The legs

The first step in getting going with your project is right in your mind.
In general,

• If you think you are ready, you are and
• If you think you are not ready, you are not.

It all starts within you.

The concept of the legs comes in handy here.

You have a dream and you may not be able to pursue it right now. There may be a really good reason for it. The reason may be one or more of the following:

Don’t have enough money

It’s too risky and you just started a family

The timing is not right

You have not found the right team to start something

You were just about to start something and somebody else beat you to it. Now there is no point in pursuing it anymore.

You are very busy with your current projects and obligations and don’t want to take on any more things

Your wife/husband is not convinced about your idea

Your wife/husband is fully convinced and now it seems like it’s too good to be true

Everything seems to be right. You want to find someone who will play devil’s advocate so that you don’t get burned later.

The reasons are good enough to NOT act. When you don’t find good enough reasons to NOT act, you can always ask one of your friends who is in the same boat for his or her opinion and you will be given one or two reasons. The point is, you never have to feel guilty that you are not acting.

You will always find one more reason to NOT act – from someone that you trust.

I remember this brilliant quote by Henry Ford –

“If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right”

The secret is not in seeing whether you have good reason to NOT act. You will always have one or more reasons for that. There is a lot of help out there in that department.

The secret is to see what reasons can you find to pursue your dream against the (typically perceived) odds against pursuing the dream.

The trick is to change the mindset – from looking for reasons to NOT act to looking for reasons to act.

Take a table with one leg. It is not very stable. You can push it a bit and topple it over. Now put another leg and the table becomes a bit more stable. Add two more legs and make all the four legs stronger and now you have a reasonably stable table. It’s hard to shake it and topple it.

Now think about your dream and the reason not to pursue it. If there is one reason, you can shake it off easily. Add more reasons (no money, no experience, no connections, etc.) and then you have a stronger reason to NOT pursue your vision. Without our knowledge day in and day out, we keep adding more reasons to NOT pursue our vision and soon unconsciously we start believing that our dream and our life are different – the cards you have been handed will just not make it easy to pursue your dream. It’s just fate.

So, what could you do?

Two things:

First, systematically remove the legs (reasons) for NOT pursuing your dreams. The more legs (reasons) you remove, easier it is to break the resistance (topple the table) to pursue the dream.

Second, use the same principle in the opposite fashion. Start finding legs (reasons) for pursuing your passion. The more legs (reasons) you find, the stronger the conviction (table) to pursue the dream. To start the journey, simply start finding a second reason to do anything important. Then a third reason and then a fourth reason and so on..

The next item that comes up when you are thinking about getting set to pursue an opportunity is that you may not belong to a “club.” Let us deal with that head on – what if you don’t belong to a club?