that? Do you have a million plans or a million ideas? Do you live with big ambition and yet you’re sitting on the sidelines because they all start tomorrow? The secret to success is to start before you’re ready.

Let me leave you with a personal video. back in 2011, we had a dream of launching Blogging Your Passion University. Things didn’t always go as smooth as we had hoped. Here’s a video filled with a few of the many bloopers, mistakes and challenges we faced in “starting before we were ready.”

Jonathan Milligan Jonathan has been blogging since 2009 and is still in awe that the Creator of the Universe desires to have a relationship with him. His passions include spending time with his kids, reading, March Madness, surprise get-a-way trips with his wife, and watching funny YouTube videos.