Jump Before You’re Ready


skydiveSeveral years ago I went skydiving. After four hours of on-the-ground training the instructor and pilot took us up to 2500ft and dropped us out of the pane, one at a time, to have our 2 seconds of free fall and 10 minutes of floating our way down to the ground. It was incredible.

Can you guess what the scariest part of the whole experience was? I thought it would be stepping out of the plane, holding onto the strut and letting go, but it wasn’t. I got the most scared while we were still on the ground, practicing and envisioning how we would crawl out of the plane. It was while on the ground that my palms were sweating, that I hyperventilated at the thought of staring down at the ground from 2500ft.

Funny how the fear can be more all-consuming 2 hours before the jump than when you’re actually stepping out of the plane.

The same thing happens when we have a speech coming, or an important phone call, or a chance to help someone, or do something that matters. Our brain goes into overdrive rehearsing the future, considering implications of failure.

The problem is that we often let this mental dialogue succeed in talking us out of taking the jump. We “come to our senses” or “listen to the voice of wisdom”… and miss our chance to do something great.

But what if we would skip the stress part altogether? What if we wouldn’t think twice? What if we would jump before our brain had a chance to talk us out of it?

Unlike skydiving, you don’t need to rehearse emergency procedures for making a phone call. The price of failure is really fairly small.

There’s a place for planning, but often we over think and pay the price of missing our chance.

Jump before you’re ready.

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