You Don’t Need to Feel Ready

As human beings, we have a tendency to believe that we must feel differently before we can begin to behave differently.

It’s a thing I’ve witnessed in many people, including myself. A sense of readiness can be the one thing that actually holds you back. Take a moment to imagine if you felt ready instantly to begin all the things you’d previously thought about? What would you have achieved by now? I tend to shy away from exploring that too much, because I know that I have held myself back in the past.

The concept of readiness can sound like:

We will change our eating habits when we feel more motivated (normally we tell ourselves this will occur after an indulgent weekend).

We will begin the workout routine when life feels less busy (and we always start on a Monday).

We will set the boundary when we feel more confident, have the difficult conversation when we feel less anxious, or change how we respond to someone when their behaviour no longer affects us quite so much. (We often give one more chance before we choose to face into this)

I hear a version of this in both a professional and personal capacity, “I’m not quite ready yet, but I’m almost there.” I think almost everyone reading this, will recognise this moment in themselves. We convince ourselves it sounds considered…responsible, even. It suggests that something useful is happening in the space before taking action and if we wait long enough, readiness will eventually arrive and our motivation will begin. But readiness is a moving target, and the meaning we place on it, follows closely.

Readiness can become the quiet bargain we make with ourselves, the challenge is that confidence and the absence of fear may never arrive in the order we are expecting them to. And, we can sometimes stay in this dreaded loop for years, for some people this can feel torturous, and I have seen people become disappointed in themselves for this in-action.

In a recent podcast conversation with Ricky, founder of Raising your Game, we explored the gap between knowing and doing. Most people can explain what they want to change and, in many cases, they already know what they need to do….awareness itself is not always the missing piece. Sometimes the missing piece sits in the emotional conditions we have placed around taking action, it’s the safe zone that we unconsciously wrap our minds in to help us feel comfortable.

Depending on the circumstances, I will often ask someone how many people have they spoken to about the challenge they are facing. If I am the first person, I think, wonderful, let’s take time to explore it together. Perhaps they need space to understand what is happening or identify the support they need. But if they tell me they have discussed it with many people, I instead ask a different question.

What has changed so far? The answer is often nothing. They have thought, talked, analysed and revisited the issue multiple times, but they have not felt ready to begin. They appear to be less consciously comfortable at remaining in the in-between state. They need to speak to think while evaluating their challenge, but they are not acting. At that point, I become curious about what all those conversations are doing for them. Are they creating clarity, or are they providing temporary relief from the discomfort of acting?

Waiting is not always avoidance, sometimes not doing anything is exactly what we need. We may need to rest, reflect or decide whether the change we are considering is genuinely aligned with who we are. But there is a difference between a pause with a purpose and a pause that keeps moving the starting line. (Having awareness of what each one looks like for you, will help you support yourself in moving away from the least resourceful state)

Genuine preparation should give us something: greater clarity, useful information, renewed capacity or a defined next step. Protected waiting often returns us to the same conversation. We still want the change….we still know what we could do….but we continue hoping that confidence will arrive and fear will disappear before anything is asked of us. That is the quiet bargain, I like to think of it as an internal trade off.

In my experience working with people, is that confidence often grows from evidence they can personally capture. This data point might be feedback from others, the way they feel about themselves, the output of an action, but ultimately we begin to see ourselves differently after we repeatedly do something that requires courage. The action does not have to be dramatic, it simply needs to be one small, credible action. Something small enough to do now and meaningful enough to count. It needs to feel easy, and achievable.

I found myself in this position a few months ago, starting my podcast was an example of this for me. For years, people I had trained, coached or supported had encouraged me to create one. I remember sitting on a beach in Ibiza with my friend Sally, deeply immersed in conversations and she said, “Oh Cole, I wish I could just have you in my pocket,”….which eventually became the tagline, “Perspective in your pocket.” I always knew that this particular conversation would be one of the moments that pushed the needle forward in taking action for me. Thank you Sally!!!

I was intrigued by the idea of hosting a podcast, but I kept telling myself it was not the right time. The honest truth was that I was afraid it wouldn’t add value to others. The first action I took was not actually launching a podcast. Doing the work that I do, I know that starting small and consistent is the key to success. With that in mind I sat down with a pen and paper and wrote a list of the topics I felt I had within me to share. These topics came from experiences, observations, education and most importantly, implementation (I knew that they worked) and the list went on for over three large pages. I was surprised at how easily the topics and techniques poured out of me. Once I started listing them down, I couldn’t stop. All of a sudden the initial doubt quite quickly turned into frustration that I hadn’t started earlier.

Seeing those pages reminded me of the real-world experience, tools and techniques I had gathered throughout my career. I already had evidence that they had made a difference in people’s lives…people frequently share kind notes of the impact we achieved together, and I collect these and sporadically review them to remind myself of the difference that was made. In fact I used these notes of feedback when exploring what my bigger purpose was, but that topic is for another day. I did not have proof that a podcast would succeed, but I realised I didn’t need that proof in order to create it. I recognised success was making a positive impact….it was about expanding peoples lives.

I asked myself how I would feel if, this time next year I was still in the same position as I am today, and had made no meaningful step closer to achieving my ambitions. This thought created a significant physiological reaction in my body, I felt somewhat nauseous and a sense of discomfort. I discussed this with Ricky in our podcast, and I express how this is genuinely one of my biggest fears and equally one of my biggest drivers to taking action. And, with that in mind, I began the podcast.

Within the first few days, my attachment to whether the podcast would be successful began to loosen. It was not perfect by any means, I made occasionally errors, or my intonation could have been more pronounced but I simply found joy in creating the content. People shared that it was helping them, and that was enough. I remember thinking that even if I helped ten people change how they felt about themselves, that was reason enough to continue.The small action of listing down the topics I had to share, did not remove every uncertainty. It did however, show me that uncertainty did not need to make the decision. I had everything I needed to begin, even without guaranteed success.

This is also why going all in is not always helpful. When we have waited a long time to start something, we can become impatient with ourselves and attempt a complete overhaul. We create an intense plan, hold ourselves to an unrealistic expectation, and then interpret any inconsistency as evidence that the change was never going to last.

It’s a bit like, creating a new fitness goal, but before you start, you buy all the cute outfits, get the best equipment, sign up to the fanciest gym, and spend money on a ton of supplements and protein powders. You even block out every spare moment in the week where you’ll go for a workout….you’ve planned every detail…and then Monday comes, you begin…you go hard, and then you miss a class, and in that simple moment you decide that you have failed, and often people give up.

What if we’d just started small…perhaps we should have started with walking consistently, and expand from there. Smaller, consistent actions offer a different kind of evidence.They are much easier to become consistent in, and consistency is crucial when building confidence and taking action. I like to think of smaller actions as a bit of mind trickery.

There are also times when resisting or reflecting is exactly the right thing to do, they both serve purposes. The question is whether the waiting has a job, for example; Is it helping you recover? Is it giving you information you genuinely need? If you hear yourself saying, “I want this, but I don’t feel ready yet,” perhaps the most useful question is not, “How do I become ready?” Perhaps it’s….what are you waiting to feel? And what could you do before that feeling arrives?

The underlying message in this article is simple!! You will not always feel ready to begin, and the more you convince yourself that readiness must be felt to start, the longer you will be waiting to achieve your goals.

My biggest piece of advice:Start smallBecome ConsistentExpand slowly