You Will Never Be Ready
So Start Now
I wrote the following piece a few years ago, and I think I just forgot to publish it. Ironically, it was part of a book I have yet to finish, tentatively titled Start, Finish, Share.
Irony of that situation aside, one of my favorite activities is encouraging people (friends, clients, random people I meet on the plane) to try new things, release their creative work into the wild, and jump off the proverbial cliff when it means the moon might be in reach.
As I support a few emerging projects to launch, it seems like a good moment to finally publish this chapter. (And one day maybe the whole book will cohere.)
Check out what’s emerging here:
“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” —Kurt Vonnegut.
As a kid in my Newton, Massachusetts, Hebrew after-school program, I thought the idea of Tikkun Olam (repairing the world) seemed kind of hokey. Imprisoned in whitewashed walls, chalkboards, and plastic chairs, the concept felt abstract. It had little to do with me.
Today, however, as an entrepreneur and change-seeker, I have reconnected with this idea of “world repair” in a more meaningful way. Some combination of Alan Watts, Joseph Campbell, and Mary Oliver has saved me from drowning in doubt about the point of my existence.
In summary, the point appears to be: live, play, try your best, make meaning.
And, maybe, make meaning by trying our best to heal the world. Repair. Mend. Make whole.
When wounds heal, when cracks fill, when broken things knit themselves back together, they become better than new.
That would be something, wouldn’t it? To create not a new world, but a better one. To leave our path not as if we had never walked there, but better for our having stepped through, endowed with a strength and resilience unique to us, to our feet, to our footsteps.
Unpopular opinion: All the inner work, the self-growth and development, the healing—it is a means to an end, not the end itself. The work has no inherent value.
What if it’s NOT about the journey? Don’t worry, it’s definitely not about the destination either.
I mean, what if it’s about the footprints?
What if the only thing that matters is if, in the act of journeying, we make the path better?
Tikkun Olam does not demand perfection of us. It demands that we look up from our belly button and try. Which is, maybe, depending on who you ask, the whole point of being here.
I feel good enough to do good. I am good enough to do good. And so are you.
In 2018, a series of happy coincidences led to my training with ESD Global to become an Empowerment Self-Defense instructor. In 2021, hundreds of teaching hours and extensive training later, I received the highest level of certification granted by the organization. Thanks to various synchronicities, I also launched Mujeres Fuertes (Strong Women), a Costa Rica-based empowerment project focused on Holistic Self-Defense.
I didn’t wait to be a black belt martial artist to feel good enough to teach my first workshop. (Side note: ESD is a violence prevention methodology, not a martial art, so this would have been unnecessary.) I didn’t wait to feel like the most qualified expert in the country to build my platform and brand.
I didn’t wait to have all my business ducks in a row.
Rather, I jumped, and I found my wings on the way down.
I have developed most of my projects this way—in mid-air. Of course, I tend to work inductively rather than deductively, so that may have something to do with it. Nevertheless, at a certain point, we all must jump before our wings are fully grown.
Because they will never be fully grown.
You will never be ready, not if readiness means perfection. You may never feel like the expert you are, and you will probably always grapple with doubt. But our world is coming apart at the seams, and she doesn’t need Goldilocks’ “just right” remedy.
She needs all of us to do our best, imperfectly.
You will never be ready. You will never be perfect. You will never be done getting the plan or the product “just right.”
So relax, let that thought system wither and die, get out of your way, and get started.
You will never be ready. So start now.