You’ll Never Be “Ready,” So Stop Waiting

By Matt Duczeminski,

Throughout our childhood and early adult years, we’re conditioned to think we need to be “ready” to take the next big step in life.

Our teachers won’t let us get too far ahead of where they think we should be in terms of knowledge.

Our parents try to protect us from ideas and truths they think we’re not ready to learn about.

We, ourselves, hold back when faced with major decisions that we don’t believe we’re ready to make.

We’re constantly told we’ll understand certain things, or be able to do certain things, when we’re older—as if the passage of time alone is enough to teach us everything we need to know about life.

This way of thinking has a hugely negative impact on the way we live our lives.

For one thing, some of us feel we are ready to move forward in life, but are constantly being held back by societal norms. Additionally, there are those of us who never take the first step toward our goals because, despite being told by society we are ready to do so, we don’t believe we truly are.

—

The night I graduated from high school, I broke down into tears.

It hit me all at once as I returned home from the school-sponsored “All Night Graduation Party”: I had no idea what I was going to do with myself after walking across that stage.

Throughout my first eighteen years on Earth, life simply happened to me. I didn’t need to make decisions on my own. As long as I did the work that was given to me, I was passed on to the next grade.

Though I did well enough in school, had succeeded at many after-school jobs, and felt pretty good about my life in general, I didn’t feel as if I was ready to take the next step.

It was intimidating to think that everyone around me had a plan for the rest of their lives while I had no clue what I wanted to do. I figured if I was going to move away, spend thousands of dollars, and commit to learning a specific set of skills, I had to be 100 percent certain that it wouldn’t end up being a mistake.

It never once occurred to me that most of my peers were just as apprehensive about their future. But while I wasted time waiting until I was “ready” to dive into college, they dove in knowing they’d figure it out along the way.

—

I ended up attending a local two-year community college that fall. I figured I would “get the prerequisites out of the way” before narrowing my focus on specific coursework.

If I’m being honest, that’s what I told others—and myself. In actuality, I spent two years doing the bare minimum to pass my classes. I barely gave any thought to my future.

It’s not that I wasn’t interested in the material. It’s that I didn’t see myself ever doing anything with the information I learned.

I continued to believe that I’d know what to do “when the time came.”  

I failed to realize that I should have been using the prerequisite classes to help me figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, rather than simply taking courses just to fill up my schedule. Instead, I skated through four semesters of community college without truly learning anything that would help me get anywhere in life.

—

I was one of the last of my friends to move out on my own. For years, I had convinced myself that I wouldn’t be able to make it in the “real world.” The thought of living paycheck-to-paycheck and in debt scared me to death.

Once again, I never once stopped to think that all of my friends also owed thousands of dollars on car payments, college loans, and more, but it didn’t stop them from taking the next steps in their lives.

While my peers were well on their way to building a life for themselves, I spent my early twenties mistakenly believing it’d be better to put my life on hold and have money saved up for when I was “ready” to move out than to just do it and get busy living.

—

We all know that hindsight is 20/20, and time is our greatest teacher. But if we wait for time to teach us how to live our lives, we’ll have missed the opportunity to take advantage of these lessons.

We need to have confidence in our abilities, and faith in the notion that taking immediate action will result in much greater gains than if we were to wait until “the time is right.”

There are a few ways we can make this happen:

Stop Comparing Yourself to Everyone Else

If you constantly compare your accomplishments to others, you’ll always find a way to be disappointed. This disappointment can lead to self-doubt and feelings of unpreparedness.

As I mentioned before, I wasted an enormous amount of my twenties thinking that everyone else around me somehow had it all together while I was barely staying afloat.

I kept wondering when I would finally have the confidence and abilities needed to move forward in life—as if these things would just come to me one day.

I now realize that confidence and ability comes from active practice, and the reason many others around me may have been more successful was because they didn’t waste time hoping for something to come to them; they put in the effort to make it happen.

Identify and Challenge the Excuses That Hold You Back

“I don’t have enough money.”

“I don’t have a well-paying job.”

“I don’t know what I want out of life.”

“I’m not quite ready yet.”

Since there are innumerable ways things could go wrong when stepping out of our comfort zones, it’s possible to create an inexhaustible list of excuses to stay stuck, and seemingly safe.

But we must realize that most, if not all, of the excuses we make are temporary roadblocks, not concrete walls. Even if it takes a little extra effort, there are ways around them.

If you don’t have enough money to go back to school, or are stuck in a dead-end job, you might default to thinking you’ll never make something of yourself. But instead of wallowing in your sorrows during the time you have to yourself, you could sign up for cheap (or even free) online workshops to help you spring into the next chapter of your life.

If you don’t know what you want to do with your life, chances are it’s not because you don’t want to do anything. (It’s more likely that you want to do everything!) Unfortunately, too many of us allow our indecisiveness to manifest in stagnation, and we end up letting opportunities to try new and exciting things slip away from us.

Yes, we should be wary of the possibility that things won’t always go swimmingly in life. But if we let the fear of being unprepared for such contingencies stop us from taking steps forward, we’ll never get anywhere at all.

It’s okay to not feel like you’re ready to make big moves in life. We all feel that way at times.

But sitting around waiting to “be ready” won’t get you anywhere. You need to actively go out and get the experience that will prepare you for the next step.

Maybe you aren’t ready to take a giant leap into the next chapter of your life, but that doesn’t mean you should stop taking baby steps in the right direction altogether.

We tend to measure our worth by our major accomplishments: graduations, first jobs, marriages… the list goes on. But we often fail to realize that none of these things happen overnight. It’s through the little steps we take leading up to these major events that prepare us to take the giant leaps that define who we are.

As long as you continue to press forward, you’ll eventually get where you want to be.

Time will not prepare you for what’s next in life. Only your experiences, and the lessons you learn from them, can.

The First Steps Toward Creating a Life You Love

By Joanna Huliin

“My goal is to build a life I don’t need a vacation from.” ~Rob Hill Sr.

The other day I had an interesting conversation with a friend, who asked me the question “Who is the happiest person you know?”

Ask yourself this question now. It’s difficult to answer, isn’t it?

There are certainly people around me who seem to be happy, but the happiest person I know? I couldn’t easily come up with an answer.

The conversation with my friend proceeded with him saying, “You seem happy, but it’s so easy for you; you live in Cornwall by the sea, you work for yourself, and you have all the freedom in the world because you’re single.”

It made me smile to think about how people perceive others’ lives. If you ask the next person they might say the absolute opposite: “It must be hard for you living so far away from anything, starting a heart-centered business from scratch with nothing. You must be so lonely being single and doing it all on your own.”

And the truth is, all the above is true. I feel each and every variation of the above on occasions because I’m human! I think and dream just like a regular employed person, I love just like a married person, and feel and breathe just like a city dweller. We are all the same.

But the conversation made me reflect on my own happiness. What does it mean to be happy? I feel the happiest I’ve ever been right now, whether I look at my life with glass-half-full or half-empty eyes. I asked myself why, and the only answer I could think of is, right now I feel authentic.

I wake up each morning and my work feels like a joyful adventure, so I don’t have to drag myself through days, questioning the point of what I’m doing.

Feeling complete deep down for the first time in my life soothes the loneliness of not being in a loving partnership right now, and walking the beach with my dog every morning watching the sunrise, instead of being on a packed London commuter train, makes my heart burst with happiness.

This isn’t a recipe for happiness in any shape or form. These are just my things. My choices leading to the life I am creating for myself, from a place of authenticity.

I have started to understand and accept that my life is up to me—my choices, my creation. The life I am living right now resulted from the choices I made before now, and yet they are no longer important; only the choices I make right now are. Right now I am free from the past but have a choice in creating my future.

So often we look outward and feel trapped by things that aren’t real. For me it was my past, my CV, other people’s perceptions, my own fears, and those pesky little shoulds, from myself and others. Or we think that we’re slaves to the choices we made in the past. But the beauty of life is you always have a choice.

I understand that some things in life we literally can’t change—maybe you’re a parent or caregiver or have other responsibilities that limit you—but you still have a choice.

You can choose to resist and focus on the negative, the struggle, or you can choose to see differently, create opportunities for change, and ask for help. No matter what your life looks like right now, you can still create a life you love.

I believe that everyone can dig deep to find out what feels right for them, be honest with themselves and others, and align their life with that place of authenticity.

Perhaps you’re wondering, how an earth do I go about creating an authentic life? Where do I start? Well, this is obviously vastly different for everyone, but my advice would be to just start somewhere, and what better place than where you are right now?

By that, I mean start by looking within.

A simple daily meditation practice has changed my life, and I truly believe it can help anyone.

Meditation, for me, is about carving out a few moments each day to sit quietly, breathe, connect with myself, and recognize my part to play in a bigger whole.

Even if it’s just a few moments after I wake up or before I hop into bed at night, this is time free from distraction, free from the roles and responsibilities I identify myself with, free from the complications in life that I might identify as stress. It’s time for just me, to connect with myself and my truth.

Creating a life you love is really about aligning your life with your own core values—those things that are most important to you personally. Regular meditation will help you discover what those are.

It might also help to think about the activities you loved doing as a child and find some time to do one of those things one day soon. Express yourself and be creative—journal, draw, sing. Join an activity group, take a class, volunteer, be of service. Move your body with exercise or yoga.

The point is to listen to yourself and take action on what you discover. Connect with how you really feel and use that as your guide when making choices so you can create a life you truly love.

If you do this, you may eventually realize, as I did, that it doesn’t matter one teeny, tiny bit who the happiest person you know is; all that matters is that you’re happy with yourself and the life you’re living

3 Thoughts That Bring Me Hope, Perspective, Peace, and Strength

“Wake up today knowing that whatever happens, you can handle it.” ~Unknown

Tears filled my eyes, and an angry wave of despair washed over me. I just wanted to wear the jeans I had worn for a couple years. The cute ones with the jewels and deep pockets.

I’m guessing many of you can relate; clothes don’t always fit the way we want them to.

Four years ago, a doctor told me I was dying because of anorexia. It’s been a long journey, a story for another day, but I am here and I am alive.

This past year, I finally reached the weight that doctors had been urging me to reach for four years. I dug in, worked with a life coach, and I did it! I finally healed. But wait, shouldn’t the healing process feel great? Shouldn’t I feel proud instead of pudgy?

I should be proud, and I am; yet I still find myself battling with the voice that whispers, “You’re not good enough. You’ll never be enough.” And perhaps that’s what frustrates me the most about my negative attitude some days. Everyone would be proud if they knew why I put on twenty pounds this year, but I am neither eager nor vaguely willing to disclose everything.

It would be convenient if everything were permanently sunshine and roses after we reach a goal, but this is just not the case oftentimes. We reach a goal, and then more challenges arise. That’s okay. That’s life.

In my moments of shame, when I want to crawl under my bed and hide from the world, there are three thoughts that pull me out and help me find hope and perspective. The more I live, the more I am convinced that living fully is a just a matter of perspective. It’s not about taking certain actions or reaching specific results; it’s about experiencing life through an open and positive perspective.

You are a fighter. Whatever you’re going through, may these three thoughts bring you peace and help you find strength.

1. This is temporary.

My mom always told me, “You will not always feel this way.” And she was right. Happiness, sadness, anger—it all passes.

In my own battle with body image and feeling discouraged by my bigger jeans or curvier figure, this thought gives me so much hope. As real as discouraging feelings feel, they are only part of the picture.

At other moments, I could care less about what my jeans look like, much less the number on the tag (which no one sees by the way). I’m too caught up in enjoying the sunshine outside, hiking on the weekends with friends, focusing on my job, and planning lessons for my students.

There are moments when I feel comfortable in my skin, when I feel at peace. These moments give me hope that any temporary feeling, no matter how strong and painful, will pass. That feeling will pass. After-all, after a good workout, or a refreshing night’s sleep, or a good shower, don’t you feel like a new creature?

Everything is temporary. Every hard week at work, every hellish project, or stressful trip to the in-laws, it will pass. You are resilient, and you can ride this wave knowing it will wash on shore to the sandy beach eventually.

2. Expect good things.

This thought has changed my mornings. I wake up and tell myself to expect good things for the day. Maybe this seems like a no-brainer, but it’s a far stretch from how I formerly approached life—expecting the worst and battling with anxiety and fear about going to work or accomplishing everything.

Repeating “Expect good things” to myself has helped me notice the good things in my life.

I think awareness is powerful. If we remind ourselves to “expect good things,” we’re more apt to consciously look for them (for example, the sunshine, the flowers blooming, that stranger who held the door open).

Beyond noticing good things, we more likely to create them when we expect them to happen. The expectation makes us braver, more compassionate, and more love-filled.

If you don’t believe me, try it. I’ve found that it takes a certain pressure off my day when I trust that good things will happen. I feel more space for love, for creativity.

As a teacher, I tell myself to “expect good things” in the classroom. It helps me create more authentic dialogue, to trust that my students will be engaged and have valuable ideas to offer.

Finally, expect a healthy relationship between your mind and body. Maybe you’re asking, how? Sure, you can wish you were a different weight. A different jean size. Naturally hourglass-shaped. Whatever your ideal shape is.

But what if you expected to have a good relationship with your body and an enjoyable life right now, not after you’ve reached a certain size or diet? You get to pick the kind of attitude you cultivate with yourself, much like you cultivate a certain relationship with the people you love.

I can fight myself for gaining weight to be at my body’s natural set point, or I can “expect good things” at this (or any healthy) weight. More love. More adventures. More mental energy to do the things that I truly care about: learning, teaching, laughing, spending time with those I love.

We get to choose. Expect good things.

3. Find something to be excited about every day.

Sometimes, when I’ve been told to focus on gratitude, I feel guilty. Wow, I have an amazing partner, family, job… yet, I feel so ungrateful or unappreciative. When I focus on the things that excite me, however, I feel less guilty and just plain happier.

When I focus on what brings me joy, I’m able to focus less on my body and more on what I value. Again, learning, teaching, experiencing the community I’m in, spending time with the people I love. Memories that will last longer than jeans.

Maybe you’re excited about an upcoming vacation. Maybe you know you can go home and walk your dog. Maybe your children bring you joy. Maybe it’s a beautiful day and you can see the flowers blooming. There’s something that excites you in life. Focus on these things and you’ll likely feel less weighed down by your struggles.

I know that’s been true for me. Though I sometimes fixate on my size, what I really want isn’t to fit into those jeans. I want to feel strong and confident, and to have a perspective that embraces life and shares joy with others.

I don’t know what your story is, but I promise you’re not alone. You can face whatever you’re going through. It doesn’t have to be pretty or perfect. You don’t have to feel like a superhero. In my experience, the healing process is messy. It doesn’t have an uplifting soundtrack like in the movies. But you can do it. I promise. Anchor yourself in hope. You will not always feel this way. Expect good things. And think about what excites you.

Three Friends

This is the true story of three friends

 First one was brilliant, never gave up the first position in his school . Topper in every exam held in School, College and the University.

 Second one  was average, wouldn't fail but pushed to the next class by default.

 Third one was a trickster , a cheat and was an expert manipulator.

But these three were great friends, thick as thieves.

Once their education  was over.....

 The first one, the brilliant guy as expected became an excellent engineer.
He gave Indian Engineering Services exam, was chosen as Class one officer.
He became a Chief Engineer in Indian railways later.

 Second one graduated with Physics major and appeared for Civil Services exam, passed and was appointed as the head of the department (HoD) where his first friend was working at a lower level !!

 Third one didn't bother to study further after school, chose the right party at the right time, fought the elections, won, and became an MP, and later became a cabinet minister and under him were the Departments where two of his school friends were working.

This is not a fictional story.

 First one is E Shridharan .. Metro man.

 Second one is TN Sheshan Chief Election Commissioner.

 Third one is  KP Unnikrishnan who got elected five times as MP for Lok-sabha, and also became a cabinet minister during VP Singh's  tenure as PM.

Three friends - from the same school, the same teachers, but destiny chartered different  paths !!!

(Translated from Original  Malayalam)