Stop Waiting
Word to your mother. It’s International Women’s Day. Here’s to us, ladies. Here's to all the game plans I've learned from amazing entrepreneurial women. And here’s to the lessons I've learned through them. Here's to our constant mistake of waiting for that "perfect moment".
Before I go on, know that we’re all guilty in that we all wait for that perfect moment. The perfect moment to make the right decision. Wondering if there’s someone better out there for us, so we get picky and we wait for that perfect moment of a person to walk into our lives. Being under the societal and time-ticking pressures of a relationship, and expecting that “perfect moment” from our significant other in the form of an engagement ring. Not feeling 100% ready to make a commitment, so putting it on the perfect moment for next year. Even then, we come home from our 9-5 jobs, and while we’re making decent money and living a reasonable life, we’re still “not where we’d like to be”, because we’re bulldozing through our lives and waiting too long. The problem with people who worry about the perfect moments being like surprise ice cream at a some kind of khaki-shorts-wearing, humid summer camp is that they don't want to dedicate their time to the uncomfortable. So here’s some things I’ve learned on the way, as I’ve stopped waiting.
Truth One: The sooner you realize that there’s no such thing as the perfect moment, the sooner you make things happen and trail-blaze your own path.
Making the mistake of waiting comes in big and small sizes. Before you know it, those steps forward seem better for someday like tomorrow. This gap between where you are today and where you want to be starts with a decision to start, even if you’re not 100% ready. It won’t be easy initially, but don’t get discouraged. Being comfortable with the uncomfortable will grow with time. I struggle with it everyday, as do many others. The world is already full of partitioned and not-yet dreams that have yet to be met. But the people who start before they’re ready are the ones that change the world.
Truth Two: Waiting for a “realistic” life option is a time trap and depressing.
There are so many things in life you take for granted that someone else would think is crazy and unrealistic.
Also, when I’m talking about things that aren’t “realistic” that should be our goals, I’m not talking about Rolls-Royce-driving, bikini-pool-party-on-your-yacht throwing, foreign-love-interest-flirting, Dom-Perignon-chugging goals. That shit’s just out of my realm of coaching. Honestly, here’s an Audi commercial that tries to tell you that you’re being unique by buying a $39,000 car.
Getting a degree? There’s a guy somewhere whose family never went to college, and he thinks that’s unrealistic. Working for a company in Seattle or New York City? There’s a girl somewhere whose family works in minimum wage jobs in hole-in-the-wall-USA, and she thinks that’s unrealistic. But the truth of it all is that we get so accustomed to what’s normal in our lives that we hold ourselves back because it’s not “realistic”. If we put aside waiting for the perfect moment to get to the goals in our lives, we’ll finally release ourselves from the irritatingly loud mass of people who complain about why we’re not where we’d like to be. The solution? Work alongside the best in your field, read books that inspired them, listen to video interviews, study what they did to get where they are — and eventually, those unrealistic dreams will become less of an illusion, and more of a reality. After all, having insecurity about where you are is the formula for a successful, impactful career. But instead of leveraging terror into action, a lot of people spend all of their time planning and planning and planning and not doing anything. 90% of your plans are going to fail no matter what you do. Embrace the feeling of inadequacy in the now, and let it fuel you to make decisions for the future.
A helpful diagram, click to enlarge.
Truth Three: Learn to optimize not only for the short-term, but also for the long-term.
As for the long term, you can’t cut the process. Life is about the little things you do day in and day out. Work has nothing to do with what you call yourself, or what your lifestyle is like. It’s all about the things that you have to work on and accomplish every single day. That’s what matters, because that’s how you get somewhere. If you’re concerned with chasing the lifestyle, trying to take on the persona (wow, what an immaculately clean Instagram lifestyle you have), you’re missing the point. You’ll never make anything worthwhile, because making something worthwhile out of the little short-term-isms isn’t even on your radar.
Literally every single elderly person says that the biggest mistake young people make is being impatient. They burn all their bridges for the short term (like a job at a big company that will impress their friends and family) instead of thinking about their long term goals. Don’t be afraid to take one step back today to take two steps forward tomorrow. Fear of success is a thing too, especially for you ladies who want children. What if you launch your career actually takes off? What if you have more demand than you can keep up with? What if you make more than your husband, and it gets between you two? What if your success presents you with the decision of whether to quit your day job and redefine yourself? What if you threaten the status quo? What if all your acquaintances start asking you for jobs and money and favors? What if people want to hire you, but only if you uproot your life and move to a new city? What if your quiet evenings at home with your loved ones and Netflix become impossible to maintain along with your new endeavor? What if you stopped waiting for the perfect moment and it ruined your life? Goodness gracious, Heaven save the Netflix. I mean, there is age old wisdom backed by modern science that ambition and career success provides no lasting happiness and often causes more anxiety and stress.*
The solution? People who aren’t willing to “break the rules” a little bit usually end up wasting years of time and money trying to achieve a goal they could’ve achieved with a lot less. It doesn’t matter what you do in your career. What does matter, is navigating what you do well, what you want to do, and what you can be paid to do. You need to know how to navigate the world of office politics. You need to figure out how to add value outside of your role.
“If you’re early on in your career and they give you a choice between a great mentor or higher pay, take the mentor every time. It’s not even close. And don’t even think about leaving that mentor until your learning curve peaks.
There’s just nothing to me so invaluable in my business, but in many businesses, as great mentors. And a lot of kids are just too short-sighted in terms of going for the short-term money instead of preparing themselves for the longer term.”
Truth Four: You’re never going to be done.
It’s never going to happen. While you’re busily not waiting for the perfect moment, the moment that you think might perfectly, randomly, glitter from the heavens above, like some kind of sparkly moment that will weather all storms, will never come. If you keep chasing that feeling of the ticking the box, and becoming someone, there will never be an end to it. You have to chase the doing, because that’s where you’ll find satisfaction and fulfillment. We’re not talking about goals here. We’re talking about habits. People usually don’t focus on habits because goals sound much sexier in our minds. They feel more motivating in the moment when we think about them. There’s a clear image of a certain result in our head and that gets us excited. Habits, on the other hand, don’t sound as sexy in our heads. They’re long-term and repetitive. You’ve just got to shrug your shoulders, pour yourself a cup of coffee, turn up your workday Spotify playlist, and get to that underrated work. Rome wasn’t built in an day.
It’s not easy to get started and kick the “perfect moment” to the side. It takes a long time to build something for yourself, whether it’s a career, a financial goal, being healthy, or even just graduating. All you can do is improve. Constantly improve. To succeed is to move the needle forward. Ceaselessly. And the one, single way to do that is to set whatever you’re working on loose, gather feedback and try again. And sooner or later, you’re going to get better.
My biggest struggle with waiting for the perfect comes with my career. Though I know through design, I’m one of those people who impact thousands of people through their work. I’m so excited to get out my bed on Monday mornings and head to work at 8am so that I can design something beautiful—to go after the best and make it better. There seems to be a bias in the human circuitry that underestimates what it takes to accomplish really big goals and overestimates the effort required to take on a series of small goals, thus, waiting for the perfect moment. In my experience, it’s the regular heartbeat of pursuing and nailing small win after small win that eventually leads to the big ones.
So, here's to International Women's Day. Here's to a better path as women. Here's to not waiting.