I don't remember when I first heard the saying, "Do it before you're ready", but I do know that it wasn't really that long ago when I was able to actually really hear it, and to grok the meaning and reasoning contained within this small collection of words.

 

So often in life I have been frozen into inaction because I wasn't ready to tackle something. I didn't know enough about the subject, I didn't have the right space to do it the way I thought it needed to be done, I didn't have the right tools or equipment. It's something I still struggle with in a great many ways.

 

When you haven't done something before, you really have very little idea what it will be like. You put in time and effort to prepare, you get the tools you think you need, you build the bits you think you need, etc. This can take quite a long time to learn and gather everything. While you can learn a great deal in this type of preparation, the problem is really that you can't learn everything you need to know through it. Some of the examples don't quite make sense, some of the mistakes others have made don't quite gel in your head, and that's if you're trying to do something others have done before. In many ways, the more you learn about something, the less prepared to do it you think you may be.

 

Think perhaps of swimming: You can learn about how to do it, you can spend time reading and you can watch others swim. You can get lost in the different ways in which to swim, the different types of pools, water, lakes, rivers, oceans out there. You can go buy a swim suit. You can feel the water in a shower, or in a bath tub. You can dangle your feet in a pool, wade in the ocean. All of that is fine preparation, but none of it really gets you ready for that moment when you are completely immersed in the water and not in contact with anything else. Only by swimming can you really learn how to swim.

 

As incredible as our ability to learn from other humans is, humans learn most effectively by doing. Once you have started to do something, the mistakes others have made doing the same or similar really become tangible for you. You can see your own way to do things outside of what you've been able to learn from others. Doing something without the right tool can often drive a level of innovation necessary to improve the art, rather than simply doing things the way they have always been done.

 

So, stop procrastinating, stop making excuses that you don't have the right tools, or know all you need to know. Get the idea, and then jump in. You'll make mistakes, but you'll be able to learn so incredibly much faster, and that will help you get to the point of accomplishment rather than forever sitting on the sidelines thinking that you aren't ready yet.

 

In my own personal step, Yomonsni is in no way complete or ready, the outlines are there in my head but I need practice, to know more, to have a real space for it, etc. Even this website is not close to what I'd really like it to be. However, here it is before you, and I'm learning so much more quickly now by doing rather than sitting back and thinking and reading.