You Don’t Need to Be Ready. You Just Need to Start.

Here’s something no one tells you: clarity doesn’t come before you start. It comes because you start.

Most of us are waiting. Waiting until we feel ready, until the timing is perfect, until we know exactly where we’re going. But that moment rarely arrives — and if it does, it’s usually because we already started moving.
Think about the last time you talked yourself out of something. You had an idea — a business, a creative project, a difficult conversation, a new habit — and instead of acting, you convinced yourself to wait. ‘I’ll do it when I’m more prepared.’ ‘I’ll start on Monday.’ ‘I need to figure out the plan first.’

Sound familiar?

The truth is, the planning loop can become its own kind of hiding. It feels productive, but it’s often just a way to avoid the vulnerability of actually beginning.

Here’s what I’ve learned: action creates clarity. Not the other way around.

A doctor once shared a tip about getting patients to exercise when they hadn’t built the habit yet. Instead of recommending a 30-minute walk — which felt overwhelming — they simply said: go for a five-minute walk. And if you’re enjoying it, just keep going. That’s it.

One tiny step. Enough to get started. That’s all it takes.

You don’t need permission. You don’t need to have it all figured out. Where you are right now — with everything you’ve been through, every experience you’ve accumulated — is exactly the right starting point. It’s not a detour. It’s the path.

The direction matters more than the destination. You don’t need to know where you’ll end up. You just need a compass — a sense of which way you want to head. The details will come into focus as you move.

I was going to call my book Do Small Things, because that’s honestly how big outcomes are built. Not through one heroic leap, but through many small, consistent actions stacked over time. That mantra still holds: do small things. Do them today.

So what are you waiting for? What’s the thing you’ve been putting off — the email you haven’t sent, the course you haven’t enrolled in, the conversation you’ve been avoiding? What’s the smallest possible version of that thing you could do right now?

Don’t overthink it. Don’t wait for the stars to align.

Start today. Start messy. Start small. Just start.

Because every version of Future You that you admire — every proud, fulfilled, energised version — was built by a version of you who decided not to wait.

That person can be you. Today.
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Stay in touch. I’ll be launching my new book “Today” soon.