Have you ever found yourself hanging back, waiting for the “right moment” to take action on something you wanted to do? You knew you wanted to move forward, you were practically chomping at the bit – but something held you back.
Most often when we do this, we are waiting for our confidence to reach a certain level before we’ll feel ready. In other words, we don’t already believe that we have the ability to succeed at our objective.
At times like these it can help to remind yourself that your greatness is already within you. There is nothing to wait for!
Once you’ve decided on an objective, made your plans and done all the preparation you can, there is nothing left to do but leap ahead and go for it.
While you hang back and wait for that moment when you’ll feel “ready,” opportunities are passing you by and your confidence actually decreases as you get locked into a sense of inertia.
Doesn’t sound like fun, does it?
You may be surprised to learn that your inner greatness will begin to grow as a RESULT of your moving forward, not the other way around. The longer you hang back and allow yourself to be held captive by uncertainty, the more difficult it will be to take a step forward.
If you instead push yourself to move forward even though you don’t really feel “ready” yet, you will grow in confidence with every step you take. Every little victory along the path to your goal will inspire you to keep going, keep daring, keep achieving.
How do you push yourself to move forward when everything within you is screaming in panic? There are two possible ways to proceed:
1) Start small.
If you’re really terrified about taking a giant leap, take a tiny step instead. When you realize that you’re still standing and nothing horrible has happened, you’ll feel inspired to take another tiny step. Keep doing that, and before long the big leap won’t seem so frightening.
2) Push yourself to take the big leap anyway.
This choice would not be for the faint of heart, but for the person who knows their fear is unfounded and is willing to face it head on. A vast majority of the time, our fear is just a result of feeling out of our element. We’re used to our comfort zones, our mundane routines. Trying to do something new makes us feel uneasy until we become comfortable with it. If we can push past that initial fear, we realize that there really is nothing to fear.
You will never realize your own greatness until you develop the courage to express it. As you do, it begins to expand and become the bigger part of who you are. The more you are willing to express and expand your greatness, the less you will feel frightened by things that are out of your control, and the more you will naturally focus on the things that ARE within your control.