Just about everything we now feel comfortable doing was once performed from a posture of feeling unready.
A seasoned public speaker at one point in their career probably nervously walked up to a stage and gave a speech that they didn’t feel confident in delivering.
A seasoned builder at one point in their career, when they were building their first batch of widgets, probably asked themselves multiple times: “am I doing this right?”
A swimmer who can now comfortably get in the water at one point entered the water nervously wondering if they were going to be able to float or not.
And yet the public speaker spoke, the builder built, and the swimmer swam anyways.
To wait until we’re ready to do anything when practice is the only way to feel more ready is as clear a catch-22 as it gets.
I’m going to give a talk in front of an audience today that I do not feel ready for. And yet it’s abundantly clear that if I ever want to feel more ready and confident about my ability to communicate with this audience in the future, I will need to lean into today’s talk in spite of my reservations.
Advice that I think we can all benefit from in our journeys to become more capable: lean into what gives you discomfort and watch as you acclimate, because you will. And what was once uncomfortable will feel increasingly feasible.
