If we wait until we’re ready, we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives
lemony snicket, the ersatz elevator
Waiting until you’re ready is such a key but difficult mindset to overcome when you’re making big decisions for personal growth. It can take a long time to feel like you’re ready, which results in missed opportunities and greater pains for personal growth.
It’s something I am trying to overcome as I’m changing careers. I admit that I had forgotten about this mindset even though I wrote about it briefly here. It all came back to me when I went paintballing a couple of weeks ago.
Waiting in paintball is usually not a good strategy
I went paintballing with a couple of work friends about two weeks ago. It was fun…and painful. 100% would do again, but with more body armor.
One of the key strategies in paintballing is to take up as much field space as you can in the beginning of the game. So when the ref begins the game, your team should rush forward (whether it’s the center or the flanks) as quickly as possible. If your team doesn’t move up, you allow the other team to occupy more area to shoot and hit you.
I certainly did…not move forward early in the game. I was way too scared to go out there. 90% of my games were me sitting in the back and shooting from afar. And 90% of my games ended up me getting shot in the arm, back, and leg on my own team’s spawn side of the field.
THE ONLY TIME where my team won and I wasn’t hit by a paintball was during my second game where I quickly moved up the flank. After the first game, one of the refs told me that I should move up more on the flank. At first, I was like “Nah no way – too scary to get flanked on the flank and get shot”.
During that second game, I realized that my flank was a little more open. At that point, the only thing I didn’t know was where the opposing team was. To be honest, I just risked it for the biscuit and ran forward. Luckily nobody was there and I was able to secure the flank.
You are almost never 100% ready…
When it comes down to making big decisions in your life, you are almost never 100% ready. There are always things outside of your control that affect your decision that you can’t plan for.
Human tendency is to not enter uncomfortable or unknown situations. We want to make sure we are in control and that we know everything that will happen to us.
In my paintball experience, if I knew exactly where the other team was placed, I would have no issue just running in, but I didn’t. Aside from not wanting to get hit, a big reason why I didn’t move forward was because I didn’t know where the other team was. And it’s extremely difficult to know when the opposing team’s positions are constantly changing and you have paintballs just flying at you from multiple directions.
…but still do your homework though
For any big decision you make. Outline the risks, benefits, and potential outcomes as best as you can.
Then once you’ve established the details, minimize the wait time to making a choice.
It’s easy to wait, but waiting too long can hurt you in the long run. You can get too comfortable waiting and end up missing opportunities that may have given you the thing you wanted. If you find yourself feeling like “man I just wish I can just go”, then go!
The three door analogy you can use to decide
I sort of thought about this analogy a couple of years ago. It involves 3 doors (it is not the Monty Hall problem…).
The first door is a door you never open because you’re too afraid to see what’s behind it.
The second door is a door you think about opening. You put your hand on the handle but then constantly think about all the options and possibilities of what could be behind the door. You end up never opening it.
The third door is a door you open and walk through. You think about it but then decide to open it anyways and take on whatever is behind the door.
The idea behind this analogy is that the only way to go through the door is to open it. Deciding not to go through or thinking/pondering/overanalyzing (all of which I’m very good at…) the situation result in the same outcome: you never open the door and go through it. You don’t move forward.
If you’re about to make a big decision and the only things that are preventing you from committing are things outside your control, then I encourage you to commit. Stop waiting. Open the door and walk through.
