You tell yourself you’re being careful.

Thoughtful. Responsible.

You say you’re just not “ready” yet.

And on the surface, that makes sense. You’re not rushing; you’re thinking things through. You’re trying to avoid creating problems you’ll have to clean up later.

I mean, that sounds like maturity. Certainly not avoidance, right?

But here’s where we can slow down and have a gentle look together.

The fact is, “not ready” is rarely about not having enough information.

And it’s almost never about capability.

It’s usually about something else entirely.

What “Not Ready” Looks Like in Real Life

Most people imagine not being ready as being unprepared…..or not having enough knowledge…..or not enough clarity…..or not enough confidence.

But when I watch how this shows up in real situations, it’s not what most people expect.

In real life, not being “ready” looks like revisiting the same small logistical questions, again and again.


It looks like researching options you’ve already researched.


It looks like taking notes you don’t act on.

It looks like you’re busy.

It often overlaps with a deeper pattern where mental effort starts to substitute for real progress. Thinking feels productive, even when nothing concrete is changing. I explored this more deeply in last week’s blog When Thinking Feels Like Work: The Hidden Cost of Overprocessing, where effort increases but closure never arrives.

This kind of delay also looks responsible.

And that’s why it’s so convincing to yourself and others.

You can tell yourself you’re not scrolling. That you’re not avoiding the work, that you’re engaging with it. You’re just…..not finishing anything!

Those are the telling signs.

A Client Story You Might Recognize

A few years ago, I worked with a client who owned his own business. He had moved far away from his family to pursue a large contract. It was a smart decision at the time, and it worked.

Years later, that contract was coming to an end.

He decided he would move back home. The problem wasn’t the decision itself. He was clear on that part.

What followed was months of waiting.

He told me he wasn’t “ready” to move back yet because he didn’t have a new local client lined up. On paper, that sounds reasonable.

But when I watched what he was actually doing, something stood out.

He talked through the same what-if questions with me over and over, just phrased in a different way. They were small logistical details about future events, nothing that would have impacted the move itself. Each conversation ended the same way. No moving date set. No constraints seemed to exist.

He took notes. He researched. He planned.

What he did not do was take the concrete steps that would actually put him in a position to land a contract back home.

From the outside, it was clear: The issue was not about lack of readiness.

He was avoiding the moment where the decision would stop being hypothetical and start being replaced with real results.

Why Waiting Resembles Carefulness

Here’s the part that’s easy to miss.

Waiting feels responsible because it resembles being careful.

Careful about your finances.


Careful about your reputation.


Careful about not putting yourself in a vulnerable position.

The mind can convince itself that it’s wise to pause.

The mind will tell you, “I’m waiting because I’m being prudent” or “I’m doing extra planning because I’m thinking long-term.”

But underneath that framing is something less obvious.

Waiting keeps everything hypothetical, which feels safer than seeing a real outcome.

That moment of truth carries exposure.

What “Readiness” Is Actually Standing In For

When people say they don’t feel ready, they’re rarely saying, “I don’t know what to do.”

They’re essentially saying, “I don’t want to experience what happens if this doesn’t go the way I hope.”

That’s a different issue altogether.

Readiness becomes a proxy for emotional safety. It becomes a way to delay entering a situation where your self-trust, your competence, or your identity might be evaluated.

Research on decision-making under uncertainty shows that when outcomes are ambiguous, people don’t delay because they lack information — they delay because the cost of being wrong feels personal.

Behavioural economists describe this as a predictable response to uncertainty rather than indecision, particularly when identity or self-evaluation is involved. (You can see this explored in How Do We Deal With Uncertainty and Ambiguity? from Principles of Behavioral Economics.)

If a choice might make you question your judgment or competence, the brain prioritizes avoiding that discomfort over moving forward.

So it creates a holding pattern.

You stay busy. You stay in “thought” mode. You stay just short of commitment.

And you call it a matter of readiness.

Why Time Doesn’t Fix This

Here’s another subtle trap.

It is common to assume that if we wait long enough, we will eventually feel ready, and that time will keep things calm.

But emotional exposure isn’t calmed by time. It’s calmed by containment.

Containment looks like setting a small, specific boundary around the risk.


An example of containment is intentionally deciding what result you will tolerate.

My client wasn’t going to feel ready by waiting for a perfect local contract to appear. That would require certainty before any movement happened.

What shifted things later was something else entirely. He stopped trying to resolve every hypothetical. He chose a defined window to move back. He accepted that uncertainty would exist for a while.

Readiness followed. After the choice.

Readiness Is Retrospective, Not Predictive

This is one of the hardest ideas to absorb, especially for people with high capabilities.

Readiness is something you recognize after you’ve taken action, not before.

We look back and say, “It turns out I was ready back then,” because the situation stabilized and emotions settled. Your identity survived the test.

But that calm was not a prerequisite for taking action; it was a byproduct afterward.

Waiting to be ready is like waiting to feel warm before putting on your sweater. Because it doesn’t work that way.

How This Relates to You

I’m assuming you’re reading this because there’s something you’ve been circling.

A decision you keep revisiting.


A step you keep refining instead of taking.


A commitment you keep postponing because it doesn’t feel settled yet.

You might tell yourself it’s about timing. Or clarity. Or needing one more piece of information.

I urge you to look closer.

What would you have to admit if your decision didn’t work out?


What version of yourself would be tested, and how would you see yourself?

That’s usually where the pause lives.

A Different Question to Ask

Instead of asking, “Am I ready?” try this:

“What can I do to make uncertainty tolerable enough to not reject myself?”

That might mean:

• Setting a deadline to make a decision instead of waiting for confidence.
• Choosing a limited experiment rather than an all-or-nothing leap.
• Defining what “good enough” looks like before you start.

This isn’t about forcing action. It’s about replacing emotional delay with intentional containment.

The Takeaway

Waiting to feel “ready” is not harmless. It’s an emotional holding pattern where a delay in action is triggered by some sort of discomfort.

You’re rarely stuck because you lack readiness.

You’re stuck because you’re waiting for your emotions to stop reacting to the risk of choosing, committing, or being seen.

And those reactions don’t disappear first.

Your reactions settle down after you decide how you’ll stand with yourself, regardless of outcome.

That’s the real work.

A Gentle Next Step

You don’t have to resolve everything before you begin.

Ready Set Grow exists to help you build confidence and structure while things are still uncertain — not once they’ve already sorted themselves out.

That’s the focus of Module 1: Entrepreneurial Fitness.

If you’re curious, I invite you to explore the program page and see whether it feels supportive of where you are now.

Check out our training program here.