Are you ever really ready to make the leap?

Over the last few weeks, I’ve had the honor of working with Bibhuti  Aryal, the founder of the Rukmini Foundation, which empowers girls in Nepal through education, health, and mentoring. From his experience, it seems that there were many things that he and his team didn’t anticipate and that challenged their ability to move forward in developing the organization and the programs they wanted to create. The thing is, even if they weren’t perfectly ready and didn’t have all of they answers, they leapt in and found a way around these challenges that made sense to them.

The term “readiness” is thrown around a lot when it comes to doing something different or new – readiness to change, readiness to act, readiness to start, etc.

People talk about assessing readiness as a way to figure out if you, as an individual or as an organization, have the support, wherewithal, plans and resources to manage and sustain something – thereby increasing your likelihood of succeeding.

But, the flip-side is that feeling like you need to be ready can create cautiousness and a lack of confidence, and you may never feel ready enough to get started with the thing that so excites you or that you believe is so needed right now.

Even expert observations of entrepreneurs and organizations show that not all of them are the same. And, very few of them are ever perfectly ready.

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. -John Wooden

Readiness, it turns out, may be more about certain qualities than it is about having a solid foundation.

Even if you have that foundation in place, you’ll still need the ability to adapt, to adjust, and to relentlessly pursue opportunity.  And this has everything to do with state of mind.

Ask yourself the following questions

• Do you think you are ready?
• Do you stand behind what you are doing?
• Can you learn on the fly?
• Are you able to adapt to changes quickly?
• Are you willing to stay the course?

If you answered yes to all of these questions, you’re probably a lot more ready than you think you are.  And even if you answered no,  don’t let in stop you in your tracks.

Do what you can to prepare and then take those first steps to getting started, even if it’s just to test the waters.  Those steps will give you feedback about whether you’re headed in the right direction, with the right opportunity or idea, with the right customer, and the right blueprint for turning your idea into reality over time.

You may find that the venture you are creating requires a completely different set of skills, resources, and plans than you – or the experts – ever thought.  But, you wouldn’t know this if you let a preconceived notion of readiness stand in your way.

 

What change have you made or what idea did you pursue that you didn’t quite feel ready for?  What were the results?  Were they what you expected?

photo credit: Rukmini Foundation