Safe to Proceed

We find so many ways to stay put. We think we couldn’t possibly start that exercise class because we are already so overweight. Or we couldn’t think to start teaching that poetry class because our life is not yet perfectly managed, the kids keep waking us up at night and we are still getting grey hairs.

Still.

And this is the thing about confidence that we bungle up. We think it is supposed to come in the beginning, that we need it for the starting. We think it is the prerequisite to action, some mysterious igniting force. But we have a serious flaw in our expectation and understanding of how this sequence really works.

Confidence arrives in the end not the beginning. It magnifies in the doingness, in the tryingness, in the one-foot-placed-in-front-of-the-otherness, sometimes even in the falling flat on your faceness.

Hey, you could just continue to wait it out.

But the truth is that your confidence may never really kick-in the way you want it to. Never. Ever. You will still be waiting, working deep grooves in the ground with all of your walking back and forth, your collar yanked tight.

Because when exactly is your life going to feel perfectly behaved?

When will it feel nicely contained?

When will it be entirely safe to proceed?