[2022-12-15] Take the leap
I like this quote by psychologist, professor and author Adam Grant:
If you wait until you feel ready to take on a new challenge, you might never pursue it at all. Few people wake up suddenly feeling prepared to lead or create. They become prepared by taking the leap anyway. Our greatest regrets are not our failures, but our failures to try.
If I hadn't adopted the habit of writing every day—indeed, not just writing every day, but publishing every day—I wouldn't have produced anywhere near the amount of content I have created in the past 850+ days. If I had written when I felt like writing, I would have generated only a fraction of the posts that I did.
I rarely sit down at my computer at night, prepared to create. When I do have a stroke of inspiration, my ambitions often exceed my available time (like when one's eyes are bigger than one's stomach). Sometimes, the piece I want to write would take more time to put together than the hours available between 6:00 PM and midnight, so I have to adjust my expectations to deliver a product within the available time.
Sometimes, I hesitate when it's time to add the Published tag to my post, wondering whether what I've written is any good. Then I'll tell myself, "well, this will have to do," because there's no time to write another post. Actually, there was one time when I wrote an entire post, but decided not to publish it. It was humorous and well written, but the timing was wrong. So I wrote something else. But on every other occasion, I took the leap.
I do recognize that creating content and taking leaps isn't just a matter of being psychologically prepared for a new challenge. Many things can get in the way of doing something valuable, especially work demands and family obligations. Those constraints can't be dismissed by giving ourselves a pep talk about the importance of pursuing opportunities.
But there are leaps we can take that don't require a lot of time or don't get in the way of other obligations. They truly are more about getting past a psychological block, for example:
- Telling someone you love them.
- Complimenting a stranger.
- Providing feedback online.
- Speaking up in a meeting or in public.
- Foregoing a hat when you've lost your hair because of chemo.
- Talking to someone new.
- Turning off your cell phone for a few hours.
- Going to a restaurant or concert alone.
- Asking for help.
- Accepting a gift without feeling obligated to reciprocate.
- Questioning a long-held belief.
- Having an uncomfortable conversation.
- Contacting someone whom you haven't spoken to in a while.
- Going for a medical test that may unearth unwelcome news.
- Admitting a mistake.
- Accepting yourself exactly as you are.
These, too, are challenges. As Grant says, "Our greatest regrets are not our failures, but our failures to try." Take the leap.
