I guess if you are my generation (Gen X) this will probably resonate with you. If you’re a bit younger, maybe not. But when you get older, you tend to become more reflective. Probably because you have more to reflect on. I realized quite recently how long I’ve been putting a lot of things off. I recognized that I am not where I want to be and it’s that little thing called “untils” that is the excuse.
Maybe you can see yourself in this conversation. But allow me to explain. I have always believed that every day is a new day. You get to start every single day anew. If I didn’t get things done today, there’s always tomorrow. Which is an okay line of thinking most of the time. But what I discovered is that I have been continually putting things off. I’ll get back to that on Friday. Over the weekend. Tonight. Next week. Next month. Next year. The thing is that putting things into the future makes them stay precisely there. They are never in the present. And I seemed to always place some sort of condition on starting something. Like “until I can find the time to get to that pile, I’ll get to it later on”. Sound familiar?
All I can say is thank God I have managed to hear myself saying these things and put a stop to it. Untils and procrastination are one and the same thing. Placing some sort of false anticipation and expectation will always get the exact same results. Nothing. No forward movement.
I am guessing there is something – maybe many things – that you have put on ‘the backburner’ for quite some time. Consider asking yourself the hard questions. Why have you put them there? How long will it be before you look at them? What will be the consequences of not looking at them? How will you do things differently moving forward?
When you get older you look back on your life with retrospect, hindsight and wisdom knowing how you would do things differently now if the same scenario were to arise. What my biggest learning has been is that time appears to go a lot faster when you’re older. All of a sudden you look around and 10 years has gone and you are still trying to work at the very things you wanted to achieve back then. So why has it taken you so long? What is stopping you? Why not now? If not now, when? Because days can fast turn into months. Months quickly turn into years. And years rapidly turn into decades. Waiting ‘until’ the time is right will never happen. The only right time is now. Don’t look back with regret on what you ‘should have’ done in your 20s. Or what opportunities you let go of in your 30s. Before you know it, you’re in your 40s and sometimes what you wanted in your 20s isn’t a fit anymore. And you missed the boat. Be the person you want to be. Starting now. Live the life you want to live. Take the opportunities in front of you. Start those dance classes. Finish off that project. You have no idea how sensational you will feel when you actually just do it. Make ‘untils’ a thing of the past.