I was very focused in what my mentor was sharing with us. To be honest, I was totally taken by his story. He shared his childhood story, the time when he was bullied as a “retarded” by his friends and his teacher. Can you imagine being bullied by your teacher? I felt weird but I was fully immersed in his story, curious to understand how my mentor became very rich and one of the most successful people in the field of personal development nowadays and share podiums with John Maxwell, Les Brown, Paul Scheele, Bob Proctor and many others, after experiencing such a difficult childhood that created many barriers within him.

“His story in unbelievable,” I thought to myself. He started working at a young age by cleaning chimneys, offices and now he runs a million dollar business. He came from a poor family of Italian emigrants, showed little interest in school because he was constantly bullied, he felt desperate and had come to think of himself as a looser until the day when he met a mentor who gave him the “Think and Grow Rich” book.

He said that this was the first book that he showed a lot of interest in. While reading the book, he didn’t “understand” what was reading in the book, even though he understood the words in an intellectual level. He had many dreams and hopes while reading the book but time passed and nothing was happening… his finances weren’t increasing.

His mentor told him to meet in 2 weeks after giving him a specific task: to read for two weeks (every single day) only 15 pages of the book that talked about the power of PERSISTENCE. If he would skip a day, he would have to start again. Paul (my mentor), started to complain as soon as he met his mentor. Nothing was working, he wasn’t getting rich.

“This will become your reality only if you work for it” – said his mentor to Paul by showing him the book.

Paul was skeptical but decided to fully commit. TO TAKE STEPS EVEN WHY HE WASN’T FEELING READY. He had nothing to lose!

Years that passed by showed that the book influenced his life tremendously. But, apparently only 1-3% of those who read it benefit from its lessons.

“Why does this happen?” – I asked immediately.

“Because most of the people do not act on what they read or learn even why they understand it from an intellectual point of view. People are resistant to change or fear judgment. They experience fear because they are never ready to act.”

That mentoring session was full of “Aha” moments for me. I started to follow and analyze what successful people do and what I noticed was that all of them took the first steps while not feeling totally ready or competent about what they wanted to do.

Ask yourself when was the last time that you wanted to start something new. Whatever it might have been (to start a business, lose weight, to think of the next career step or write a book), did you feel unsecure, scared and doubtful for doing such thing, that you didn’t have time, finance or skills?

You are not alone in this.

Most of the people feel that way and they never start. But this does not apply for successful people. They may not have the human or financial resources, the information or the experience, but they decide to start anyway ad this is what makes them successful.

Don’t wait to be ready! You will never feel ready mentally. But the only thing that you can do is: to start even when you are not ready!