Continuous Learning

We all have experienced such situation before - looking for the perfect timing to do something. Well - when was the last time that you found the perfect timing?

“Oh - I will take care of that later”.

“There wasn’t a right moment for me to ask her out”.

“The market just crashed, and this is not the right time to strike out on my own”.

Either we have said them ourselves or we have heard someone saying them. And sometimes others are not making things better by giving you the same advice. For some reason, timing is a big deal for us. Somewhere in our subconscious, we believe that if we have the right timing, things will all just work out. If the market is just right, we can catch the wave all the way to stardom. But if the timing is wrong, then the chance for our success is zilch. As such, it’s clear that we believe external forces truly control our destiny.

Of course, sometimes such behaviors might be justified. For example, someone might have asked us to take on a task either that we do not care to do, or that we have something of higher priority to work on. Another situation is that we are very good at what we do, and what we do does depend on timing, such as investing. For these, “not the right time” might be the right response. We are not concerned about the above situations.

Instead, the situation we are talking about is when we truly care about something deeply that we can only tolerate one particular outcome. For example, you may have a deep crush on someone else but can never muster the courage to express your feeling, because you are afraid to be rejected, and you have to settle for the “best friend” title. Or you may have a strong desire to start a business, but because you are afraid to fail and be ridiculed for trying and getting an “I told you so”, so you continuously wait for the right opportunity and stay in a “getting ready” mode. In these situations, we look for the “perfect” timing, and we constantly fail to find it.

Why? Because in such situations, we care about the outcome so much, we create such a high expectation on having a particular result, we effectively become afraid of it turning out differently.

We become consumed by fear. Instead of focusing on how to make things work, our minds focus on the what-ifs.

“What if s/he won’t like me? I will be so ashamed”.

“What if I fail at my business and go bankrupt? I will be devastated”.

We tell ourselves, “okay, maybe just wait for a bit longer, the right opportunity will show up.” But day after day, the timing is still not right, and we keep on waiting.

Or rather, we keep on preparing. We tell ourselves, “I am not wasting my time. I am working on it”. But we still have nothing to show. Instead, as each day goes by, our confidence sank lower, and we give ourselves more rationalizations along the same time. Eventually, we will rationalize away the whole desire, and tell ourselves that it’s never worth it in the first place. We give up.

And we give up not just the desire, but also a part of our self-worth. Because deep down we know we have failed to try something that could have made us happy. And that’s how we poison ourselves slowly - by looking for the perfect timing.

Of course, there is no such thing as a perfect timing if you are looking for it. There wil always be something wrong. Perfection is the enemy of good enough, and expectation is the energy source for fear of failure. It will paralyze us from taking the necessary actions to learn to become eventually successful.

The chances are, the first time you do something you will suck at it. You are not likely to succeed in the common sense. That is because most of the worthwhile activities will take time to master. While some people might have been born with natural gifts, most of us have to acquire them, and even the ones with natural gifts have to keep training to keep the gifts from eroding. Most of us learn best by doing. As we do we are guaranteed to run into challenges, but overcoming those challenges will teach us the biggest lessons.

Even when we first start and we do not succeed in the common sense, we have succeeded at a deeper level - we have conquered our fear of failure. The ones that eventually succeeded are the ones that overcome themselves - they do not allow their fear to rule them and eat away at their own self worth. Because they are able to conquer their fear, conquering failures become just details during the journey.

In order to take that first step onto the journey, we need to let go of our expectations. Instead of thinking that we need a particular outcome, we should realize that the best way for ensuring that outcome is to start trying and learn. If things turn out the way we expect, that is great; if not, then we would have also gained something valuable that will help us get closer to our goals. The more we try and learn, the more steps we take toward the goal. The biggest failure is not to take a step - we would still have the same distance to go, and we have just lost time. The only perfect time to start is now.

So - what are you waiting for?