If you’re waiting for the stars to line up and everything to fall into place before you leap and make your dreams your reality, I have some sobering news for you: you’ll never get there.

That sounds a bit harsh, doesn’t it? If I didn’t have personal experience in this area, maybe I wouldn’t be so harsh. But I know that waiting until we are “ready” before we listen to our soul and have the guts to make big changes in our lives can be absolutely paralyzing. And I also know that life isn’t perfect – it’s messy and disorganized and chaotic. And we will always have more to learn and more ways to grow. Always.

We are never going to be “ready.” But we can be “ready enough.”

  • If you think that you have to have a certain degree before you can leap, you’re missing out on all of the living that you could be doing right now.
  • If you think that you have to do all of these things to prepare for your leap, all of that preparation will continue to keep you from leaping.
  • If you think that you just need a little more time to be good enough or smart enough or ready enough, you’re setting yourself up for a lifetime of paralysis. You’ll never leap. You’ll never change. You’ll never do anything but wait and plan and talk about it and write about it and think about it but never actually do it.

That’s definitely not what you want, is it? It’s not what any of us wants.

We all have such good intentions. We all have such beautiful hopes and dreams for our lives. We want to leap – we really do. But we’re afraid to. And so that scared part of ourselves convinces us that we need to be ready before we do anything too drastic. We need to be ready before we leap into the unknown. We need to be ready to make sure we’re completely prepared for whatever will come our way.

Do any of these scenarios sound familiar?

  • I have a positive message to share with the world, and I’m going to write a book. Really, I am going to do it. But first, I just need to live a little more and gather up some life experience because seriously, who is going to listen to me without that? Who am I to share this message anyway? I should probably wait until I’m more experienced – more ready.
  • I’m really great at helping people. I love to support them in living fully. But am I ready to be a full-time coach? Oh, I don’t think so. I would need certification and lots more experience before then. Yes, of course that would be wonderful, but I just don’t think I’m ready yet.
  • I definitely am going to get onto that stage and speak. It’s something that I feel called to do, and I really feel that I was born to do this. But…I’m really not ready to do it yet. I would probably need to join a speaking group and practice. Maybe in a couple of years or so, I’ll be ready. Definitely not yet.
  • I do want to leave this relationship that I’m in. I know that it’s not a healthy place for either of us to be. And yet, I feel comfortable here. And I question whether I’m really ready to go out on my own. It would be scary – I haven’t been alone in so long. I’m just not quite ready.

This is what I know for sure: We will never be ready. Ever. Not in a million years. We will never feel that everything has lined up perfectly and we are 100% certain that when we leap we will land on our feet. And if we wait for everything to align before we take that leap, we’ll be waiting forever.

This is where faith comes in. Knowing that when we leap toward our dreams we will be fully supported by the universe is how we can jump off of the cliff before everything has come together perfectly. Knowing that our soul would never lead us astray and we wouldn’t be feeling these urges unless we were being guided is a beautiful way to journey through life.

And guess what? Sometimes we jump and things don’t happen how we planned – our book isn’t flowing out of us, our coaching practice doesn’t take off right away, we panic on the stage, and being alone is harder than we imagined. This is the messy part of life – the unpredictable partΒ  – the part that we try so hard to avoid. This is where faith is extra important. We have faith that we are fully taken care of even when things aren’t looking that great.

We can’t see the entire picture – we only see what’s right in front of us. While it may appear that your book isn’t flowing, that may be because something else is stirring and waiting to be birthed. While it may appear that your coaching practice isn’t taking off, you may have simply needed some extra time to tweak it until it felt just right for you – something that was completely aligned with your soul. While it may appear that your speaking career is over pretty much right when it began, you start to receive feedback that your ability to show how afraid you are is helpful to your audience – it allows them to show the same authenticity. While it may appear that being alone is excruciatingly painful, you may need to go through this stage so that the butterfly within you can eventually spread its wings and soar.

We don’t know what’s on the other side. We don’t know what’s going to happen when we take a leap of faith. We don’t know how our life will turn out. And there aren’t enough hours in the day or months in the year to prepare us for this. There isn’t anything we can do to be completely ready. Nothing. And isn’t that freeing to think about? Isn’t that amazing, actually? Knowing that we will never be ready allows us to leap right where we are in this exact moment!

You may not have the confidence or the degree or the experience to leap toward your dreams, but you do have the heart and the willpower and the inspiration to do it anyway. You are ready to live fully.

And living fully is something that we can all do right now. We are all ready for that.

Can you think of anything that you’ve been putting off in your own life because you didn’t think you were ready? How would your life be different if you took the leap anyway? Would you be willing to take that leap of faith now?

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