Stop Waiting to be “Ready”

Education, research, and self-development are important, but they are a means to an end, not the end. People often get sucked into this merry-go-round because it constantly reminds us that we don’t know everything. But the fact is, we CAN’T know everything. And furthermore, we can’t know what we need to know until we make a choice, take an action, and step out in the world.

I know someone who had 15 years of experience in his industry and finally landed a prestigious position he had been seeking for years. He dove in with both feet and discovered the stress and politics involved in his job wasn’t what he wanted. Until he had experienced it first-hand, he couldn’t know that he needed a job where he worked alone and had a lot of autonomy. He reevaluated his situation and within a year had nailed the job of his dreams.

We can only make decisions with the information we have at the time and we can never have all the information. It’s easy to look back and say, “If I knew what I know now…” But we didn’t and we couldn’t, so we made the best decisions we could with the information we had at the time.

Now we have more knowledge, experience, and wisdom and we get to make a new decision.