If You Wait Until You're Ready...

I was just reading a blog post by Ruby, a girl from Ireland who has struggled with addiction and anorexia/bulimia (still struggles with the latter!) and she wrote the following sentence: 

"I'm not ready to be healthy."

That is such a raw, honest statement.  But here's the thing... is anyone ever really ready for anything?  Anything big and worthwhile, I mean?  You can be ready for a vocab exam.  You can be ready for bed.  You can be ready to get a haircut.  But what about the really big things in life?

Marriage.
College.
Medical problems.
Parenthood.
Total lifestyle changes.
Growing up.

Are we ever totally ready for those things?  I don't think so.  How could you be?

When you're getting ready for bed, you have a checklist to follow.  They are measurable, attainable goals.  Brush your teeth.  Take your sleeping pills, if you have any.  Put on your pajamas.  Plug in your phone.  Set your alarm.  Fluff your pillow.  Whatever else you do.  Once you've done those things, you are really and truly ready for sleep.  Whether you are ready for what tomorrow brings is a different story. :)

It's like I told my friend, S.  S got licensed for teaching Zumba almost 2 years ago.  Our mutual friend, also a Zumba instructor, told S she wanted him to lead a song in her class.  He kept telling me, "I'm not ready, I'm not ready."  Same thing for teaching a class of his own.  

I said, "If you wait 'till you're ready, you'll never teach at all."  Because you'll never be fully prepared.  You can't prepare for teaching a class.  There's always shit that comes up that you didn't prepare for!  Your iPod malfunctions, someone falls down (heaven forbid it's you!), the speakers blow out, the floor is wet, someone doesn't like your class, you suddenly feel sick... any one of a million things.

Now, I am proud to report, S teaches not one, not two but THREE classes per week!  And he's damn good at it too. :D

But really... is "not being ready" a good enough reason not to do something?  It depends on what it is.  And it depends on how "not ready" you are.  Let's use S and Zumba as an example.  If you meet the following criteria you are, in my opinion, "ready enough" to teach an hour long Zumba class:

-have at least 1 hour's worth of music and choreography
-want to teach a class
-have a space in which to teach it
-have a sound system that works
-expect the unexpected

If you are missing one or more of those things, then yeah, probably not ready enough to teach.  But even if you read that list and go, "Yup, I have them all!" then even then you can't be 100% prepared to teach.  I sure wasn't!  I had about two minutes notice that I was going to teach my first ever Zumba class (my instructor was caught in traffic and I was the only licensed instructor within miles.)  I didn't even have time to get nervous!  And you know what?  It went fine.  Sure, I wasn't "ready".. but from that experience came my ability to sub a class at the drop of a hat!  I never go anywhere without my iPod!

So, to my friend Ruby, I say, "You're doing fine!"  Since nobody can ever be totally ready, we might as well give it a shot with the best we have, right?