I speak to a lot of people that are not ready. Very few of us ever are. It can take some people an inordinate amount of time to ‘get ready’, a realisation I’ve had many times whilst living with a partner.

Ready is just a state of mind upon which we’ll often put external dependencies. I won’t allow myself to FEEL ready until these circumstances are met. I can’t go out without make up, I have to have x amount of savings before I invest in this course, or I won’t go to the dinner party until I’ve lost ten pounds.

All conditions for feeling ready are made up. Fabricated. That feeling of being ready is something we create once we see those conditions being met, yet that feeling is available any time.

Ready is a self-made mirage, one for which we need not wait. There might be a moment when the mirage looks real enough for us to step forward, or we might just be waiting forever. The weight and burden of forever as ready becomes a self-obsessive distraction from taking action.

There is an alternative: Willingness. I can ask myself “Am I willing?”
Irrespective of how I feel about being ready. Irrespective of the mirage.

Just be willing. Willing to jump out of the plane, willing to pick up the phone, willing to try the deep fried squid. Willing to ask the question I want an answer to at the conference.

At aged twenty there was no way I was ready to become an overnight step-parent. But I was willing. Looking back, I don’t think I was ready until a good few years later!

Some people tell me they are not ready for coaching. Often they are not willing to see the truth about not being ready. Not willing to do what might be necessary to make such an investment in themselves. Not willing to explore and take the next required action to create the life they want.

As a coach I always want to explore this, because I’ll happily work with anyone that is not ready. But I don’t work with anyone who is not willing.

It’s a simple distinction between wanting some assurance on what an outcome might be, or being willing to explore what we might create and uncover.

If I’m in the ‘need to be ready’ camp I’m kind of open to corruption, similar to the researcher who is sponsored by an organisation with an invested interest in the results. As an independent explorer, I have no such contamination, I am free and open to all possibilities. I don’t need to see an imagined mirage of what the road ahead might look like. I'm willing, in my faith, to explore and see what shows up.

Blind faith? Yes, of course, all faith is blind.

An entering into that which is not yet seen or not yet known. Entering into that which may soon be seen and known.

I wonder if anyone who has sky-dived actually felt ready as their legs hung over the ledge of the airplane. Or whether, in that moment, it was simply a case of being willing to jump, to fall, to surrender to gravity and the saviour of a parachute. It’s not something I have experienced because I am definitely not WILLING to jump out of a perfectly serviceable aircraft.

I’d guess no child waits to be ready before they attempt to take their first steps on their feet. They simply explore, willing to give it a go, time and time again, even after falling down. Again. After a fall they don’t tell themselves “Right, that’s it! Clearly I’m not ready, I’ll try again in a couple of years!” They are willing to explore in the direction of their desire (the shiny keys on the table,) irrespective of the outcome (a grazed knee.)

They are not waiting for the mirage of walking to appear clear enough. A grazed knee is nothing to the joys of walking, running, hopping, skipping and jumping for the next eighty years!

Be willing.