The Right Feeling Trap
My dream was to become a software engineer. I completed my engineering courses, but there was more to do before I could start interviewing.
I had to read the infamous, Cracking the Coding Interview.
After that, there were a dozen other books to read.
After that, there were online interview courses for me to take.
Then I had to schedule mock interviews with as many engineers as I could find. And finally, once I was done rinsing, I had to repeat.
6 months passed and I still did not apply to a single job. 6 months became 8 months. And finally, a year passed and my interview count was still zero.
That’s when my friend gave me what I consider the most important advice when it comes to reaching your goals.
“Don’t let the need to feel the ‘right’ way block you from what you really want”.
It took some convincing. Actually, it took a lot of convincing before I took that advice to heart.
Then I did it. I applied. I interviewed. And then I got rejected. It felt like a punch to the face.
But I got back up and I applied again. Each failed interview taught me things that a book could never teach.
It turns out that the best practice was to jump into the real deal and interview at actual companies. I learned valuable skills that I wish I had learned much earlier on.
And so here’s the moral of the story.
Waiting until you feel ready can do much more harm than good.
For example, maybe you are waiting until you lose weight to start dating. Maybe you’re waiting until you feel like an expert before giving a presentation.
We tend to put off valued living until our thoughts and feelings can be “fixed”.
Take a step back and recognize when you have fallen into one of these traps.
And then take that leap of faith and see how far you can go!
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