This is a follow on thought to “you’ll know it when you see it” from last week. It’s about timing.

I’m a pretty organized and disciplined person. Not in everything, but more so than not. I’m perfectly capable of making myself do something, making something happen, pushing through no matter what. There’s a school of thought that thinks that’s what it takes to succeed.

Oddly enough I disagree. Sure, sometimes you have to make yourself do things and make things happen. But not always. Sometimes you have to wait for the right time, wait to be ready.

I think that knowing the difference is what it really takes to succeed. Okay, to be perfectly honest, I think that’s just one of the many wonderful things it takes to succeed, but that’s a topic for another day.

You can eat a tomato before it’s fully ripe, but it won’t have all the deliciousness that it would have had when it was ripe.

You can plant your garden too early and the tender shoots can be damaged by a late frost.

There are a thousand more examples. It’s also equally true that if you wait too long to pick a tomato, it will be spoiled or the opportunity to plant will have passed.

You want to hit the right window, the sweet spot. You want to be ready.

Waiting until you are ready is not the same as procrastinating. Oh hell no. Procrastination is active resistance, and it’s hard and uncomfortable. You can tell if you are procrastinating because you’ve got lots of inner drama about how you should be doing something, or how you just aren’t going to think about it now.

Waiting for the right time is much easier, but it doesn’t mean doing nothing. It means planning and preparing. Arranging. Doing other things to make time and space. Doing the work to be ready.

I think that’s what divine timing really means, because when it finally happens, it feels divine – as if it were meant to be, as if it were so much easier than I had thought possible. And it tastes ripe and juicy and wonderful.

Sometimes we just have to risk it and do it now. Sometimes we want to be ready. It just depends…

And remember: in all things – progress, not perfection!

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If you’d like to chat about whether you are procrastinating, or what you might want to do to get ready, send me an email and we can set something up maggie@maggiehuffman.com