Screw Being Ready, You Need This Instead

How many times have you said, “I’m not ready yet” in your life?

You waited, you learned as much as you could, you primed yourself and you primed yourself, and then...the moment or opportunity had passed. It’s not always like that. But I’m sure it’s happened enough for you to feel, how do I say this delicately? Fucking gross. It sucks. You tell yourself that if you just had more time you would have been ready. But you didn’t need more time. Why? 

Because ready doesn’t really matter. 

Now, I’m not saying it doesn’t matter if a surgeon has studied through undergrad to residency and applied themselves, especially if they’re about to cut me open! I’m saying that many opportunities in our life don’t require nearly the amount of preparation we think they do. I would argue that our desire to know every single detail before we take a risk is simply another form of procrastination. 

This applies to anti-racism and inclusion work as well. You might think you need to read every single book on every single book list before you begin to build your advocacy. You may feel like you need to get a doctorate in critical race theory before you talk to another black person. More than likely, you probably feel afraid to royally mess something up, retraumatize a person, or be shamed for being wrong and getting corrected. 

Those are understandable reasons. But what you don’t practice you cannot improve. You should take some time to build a foundation before you engage, but not all of time to start doing it. In fact, a real advocacy plan includes the foundation so avoiding it costs you even more. In that same time you could have built a solid  plan and actually executed it. You know, that whole actively benefiting vulnerable communities instead of centering your ego, thing. 

I know, you hear things in the entrepreneurial space like “take the leap and assemble the plane on the way down.” But what never gets qualified in those types of statements is who they’re talking to. I would argue that 99.5% of us are good at taking calculated risks.

That means we’ve gathered the information, considered the pitfalls, and made a decision based on judgment, guts, and information. If that’s the case, it’s not about being ready, it’s about being willing. 

Are you willing to get it wrong to get it right? Are you willing to gain better community and social impact even if you mess up along the way? Are you willing to fumble, stumble, and get humbled to finally activate the advocacy you know you could be building? 

Willingness is so much more important than readiness, despite what’s been drilled into our heads. Paul McCartney once said he couldn’t sleep at night knowing there were better musicians out there that didn’t get the opportunities he did. I’ve always loved that quote because it confirmed something for me.

The titles we give like “the greatest” or “the best” are not the greatest of all those available but the best of who showed up. The people who show up are already leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of us still waiting to be “ready.” Privilege keeps the people who can show up limited but your advocacy has the opportunity to change that. 

You might not know that I'm obsessed with playing solitaire. Playing with an actual deck of cards (like a badass 😅)showed me why. Even though there are a controlled set of outcomes, I still can’t predict them. I have to make decisions based on the information I have available to me. I don’t know what cards will be where. I just have to be willing to figure it out. There’s so much liberation and ease in that.