Take a moment and think back to a time when an experience that you had completely invigorated your senses and shifted your perspective.
It could be a concert, a conference, or a speech that you attended that left you thinking and feeling differently. Maybe it was a week that you spent traveling to a different region of the country or world that opened your eyes to things you hadn’t considered before.
Now hold that memory in your mind’s eye.
You went in feeling like you would on a typical day, but the experience transformed you so that you felt as if your life would never be the same.
When you returned to your normal environment, did you decide to act and make changes immediately, or did you wait?
I’m asking this, because timing matters.
You see, if you strike while the iron is still hot, you are more likely to make the desired changes. On the other hand, the longer you wait to do something, the greater the odds are that you will never do it.
This is referred to as the law of diminishing intention.
The reason I am writing on this topic is because I don’t want you to wait for the perfect moment to do something that is really important to you.
I don’t want you to wait until you’ve figured it all out.
I want you to act now, at this moment, when you feel excited about doing it.
It doesn’t matter if you make mistakes. What matters is that you put yourself out there and do the things that you want to do.
Things don’t need to look polished. If you feel strongly enough, don’t hesitate to put yourself out there and take action from a place of authenticity and meaning before the inspiration and motivation fade away.
I have had a number of occasions where I have been inspired to do something, only to talk myself out of it by waiting too long to act.
I have also had times in my life, when I’ve acted swiftly, using the momentum from certain experiences.
At these times, I’ve seized the moment, and like a mountain climber who uses her ice axe to anchor herself while climbing upwards, I’ve created a new path for myself, one that takes me on routes that I’ve never explored before.
I had one such experience last November at a 3-day mindset retreat for entrepreneurs held in Atlanta. It was the second day of the retreat. The speaker, Fabienne Fredrickson, asked the audience to journal about what we were not willing to do in our business.
Mindset Retreat–onstage with Fabienne.
I wrote down that I wasn’t willing to speak or record videos, because the thought of doing so terrified me, even though I really wanted to get past the fear. Because I really did want to get past it, I raised my hand when Fabienne asked for volunteers to share.
She called on me, and what happened next shifted things for me fundamentally. You see, after I told her that I had a fear of speaking, she invited me on the stage in front of 300-400 people. I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t have raised my hand had I known that this is what was next. But I didn’t know it beforehand, and so without hesitation I decided to take her up on the offer.
Being up on stage was scary.
I remember holding the microphone, feeling my heart beating in my chest and anxiety whirling through my stomach. I remember standing next to Fabienne while she talked, relieved that I could stand there without throwing up or fainting, and that I could be still. She started asking me questions, and I felt happy that I could simply reply in short sentences and answer her.
There was a point when she asked me to talk for about 30-40 seconds about what I would want to share with an audience about what was most important to me. I’m not sure if I really remember what I said, but I think it was something along the lines that the most important thing you can do in your life is to share your truest self. The self that you were meant to be.
The entire experience lasted 3-4 minutes at most, but dare I say that it was life changing?!
It unlocked something in me that had wanted to be set free.
I gave myself permission to consider the possibility that I could learn to speak in front of an audience and maybe someday even love it.
One thing that really opened my eyes was hearing people’s feedback about my being on stage. The audience members were so warm, saying how authentic I appeared on stage, and that I seemed to get more comfortable as time went on. Some people even told me that the camera loved me, which is something that sounded completely foreign to me, but which I was willing to take in.
On the plane back from Atlanta to Minneapolis, I started having weird thoughts. I had never wanted to have fake-colored hair before, but I started daydreaming about going to the hair salon and having a pink extension put in as a wild streak. I made an appointment to do this. And although pink wasn’t available, I chose a pretty color that was less vibrant. I took action.
I also made the decision that I would do my first FaceBook Live. Just days before, I would never have considered it. It would have scared me too much. In fact, until the year before, I had actually deactivated my FB account for six years because I had felt too visible whenever I wrote something online.
So I did it. I took the leap. I arrived home, took a nap and shower, and did my first FaceBook Live, (you can watch it here) sharing my experience of being called onto the stage at the retreat.
No, it wasn’t perfect. It didn’t have to be. I just had to be me and I had to be willing to do it.
It’s been three months since that experience, and I have since joined a networking group where I get to practice doing 60-second presentations on my business each week in front of 25-30 people. In two weeks time, I get to do my first 10-minute presentation using PowerPoint.
Here’s the thing. Until now, I have been so adept at dodging the issue of giving presentations and speaking in front of others. I ran away from these opportunities. Now I am willing to move towards them and even to seek them out.
Some day, I expect to have complete fun giving a talk in front of a group of people. This would never have occurred to me before November.
So, if you don’t remember anything else from this post, remember this:
There will never be a right time to do something, so don’t wait for that right time to come. Seize the moment, and make now your right time. You won’t regret it.
