Do It Scared
Do you ever feel like you’re not quite ready?
To get married?
Build a family?
Quit your job?
Start that business?
You are learning everything you possibly can. Reading all the blogs Listening to all the podcasts. Attending all the seminars. Buying all the courses. You feel like everybody else has already said yes to the dress, but there’s no Prince Charming waiting for you at the end of the aisle.
Yet.
If you wait until you’ve learned all the things, you’ll never begin. You’ll never be ready.
The perfect time is not some far in the future imagined place.
Just do it scared.
It’s true you may not know as much today as you’ll know in two weeks. Or two months. Or two years. But what you’ll learn through experience is priceless.
Here’s some examples from my own life, and what I learned through them:
1) My husband and I got married young. Some people might have said we were too young. When we planned our wedding, neither of us had a job. We didn’t care—we were young and in love! And guess what—we still are! (Only now we’re old and in love) And one of the biggest reasons we’ve been able to make it work is because we grew up together. We figured it out together. Neither one of us knew what we were doing, but back then we were each other’s biggest fans. That's still true today!
2) Lots of people won’t have babies until everything is perfect. They want to have the perfect job with the perfect 401K, and the big house with the correct number of bedrooms, bathrooms, and maybe even a playroom. When we got pregnant with our first daughter, we were living in a one-bedroom apartment in a terrible school district. I often joke that we would still be there if it wasn’t for that little girl. There’s nothing that catalyzes change quite like constraint. (Adding a new person to our family forced us to make some changes).
3) My husband, Gavin, used to work for a large consulting company. When he realized that the road to partnership meant lots of travel and time away from home, he decided to quit. He had acquired skills and experience to serve him well, so he made the leap, and never looked back. It was scary, and we didn't know what the future would hold, but we knew that we wouldn't experience success on our terms if we didn't do the things that aligned with our personal values.
4) A few years ago, I had a dream to start a business. As it turned out, the business was more of a passion project than a pathway to financial freedom, but along the way, I discovered three important truths: 1) People want to help you on your pathway to success 2) You know more than you think you do, and 3) Experience is never wasted.
The bottom line is that you have to DO IT SCARED if you’re going to do it at all. I’m not advocating for people to get married young or quit their jobs or go into debt, but if you have a dream worth doing, you will be scared.
Do it anyway.