It is easy to look back and think, “I should have done X” or “I wish I would have done Y earlier.” But, everything that has happened in your life and everything you have done is what brought you to this moment. It would not be possible without what you have done in the past – good or bad, profitable or expensive – and the experiences you gained along the way.
Just a week ago I notified my employer I was leaving the company. They have been amazing and has been one of the best jobs I’ve ever had. However, I am finally ready to start my own business. I am going into partnership with my brother and starting my own business is something I know I needed to do to get to my vision.
What was stopping me was giving myself permission to chase that dream. There was always something stopping me, something I need to prepare or it was always just not the right time.
But everything I’ve done in the past has lead to this moment.
- I’ve worked in the industry for over 20 years.
- My brother and I started a company together 15 years ago, we’ve done this before.
- I’ve worked in various ways in the industry that has given me a thorough understanding of the clients, competition, and gained business acumen needed to run a business.
- I’ve tried and failed at other businesses and have learned a lot along the way.
- I’ve developed myself into a better person who is ready to take on being a small business owner.
Remember that the right time to do something is today. We all often look into the past and use it as a way to procrastinate what we actually want. We get this feeling that we missed our opportunity and now it is too late.
It is never too late. Start today. All your past experiences have lead you to this point. I give you permission. Go do it and don’t look back. The only path is forward.
This moment in time | Transcript
This transcript was created with speech-to-text automation and lightly edited by a human. Some errors may still exist.
Hindsight can be very powerful. We use it all time in our jobs, right? We do retrospectives on projects, or as people call, which I hate this term, “postmortem”. I prefer to call them retrospectives. We’ll look back at how a project went, look for opportunities where we’d be able to get better, where things went wrong, maybe we can identify some opportunities to get better in the future. And then also use it to look at what went well and then try to recreate that as we go forward, right? We’ll look back at these projects and see what we could have done differently and apply that to the future.
But, they get dangerous sometimes. Sometimes we use those retrospectives or hindsight to look back and say, “Well, I should have done this, or I should have done that. We should have started “x” earlier. I should have done “y” as soon as possible.” and that works in our project sometimes when we do those retrospectives to say well we should have started this in the very beginning. But it doesn’t work when we apply it to our own personal goals.
We apply it to our career, to our personal objectives the things that we want to accomplish. Oftentimes we will weaponize that hindsight to look back at what we had done and say, “Well I wish I wouldn’t have done that, I wish I would have started this earlier. I wish these things would happen. I wish I would have quit that job sooner.” Whatever it is, you use that to weaponize it against yourself. To pull yourself down, to try to give yourself these excuses to say, “Well, I didn’t do these things in time and so therefore it’s it’s too late. I didn’t do this, I didn’t do “x”, I should have done “y”. Now it’s too late and I’m just stuck.”
But want to break out of that cycle really fast and I want to say, this moment in time where you are right now, when you’re ready to make a decision, this moment in time exists because of those past experiences. That these things right now would not be possible if you hadn’t experienced those things in the past. If you hadn’t taken those risks, those chances, if you wouldn’t have taken that crap job you wouldn’t be in this scenario right now.
This has been on the forefront of my mind because I just recently had this conversation with my brother and the reason why we were having this conversation is because I’ve decided after 18 months of working at a job that I really, really love and have really enjoyed doing, I put in my notice that I’ll be leaving at the end of the year because I’m going into a business partnership with my brother. And we were having a conversation about, maybe we should have done this sooner, if we started this two years ago look at where we’d be. But this moment in time this was the right time. Even if it’s late or you should have done it sooner or there should have been a different route that we went.
Everything in the past had to happen in order for us to get here. We had to have worked in this industry for 20 years, we had to have tried a business venture together before a long time ago, like 15 years ago we tried to do a business together. It took me running another company, it took me working in the industry, working behind the scenes in the industry, it took me experiencing and hating corporate culture with a passion in order for me to look at this opportunity and say now is the time.
And we can be very, very hard on ourselves to say that we should have done things differently or sooner or we wish things would have gone a different way and weaponized that against ourselves to say, “Now it’s too late.” but I’ma tell you it’s not too late. It took all those things in the past for you to get to this moment in time.
So what are you gonna do with this moment? After the last two years and how things have gone, it took all those things for you to become the person that you are today. The experiences that you’ve had, the things that you have gone through have led you to be this person. And we’re coming up on the end of the year, what is it that you’re going to do? What did you wish that you do? What could you do right now to take that chance to go do that thing. I give you permission.
Because that was the biggest thing that was stopping me, from in the past, was giving myself permission to go take that risk. There was always an excuse. Not enough money, not the right time, benefits, something else that’s happening in my life, wasn’t ever the right time. But I just needed someone to give me permission to go do it. So I give you permission to go do that thing. Go do it. Start somehow, right now, what’s the small step that you could take because everything that it has taken you to get to this moment in time, now is the time to do it.
And that doesn’t mean that you need to be all in. If you’re not ready, that’s okay. But what’s the smallest step that you can take today to move to that vision that you have for yourself? And those experiences, and those little steps that you’re going to take is what’s going to build to your moment in time.
So that’s why I got today. I’d love to hear your feedback on this. You can leave a comment below wherever you’re watching this video. Love to hear, what is your moment in time? What experiences have you had that have gotten you to this moment where now you’re finally ready to take the plunge. Because it took all those things in the past. And don’t be so hard on yourself because you needed those to get here. That’s what I got this time, I hope you enjoyed it, leave a comment below wherever you’re watching this. Bye, pals.