You Can't Think Your Way to Greatness
We live in the age of endless preparation. Before starting anything, we research extensively, consume tutorials, and wait until we feel "ready." But this entire approach is backwards.
The ancient Greeks distinguished between theoria (contemplation) and praxis (action). Aristotle understood that while thinking about virtue is valuable, you only become virtuous by acting virtuously.
You Become by Doing
You don't become an entrepreneur by studying entrepreneurship. You become a writer by writing badly, not by perfecting your understanding of prose. You become confident by doing scary things, not by reading about confidence.
You become anything by doing it badly first, then getting better.
The School Trap
Our education system taught us the opposite: study first, then apply. Master the theory, then attempt the practice. This works in school, where the goal is demonstrating knowledge. It fails spectacularly in life, where the goal is creating value.
School rewarded preparation and punished mistakes. Life rewards action and learns from mistakes. We've been trained to fear being wrong, but being wrong is often the fastest path to being right.
The Permission to Suck
What stops most people isn't lack of knowledge, it's unwillingness to be bad at something. We associate competence with worth, so public incompetence feels threatening.
But there's a crucial difference between being bad because you haven't tried, and being bad because you're learning. The first is stagnation. The second is growth in motion.
Every expert was once a disaster. The people we admire didn't skip the messy middle, they embraced it as the price of mastery.
Start Before You're Ready
Theory has its place, but get the sequence right: start with minimal knowledge, begin practicing immediately, then return to theory to make sense of what you're experiencing.
You don't need permission to be perfect. You need permission to begin imperfectly and let the doing teach you what no amount of thinking can: what it feels like to become who you want to be.
The question isn't whether you're ready. It's whether you're willing to start.
