Working Towards Our Purpose

Welcome to episode 84 of Working Towards Our Purpose.

In today's episode, we're going to talk about why you never

feel ready enough to leave the life that you've outgrown. But

before we get into that, we're going to do our normal check-in with

ourselves, and we're just going to take a couple moments and see where we're at

today, see how we're feeling.

All right, so for me, did a little check-in and,

uh, seeing where I'm at today, I'm feeling pretty

good, pretty supported. Um,

accomplished, dare I say, a bit proud of myself.

Yeah, a lot of new things this week for me and

feeling pretty good about them. So yeah, that's where I'm

at. Hopefully you got a chance to see where you're feeling today.

And yeah, so let's get into today's episode,

the feeling of not feeling ready to make a move, to

make a change. So this episode was

inspired by my friend

Carrie, who

is making a transition from

a corporate sort of setting to her own business. And she's a

wedding and event planner, and she's really awesome. And I'll link her in the show

notes so you could find her website. But yeah,

just talking with her and kind of reminding me of the feeling of

leaving my own corporate job 5 years ago and how

I never felt ready. I never felt ready to make a change and it never

felt like the right time. And yeah, I kind of just want to dig

into that feeling and talk about it and

try to figure out where it's coming from and how we can decide

how to make a change even though we're feeling not ready.

So, yeah, I think for me, I've gone through a couple of these that

came to mind as I was thinking about this episode. The first one being my

corporate 9-to-5. But another one was starting this podcast. And I remember

talking about this podcast for a while and feeling like it was a good idea

and just taking forever to actually follow through

with it. I think it probably took me a year

or so to record the first episode and put it out there.

So yeah, that was another big one for me was like starting the

podcast that like I knew I should be making. And then most

recently is like going to open mic nights and performing at

open mic nights. And yeah, so the last

time I recorded an episode was like the day that I was gonna do my

first one and I did do it and I got through it and I

didn't die. I survived. And I've actually done 2

since then. Just with the way that the

days fall of me recording this. But, um, so yeah, that was another

big one for me was like participating in an open mic. Like I went

to a bunch of them, um, but it took me

a while to like go and perform myself. And, you know, I think I have

to give myself some credit. Like it hasn't been that long. Maybe it's been like

a month and a half or something. So, you know, that's

something that I can look at and be like, hey, this time it took it

was less time for me to think about wanting to do the thing and then

actually doing it. So yeah,

why do we never feel ready? And I think it's pretty simple.

If we break it down and think about

the reasons we're feeling like that, and it makes sense, I think. So why do

we feel uncomfortable? Why do we feel like we're never

ready to make the change? Well, I think when you're growing,

you're stretching, you're going outside of your comfort zone,

which by definition means you're going to be uncomfortable.

And by doing things that you haven't

done before, kind of like how we talked about last week, it's going to just

feel uncomfortable and it's going to feel— it's

going to put you outside of your comfort zone, which I think is an indication

that you are growing. And instead of

questioning and wondering why we don't feel ready, we can almost look at that

as a sign of like, oh, well, I'm growing

here, so I should not feel ready, and kind of almost thinking about it in

a different way. And I don't know if that helps to

somebody who's actually trying to make that

change and make the thing happen that they feel uncomfortable in,

but thinking about it conceptually sometimes helps helps me a little bit to think

of like that feeling of not feeling ready is

actually a good feeling cuz it means that you're

growing yourself. You're, you're stretching, you're, you're doing something new. You're, uh,

putting yourself out you know? Um, there, and, and those are all things to

be proud of yourself for cuz they're hard and

they do feel uncomfortable. But, but when you do them, you can look back and

like feel proud of yourself and you can make progress towards the

goals and the things that you want for yourself. So, um, so I think like,

yeah, it makes sense. Like we're outside of our comfort zone, so we're going to

feel not ready. And I think a lot of times too,

like if you do feel ready, then

perhaps it's like,

um, I don't want to say too small of a goal, but like, um, perhaps

you waited too you know, long, like, like I think about starting my

business plus a podcast. Like, that didn't feel like I wasn't ready to

do it. I just like went and did it, but it was because I still

had a corporate job and there was like nothing really to lose by putting

a website up and like social media and like trying to find clients and stuff.

So for me, like there wasn't really pressure for that situation.

So, yeah, just thinking about these different things and how they work. And

then I wanted to also talk about like what I've learned from

going through a couple of these, like feeling like I'm not ready, but taking the

jump anyways and making the leap. And I

think every time I did it, I always felt like

the buildup to it is so much more harder. And the

actual decision, like quitting your job or going,

like the buildup to an open mic night, always way harder than the actual

thing. And I think

I've found that

the anticipation is worse than the actual thing. So once I did

it, I always felt like, oh, I could have done that months ago.

Especially when I quit my job, I was like, oh, I could have done this

a year ago. I didn't have to wait 3 years in planning.

I could have done it sooner. And not in a regretful way, but just

thinking like, once you hit the tipping

point of there's no turning back, it's like, oh, okay. Yeah, this

feels right to me. This is something that I

should have been doing earlier maybe. And maybe that's a self-critical

thought, but just trying to get to the idea that

it was always more of the afterward feeling of

like, oh, okay, it wasn't that bad. I could have done it earlier. And same

thing with the open mic that I just did. I was like, okay, it wasn't

that bad. I could have done them earlier. I would have been ready to do

them earlier, but we all work on our own times and whatever

gets us there is the important part. And as long as we're making

progress, I think that that's something to

really, really focus on. So that's one thing to— is it's

like, I've always felt like, oh, I could have done it sooner. The

other thing is I've always been

surprised at the people that have been supportive, especially

when I think about quitting my corporate job. My boss, who I

put in my 2 weeks for, was supportive and I didn't think that he was

going to be supportive at all. I thought he was going to be critical or

mean or asking all these questions about,

well, how are you going to do this? But he was actually really supportive. And

I think in my mind anyways, I always sort of

villainize other people and

can sometimes think worst case scenario is what I mean.

Not villainize, but just think worst case scenario. So

I found it surprising that most of those worst case scenarios didn't happen

and most people were supportive and were even excited

and were like, that's so cool. Like, man, I wish I could do that. Or

offering any sort of support. So I think that that's always been

a nice thing, knowing that when you're going into something that

you don't feel ready for, knowing that you'll have some support somewhere

is kind of nice. It's a nice feeling to

think about, like, you're not really doing it alone

almost, that you always have people around you to support you, even if you

hardly know them, or even if you think they're not going to be supportive.

And then the last thing I had

was, well, two more, I guess. One of them is

the plan that you have.

I don't think being so steadfast and hard on the plan that

you have is that crucial. I think things have

always panned out differently than I originally thought before I did it,

before I made the change. They were always a little bit different. And

I think it's okay. Like, it's okay to figure it out as you go along.

And you don't have to have all the answers before you make the leap. And

I think that that's another thing that keeps us stuck is like trying to plan

out every single detail without ever being there.

So you don't really know what to expect because it's, you know, a lot of

new stuff. So it's impossible to plan the whole thing out. And

I'm a planner. I'm an analytical person. I like to

have a proper plan before I do stuff, but

you don't need the whole plan. Planning's good, but you don't

need to have every minute of your vacation planned out

before you do it sort of thing. So that's

always something to keep in mind also if you're a planner like me.

And then the last thing I want to say is look for signs. I think

that that's important. I think

For me, like, you know, with the open mic example, like, there was

people telling me like, hey, you should do You this. know, you're ready to do

this. You should do that. You write your own songs, go perform them.

So for me, like, thinking about looking for

things outside of myself, because you can get trapped in your head and you can

you know, like, I could think, oh, I'm not good enough.

I'm not ready. I need to practice more. I'm not good enough at this. I

don't have don't have I the right equipment. I don't have— I need to get

a different guitar or whatever. Make all these kinds of excuses. But

sometimes if there's somebody you trust,

somebody who's doing it, who's encouraging you and who's gone

through that path before to be like, hey, you know what? You're ready to do

it. You're never going to feel ready, but try it, see what happens. I

think that that's helpful too. So I've definitely had people in the open mic

circle that have been that for me. And I'm appreciative that they were able to

recognize like, hey, I see that you're ready and I know that you feel you're

not ready, but I'm going to tell you that you're ready. So

look for signs. And yeah. All right. So now

I want to get into how to tell if you're

ready and stay with me here.

I know that maybe that contradicts what I said, but

so you're in a position, maybe you're in a job and you're trying to figure

out if you're ready to quit that job. I think that this, like, little framework

can be helpful for knowing if you're ready because you're not going to feel

ready. But if you can tell the difference between being

unsafe or uncomfortable, then I think that that

can give you the data and the information that you need like,

to, to know you don't feel ready, but to know, like, it's time to move,

it's time to make that change. And so let's talk about that. Let's talk about,

like, what unsafe versus uncomfortable is.

So unsafe is like, okay, you quit your job overnight,

you have no savings, you have bills to pay, you have

debt, whatever, and you don't have any plan

to pay those bills, right? You

don't have a place to stay if you don't pay your rent and you don't

have an income, you don't have a savings. That's kind of an

unsafe situation because we need to pay rent.

So that's one example. Another one would

be physical or mental harm. If you're

making a decision that's going to put you in physical harm, surely unsafe.

If you have to be dependent on a person who maybe

is being unsafe to you, that's obviously not a good situation to be in. So,

well, maybe it's not obvious. I shouldn't say that. But that is a situation that

you shouldn't want to put yourself in. And

then just, yeah, the ability to not pay your bills, not

have a little bit of a savings or a little bit of a cushion,

and then making a rash decision, making a decision in a week or

overnight. And sometimes that works for people, so I'm

not going to discourage that. But I think

the way that I did it, the way that made sense to me was to

plan a little bit, have some savings, and then

think about making a decision that's not

unsafe. I didn't feel unsafe when I made my decision. I felt

unready, but I didn't feel unsafe. And

the difference between unsafe and uncomfortable, uncomfortable,

still feeling like you're not ready, feeling scared,

questioning, will it work out? Questioning, did I make a

big mistake? So those

sorts of things I think is more uncomfortable, like

making excuses for yourself,

like, I'm not experienced enough, or why would somebody

trust me for this? Or I'm not good enough. This person's more further along than

me. Those are all things that are uncomfortable. And I think

if we can try to think about, is

this an uncomfortable situation or an unsafe

situation? And I think most times it's going to be uncomfortable.

And that is your signal that

like, okay, this is something that I can do. I just

don't feel ready to do it.

And yeah, just thinking about the differences between like, what does

uncomfortable mean and what does unsafe

mean? And I think uncomfort is just driven a lot by fear. And

yeah, I don't know. I feel like I'm not articulating this very well, but

what I'm trying to say is

maybe it's internal versus external, like the fears that you

have in your head versus real

fears of not being fed and not having shelter.

Perhaps that's it. But hopefully that makes sense. Hopefully,

trying to differentiate between unsafe and uncomfortable, because

like I said, I think most times it's just uncomfort that's holding us back.

And we know that we have to be uncomfortable when we're changing because we're

growing and we're going outside of our comfort zone. So it makes sense

that we're uncomfortable. So, um, so yeah,

I I just, also wanted to go through now, like the 3 that

I have talked about and to try to just like tell a little bit of

like to reminisce and tell a little bit about the story of like how I

made the transition. Cause I think that might be helpful, um, to

give examples of like how to make that transition when you don't feel

like you're ready. So, so the first one for me was my 9 to 5,

like leaving my 9 to 5. And I was thinking about this for a long

time. And it pretty much took me like 3 years to

quit. And I was setting money aside, I was saving.

And I remember one of the first things I did was I was

trying to get somebody else to tell me that I

had enough money to quit, which is a ridiculous thing to think

about. Nobody knows how much money I need

to survive and can tell me, "Oh yeah, that's enough."

So I first went to a financial advisor,

and I was like, "Hey, I need you to tell me if I can

quit." And I literally said that and they were like, "I can't tell

you that, but you're doing a good job saving." That's

basically all they told me. So I didn't get my answer there. And then

I remember going to my— I had a tax preparer who was like,

she also had a small business. So we talked

about business and stuff and I asked her and I was like, "Hey, am I

ready?" And she was like, "Do you have 3 months of savings?" And I was

like, "Yeah, I have more than that." And she was like, "Well then you should

have quit already. What are you doing?" And that didn't feel real to

me. I thought that that was rash. And I was like, "No,

that's not my answer." And then I remember talking to my accountability buddy and I

was like, "Look, this is what I have. Am I ready?" Asking him

and just looking externally for somebody to tell me I could

quit, it was safe for me to quit. And then,

yeah, I don't know. It wasn't until really

getting sent home from COVID and thinking about

things in morbid terms of we didn't know where the state of the world

was going to be. It was like, am I going to just keep sitting at

this corporate job working in my apartment? I drove myself

crazy doing 2 things by the end of the year sitting home

from corporate. And was basically just at my

wit's end, completely burnt out, doing 2 jobs, sitting in my apartment, not leaving

alone. And I was like, I have to pick one. And

then when I asked myself, well, which one are you going to pick? You can

pick the corporate job or you can pick the unknown. And

I remember just then being like, okay, you have to do it.

You've talked about it enough. You talk about it all the time. You have to

just walk the walk at some point. So it took me a long time to

do it, but I was searching for that external

validation and I really needed to be asking myself

the question. And that's what I'm trying to say with this whole episode too,

is you got to ask yourself the question because nobody's going to know if it's

right for you and nobody's going to tell you that you're

ready. It's helpful when people who have done the thing that you're doing

are encouraging you,. But you need to, like,

you know, you got to do it yourself because nobody's going to make you quit

your job. Nobody's going to make you start the business.

So, yeah. So, and then the podcast, I remember it took me probably a year

to start it. And I kept telling people the idea and

everybody was like, yeah, that's a great idea. Sure, go ahead, do it. Go ahead,

do it. But I was, I don't know what I was looking for. Again,

probably external validation, but I was looking for

I don't know, maybe somebody to help me or maybe like a partner or something.

And then I just kept saying it because I knew that if I kept saying

it, that it's almost like asking for help, I

guess. And I eventually ran into this person

networking and he was like, oh, I'll be your first guest. And I was like,

oh, okay. And at that point I didn't have

an excuse. So that's how I started was Somebody just

offering like, oh, I'll be your first guest. And then it made me

sort of accountable to him because he said yes

without even really me asking. And that was kind of like how

that started. And then the third one, the open mic,

again, sort of surrounding myself with like putting myself in the

position, like going to the open mics where people were

performing, but not performing. And then using that

as encouragement and

yeah, just positive feedback and

feeling like you're supported and then being able to go up and do it yourself.

And I think if I look at each one of those, the times got shorter,

which is cool. Corporate took me 3

years, the podcast took me a year, the open mic took

me a month or two. And that's

pretty cool to think about, that you get better

at doing these things that you don't feel ready for. You jump

off the cliff enough times and eventually it's not as scary as

it used to be. And yeah, I think the first one

is always the hardest, and that makes sense. But

yeah, I'm just thinking about how

that's encouraging for me to reflect back to myself and to think about

Okay, now next time there's a big thing that I don't feel ready for,

it'll work out. You'll figure it out. So, yeah,

enough about my stories. I think

now we'll just talk about some takeaways from this episode and

a couple of things I want to say. So, one is that you

are more capable than you think that you are. I think

that's what I needed to hear when I was going through these things.

Is that you're uncomfortable

and you feel like you're not capable. A lot of imposter syndrome, you're

not good enough sort of thoughts coming up. So you're more

capable than you think you are. And that

also reminds me of a story real quick.

I remember talking about wanting to start a business

and I was talking to an ex-girlfriend's father at the time.

And he said something to me that really struck me. And he said

that, he was like, do it. He was like,

start a business. You should do it because you have the drive. And he said

most people don't have that drive. And if you have a drive for something, that

you should follow that because that drive is what's going to get you to figure

out all the problems and the

hiccups and stuff that are there along the way. That

drive is what's going to help you. So So I thought that was important to

say now to anybody who's on the fence. If you have

that drive and it keeps coming back to you, that's a really

important ingredient in pushing through hard times and

figuring stuff out when you don't know it is wanting it and

wanting it bad enough. So that was really helpful for me when he told

me that. And I've always remembered that. And yeah,

hopefully that can help somebody else. Another thing

is when you when you have— add pressure to

something, you'll find more solutions that you didn't see

beforehand. So me thinking about quitting my job and

trying to plan the whole thing out, I'm not going to think of all the

solutions, but once you are doing the business

for a couple of months and you're like, okay, I need to bring in more

income, what do I need to do? That sort of

real pressure will help you solve things that that you

couldn't have solved beforehand. So that's always important to remember too, I think,

is to know that added pressure is going to help you figure

some stuff out. And then the last thing is just

ask for help when you need it. There's so many people out there that are

willing to offer help and have been in positions

that you're in before you were, and they have insight and

perspective. And especially with any of

this stuff, if you need

money or if you need a place to stay or whatever, there's people out there

that will support you. And I think we tend to think that we don't

have options because we want to be self-sufficient.

And that's probably a whole nother episode is the idea of being self-sufficient. But

there's people out there that will help us. And

Yeah, I think I wanna end on that. And

yeah, so if you've gotten this far, I have a free guide about

being kinder to yourself. It's called Softening Your Inner Critic in 7 Days.

That's also linked in the show notes, so you can get to that if you

want. But yeah, otherwise, thanks for listening. I

appreciate all of you listening, and I will see you on another episode real

soon. Take care.

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