Are you Stuck in Preparation Mode?

A popular inspirational speaker once commented to her audience that she recognized a number of them from previous seminars.

Although she was glad to have their support, she cautioned them not to get stuck in taking nonstop seminars, but to get busy putting into practice what they had learned.

Many students take classes and pursue degrees, always preparing to live life later.

Unlike school, in life the test comes first, then the lesson. Get busy living and learn as you go.

It’s like believing you need to read the manual to your new computer or digital camera thoroughly before you can start to use it.

Just the opposite is true.

You can only learn to use something by trying it out, making mistakes, and then finding solutions on your own. No manual can cover every contingency.

Young people subscribe to the theory that technology should be easy enough to understand without a manual. I think this is the basis of the term “user-friendly.”

By the time we finally understand that it’s okay to live without “reading the manual,” many of us have wasted our young years in a never-ending state of preparation.

We take classes and attend seminars, but we never really live.

Sadly, some of us make it to adulthood without having left the starting gate. As Wayne Dyer says, some people “die with their songs still inside them.”

Don’t let that be you.

Take classes, build your skills, read articles, books as well as instructional and inspirational information.

Then take action.

Put into practice what you learned.

Make adjustments.

Correct your course.

And by all means, get out of preparation mode, leave the starting gate and get on to living your life to its fullest.

That is the point after all.