Start before you feel ready...but maybe with a plan to catch up with yourself!

Last year, I attended an event to hear the founder of the Magic Breakfast, Carmel McConnell, MBE talking about how we often have brave or big ideas and dreams but feel stuck as to where to start because it all feels so big. Sometimes that means we don’t start at all.

Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time coming up with grand plans of things I wanted to do and learn but without necessarily doing anything to make that happen (where was coaching when I needed it?). My self-talk often included me saying to myself and others that the time wasn’t right, I wasn’t good enough to do whatever, didn’t have the right expertise or I didn’t have all my ducks in a row.

Perhaps it’s because well over half of my potential 4000 weeks of life have already gone (Oliver Burkeman has a lot to answer for!) but I’m now of the opinion that time is going to march on whether or not I do something so I may as well do the thing!

For that reason, I’ve done quite a lot of starting before I’m ready over the last 5 years after many years of procrastinating.  My two biggies are:

·      Setting up my own coaching business – People Like Me

·      Writing the first draft of a crime novel!

Before that, I had so many reasons why I wasn’t doing either of those things. In the case of going self-employed, my reasons were fair and practical; worry about financial security, lack of business experience, worried about missing being part of a team. Having been employed by other people for four decades, this felt like a massive jump into the unknown.

But knowing what I didn’t know, I went to business school in the evenings, to do a ‘start up’ course and I went to see a financial advisor to see how I could make it work. It was still scary and I had no idea what the future would hold but I started to realise that there would never be the perfect time and instead of asking myself... ‘what if this goes wrong, I started to ask myself...

‘what if it goes right?”

So I decided to start before I felt ready (as I realised that might be never) and took the plunge, but with a clear focus on how I could potentially make this work. I treated the first two months after I left paid employment as my new job of ‘setting up my business’ using everything I had learned on the course. I was ready to launch earlier than planned and even though a voice in the back of my mind kept asking.... ‘but are you really ready’, I took messy action and got going.

I’m now in my fourth year and going strong. I start before I feel ready most weeks, and then catch up with myself by learning what I need to learn and linking with people who can support. Because the other thing I’ve learned is...

Motivation might have got me started and through the first mile but consistency and discipline gets me to the finish line

Starting before I feel ready has not been about taking huge leaps when I feel like it. It’s been about acknowledging I can’t get everything perfect straight away but instead if I plan and take small incremental steps in the direction I want to go, I’ll get there.

My second example of starting before I feel ready is more exciting to me because I have always wanted to write a book, specifically a crime fiction novel, for as long as I can remember. I wasn’t actually putting pen to paper but could talk a good book!

So, finally, in the last two years I took messy action and got started. Imposter feelings whirled around my head and I was aware that everyone in the world seemed to have started writing a book during the pandemic. Who on earth would want to read anything I had written?

But this time I pushed those voices down and actually got going. I started when I was on a trip in Guatemala when a whole plot came to me based on the trip we were taking and the people we were travelling with. I bought a notebook there and then in the village of Flores and started mind mapping ideas. One of my fellow travellers took the picture below as I started writing without me knowing and later sent it to me saying it could go on the inside of my book cover! My brain was fizzing with ideas and I just wanted to keep going with no idea of where it was going to end up.

For once, I didn’t overthink it, I just wrote.

When I got home and back to work, I was struggling to make time to write. I didn’t want to lose the excitement now I had started. I made the move to condense my hours so that I work full time over 4 days giving me protected time to write for a full day on Friday  with a few hours on Sunday too. It took me a couple of months to make that work but now it’s an established pattern.

I found many free online courses with respected writing schools to develop the craft of writing, enrolled in a couple of short paid courses and also managed to go on a Spanish writing retreat where Rizzo the Portuguese water dog kept me company.

In the beginning, I got a bit distracted from my book and kept dabbling with short stories so I was a bit slow in getting going but once I was used to getting in the zone, it’s been the joy of my week. I get excited on Thursday evening knowing my writing day is coming up. I start every Friday with my notebook, go somewhere nice for a coffee or breakfast and that habit gets me into my writing head for the rest of the day.

So, two years after I took messy action and put pen to paper, after years of procrastination, I have completed the first draft of my book. It’s a destination thriller – a genre I didn’t know existed until I started writing. Now I’m in the editing process, checking for plot holes, character development and looking at making the dialogue and description  as good as I can get them. Summer is my aim to have it in a state I am happy to show to others. I have actually written a book!

This consistency and discipline has made my self employed life and my writing  part of who I am and what I do now. I live as I coach and the plot for my next book is already a mind map in another colourful notebook and I can’t wait to start it.

Both of those things may have ended up in a world of lost opportunities if I hadn’t started before I felt completely ready.

So, my invitation to you is to consider...

what have you always wanted to do or have been putting off that you could perhaps start before you are ready?

If you want support to explore that thought, you know where I am!