I’ve always used perfection as a guide on how to live my life.
It’s only until years later I realized perfection was actually the enemy of good.
Because perfection for me meant that everything had to be perfect.
Whenever I was going to start something new, I waited for the “perfect time” before doing it.
Whenever I was going to do something new, everything needed to be laid out perfectly clear so the results could be perfect as well.
This created certain habits for me where I could spend weeks upon weeks of planning things out and end up never actually acting on any of it.
Doing something new means going out of our comfort zone which we all know can be uncomfortable.
And facing this fear of ours takes courage which can take some time to build up.
Our brain likes to map out a lot of different outcomes of what could happen to be prepared with solutions and make as perfect of a result as possible.
But by letting our brain take its time to prepare us, we could instead become the complete opposite – not prepared at all.
We wait for the perfect time before doing something without realizing that just doing it is what creates the perfect time itself.
Execution creates the starting point, not waiting around.
So, do you usually find yourself waiting for the perfect time to start and end up postponing it instead?
Perhaps you have an amazing idea of something but can’t quite get your ass to execute on it?
Then you’re certainly not alone and in this very distracted world we live in, you’re not to be blamed.
The answer to this is very simple, we just have to start doing it.
But because we’re waiting for ourselves to execute, it seems as if it all turns into an endless loop.
There’s something else stopping us from breaking out of this loop and hindering us from executing.
That is fear, and our very comfortable comfort zone which we don’t want to break out of because it’s too comfortable.
Fear of failure and fear of what other people will think of us.
Yes, that’s right, fearing what others would think of me was what held me back the most in my life.
And the fear of failing.
I essentially had a lot of worries which all became barriers for any progress.
I kept telling myself as to why today wasn’t good enough to start something and I always postponed the start.
Waiting and waiting like I did, I never quite seemed to realize that the perfect time I was so eagerly waiting for, would never actually come to me, I had to get to it.
And I did.
Slowly but steadily, I sat myself down and started watching a course online instead of YouTube.
It was a very passive action which didn’t require me to do anything other than watch, but at least I did something.
Then I really enjoyed what the course offered and started following along and experimenting on my own.
The best part of it all was, I stared executing and once I had started, I was in.
I kept going and going, made tons and tons of progress that was actually visible.
Being able to see all the progress I’d made got me motivated to continue the next day and the day after that.
I had created myself another loop, but this time I made actual progress towards my goals.
Post after post got written and published on the site and it got bigger and bigger.
Morning after morning I found myself starting the day off at the gym and building the discipline for the rest of the day.
All I had to do was to get myself to the computer or to the gym or whatever was on the agenda, and then by having started, things sorted themselves out.
I made the starting point as comfortable as I possibly could to make this choice the most convenient over anything else.
Restricting access to apps and other things that were normally very comfortable and could distract me for hours.
Deleting games from my computer to make them the most tedious choice.
I basically forced myself to the starting point and got stuff done.
I even decreased the fears I had previously by creating a new fear that would further push me to the starting point.
That new fear was the fear of what I would miss out on if I didn’t start.
All my dreams, goals and desired lifestyle.
Having this clearly written down on a piece of paper made it more real and would remind me every day of what I could be missing out on.
Seeing that list was not very comfortable at all and the most comfortable thing was instead to start working and make that list more within reach.
I couldn’t find the perfect time to start, and I don’t know if it would ever show up, so I created it myself by making the start the easiest thing to do between all the distractions.
I got control over life, and I started creating a sense of trust in myself that I could actually get things done.
I only had to force myself to do the start and after 2 minutes the rest would evolve by itself.
It got easier for every day that I got to working and soon enough it would be a habit of mine.
Create yourself a similar list to mine, with all your dreams, goals and anything you want to do.
Include things that you would be able to do whenever that thing is achieved and what it will look like if you don’t achieve it.
Perhaps you find it a hard time to start exercising.
Then you should put down anything that can be the outcome of not doing it, like living unhealthy, gaining weight and increasing the risk of getting sick.
And what your life will look like when you do achieve it, like living healthy, losing weight, gaining control of your life and decreasing the risk of getting sick.
Make the negative list as scary as possible to look at, and you’ll find yourself going to the gym and reducing the risk of it happening.
Note that failing is the most valuable lesson we get and remember to learn from it instead of giving up completely.
I think we can all agree that the preferred scenario is to always reach our goals.
That’s why we set them in the first place.
They will not be achieved by themselves and by just waiting around for someone to hand them over to us, we will miss out on them entirely.
Face your fears, get out of your comfort zone and put yourself out there.
The only thing you’ll ever regret is not doing it.