Getting Ready Is The Best Part Of The Game

"Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success."

-- Henry Ford

Isn't that just the way. . . we want success and results, but we aren't willing to spend the time it takes to get ready for receiving it. Just think of what a young athlete must go through in terms of getting ready for many hours, days, weeks, months, years, in order to perform one time in something that most likely takes less than 5 minutes. Think of how strong their vision of the goal must be--to be working hard right now and seeing more working hard for several years preparing for the Olympics that come only every four years. The courage and tenacity that they must have is unthinkable for most of us.

I have found also in business that getting ready is a huge chunk of what I do. I'm preparing for success by thinking, studying, expanding, fine tuning, researching, communicating, and much more. In the beginning it was just me, but now there is a team and that increases all of these things, yet allows for even more possibilities because one person is limited. So, now we are preparing for even more success.

Now, sometimes we might think of getting ready as the four letter word, work. I suppose it is, but when there is this big goal in front of us, the work flows easily and as a matter of course. Keeping that big goal in mind is key to having the energy to continue to drive forward. Other than this one fact, the goal is pretty much not important--it is the journey toward it and the preparation for reaching it that is important. It is important because it is life in the moment. Therefore, I think that getting ready is the best part of the game.

Now some of you might be thinking, as I have in the past, that one cannot spend their whole lives getting ready, like a professional college student getting one degree after another, or a builder who continually brings materials to the building site, but never builds anything. You're right on that. It would be a waste of talent. The key is to live while preparing; to do while thinking--or, an easy way to say it is to try.

Just like the athlete, we think, plan, and execute. If it works, we do more of it, and if it doesn't work out so well, we erase it and begin again with more information from that feedback. In business it is the same. We think, plan, and execute. If it works, we expand it, grow it, advertise it. If it doesn't work so well, we rethink it, adjust it, reformulate it, pull it from the shelf, or maybe even discard it, and move on to more things that work. It's all part of getting ready. It's all good and it is the growth that we live in the moment with that is the thing we enjoy the most and that makes getting ready the best part of the game.