If you ask anyone who has kids how long you should wait before having kids, you’ll probably get an answer like: “You’re never really 100% ready, so if you want kids, just have one.”
The same goes for the things you’re not doing in your business.
We always think we need one more piece of knowledge. One more employee. One more location. One more revenue increase. One more class. One more tool.
So we wait.
The Fear Muscle
Thinking we need one more whatever is our subconscious “fear muscle” protecting us from some little piece of unknown, as if the one possible obstacle we can think of is enough to prevent us from starting, much less succeeding.
That one thing is usually not a start/stop choice, much less a project-ending obstacle. It’s usually just something we have to deal with – and it might not become an issue for weeks, months or even years. The scope of the project, the market and who knows what else could change by then. This hesitance tends to be an internal protection mechanism that we really don’t need. As a species, we’re far more adaptable than we realize, but our subconscious loves to protect us from what feels like an unknown.
In business, it’s protection we rarely need. In fact, if we need protection from anything, it might be protection from the inertia that keeps us from starting things.
Inertia is often the biggest obstacle we face. We tend to be afraid, or at least hesitant, to start as if we can only create the perfect child by having that child at the perfect instant in our lives. Anyone with kids knows better. Anyone who has started and built a business (or anything of substance) already knows this – but sometimes we still wait.
We’re not talking about the normal kind of afraid, just the “well, I need one more whatever to be certain this will work” kind of afraid.
Really, you don’t need that one more whatever. You just need to start. Start on the next project, the next service, the next journey or the next challenge and see where it takes you.
Do one thing
I know, it sounds simple. It sounds like common sense. Yet how many times have you waited and then later, wondered why you waited so long?
If you have to backtrack or stop to learn something, so what? It’s part of the process. You may zig or zag now and then, but that’s no different than what Marissa Mayer, Richard Branson or Warren Buffett deal with. Maybe the scale and probably the resources are different for them, but the PROCESS is the same.
Just get started…and keep moving.
{ 0 comments }
