We are never ready for the events that shape our lives.

When you left home for the first time, or started a family, or asked your boss, “Do you have a minute?” right before quitting, you might have been excited about the change, weighed all your options, created a plan, and finally jumped.

But look back at these moments. If you’re honest with yourself, were you 100 percent ready? Did you know exactly what was going to happen next?

Everyone has fears. Even the most prepared, talented, and accomplished people are sometimes scared to begin. (In fact, sometimes they’re the most scared.)

Fear helps us delay big decisions until those decisions are made for us. Fear leads to choosing our college major at the last possible moment, or tolerating a job we’re not crazy about for “just a little while longer.” Fear is very good at keeping us cozy—until outside forces barrel in and tell us it’s time to move on, whether we’re ready or not.

Outside forces can grant us accidental gifts, even when they shake up our lives. We learn to start again, because there is no other choice. We walk through the world knowing that things we once considered constant can also be lost. And as we find ourselves emerging from these moments of uncertainty, grief, or pain, something incredible happens. Our sense of what we thought possible expands. We find courage we didn’t know we had.

Outside forces show us how strong we can be.

The lesson is to apply these experiences to the act of beginning—over and over again.

For all your major moments and milestones, you must start before you’re ready. In fact, you can start before you’re ready when it comes to the smaller tasks, too. You might be reluctant to make an overdue doctor’s appointment or ask a favor of a colleague. Cue the excuses: there will be a better time, or you still need more information. Maybe that’s true, but none of us will ever be eager to get uncomfortable or scared, in the same way we may hesitate before starting a new project or applying to a dream opportunity. Comfort feels safe, so we sink into it. The days pass, our lives pass, and we wake up one morning and wonder, Why didn’t I ever do the things I wanted to do?

You will never feel completely ready for the projects that scare you, for the levels of creativity you think you need in order to do your best work. You may not believe you have the courage to change locations or careers. You will hedge and debate. (If you’re like me, you might overanalyze for years.) You drag the important tasks from one day to the next on your calendar, telling yourself in a kind and understanding tone, I’ll just do it tomorrow.

The illusion of tomorrow is beautiful, perfect, and completely spotless. Tomorrow is all promise. Because we want the best for ourselves and our projects, our seeds of creativity and business ideas, our dreams and pristine drafts, we believe that waiting until tomorrow is the correct choice.

But it’s not.

Tomorrow will fail you. Not in any grand or catastrophic way, but through an inevitable winnowing of hours. Your meeting will run long, your car might break down, you get sucked into a TikTok scroll. Every free minute will attach itself to a task. You arrive in the evening looking for the thief who made off with your day and, by extension, with your life. Where did the time go? Wasn’t tomorrow supposed to be different?

Many of us have spent years promising ourselves to start something tomorrow. But we need to admit that tomorrow isn’t the solution.

Today is the day to begin. You may not finish every task or fulfill every goal, but you can make a commitment to yourself—to your projects, dreams, and future—that you refuse to wait any longer. You can look back on your history of pushing through uncomfortable moments and moving forward without every answer and trust that those experiences have prepared you for this one. Always have faith you are better off leaping rather than standing still.

We are not starting today because we’re ready, but because we know we will never be ready. Admitting that no absolutely perfect moment exists means that every moment is full of promise.

Life doesn’t wait until we are ready. 

Life happens anyway.

Isn’t it time to begin?

Excerpted from DO IT TODAY by Kara Cutruzzula, published by Abrams (2022) and available here.