Taking a Leap of Faith

By Lekshmy Sankar | 11-Mar-2018

What are you waiting for? How long will you wait to complete something on your bucket list? Will it take a diagnosis with a health issue, the death of a loved one, or a bad rating at work for you to start taking a more critical look at your life? 

What if you decided to do what you love by taking a leap of faith and taking that leap resulted in everything you have ever wanted? What if you took a chance on a job that paid you less but resulted in more energy for your family life? What if you chose to adopt a better attitude towards your current situation that led you to greater professional and personal relationships? 

Taking a chance, any chance is difficult. I recently reviewed my own and came to realize I too keep putting off stuff saying "after this" or "one day." Question is, when are our preconditions ever actually going to come to pass? These are my suggestions on getting you to take some leaps:

• Make a list and prioritize - write down all your dreams and things you want to do with your life. It doesn't matter how crazy they sound, just write it down. Then prioritize what's important to you. I always thought to play the French horn was important to me and it was my secret pipe dream to do it for a living. But once I started writing down my list, I realized right away that there were many more amazing goals I wanted to achieve. 
• Focus - this all sounds exciting and if you are anything like me, you are probably thinking, "let's do everything - everything on my list sounds amazing". It's important to understand that it's better to focus on achieving one goal to motivate you to achieve your next goal rather than diluting your energy over multiple projects. 
• Prepare - If quitting one thing to follow your dream sounds difficult, that's okay - it is a chance and a risk. So prepare as best you can. It's easy to make excuses for your own inaction when you hear about someone else following their dream - excuses like, they're just 'lucky' or they don't have all the 'obligations' you do. Well, that's probably not the case. What you will notice when you start preparing to follow your dream is that it is much less scary than it sounds. If you've prepared, you'll feel better about meeting the upcoming challenges.
• Living in the present - I wrote a previous article about this but this advice is important. I'm oversimplifying the advice here but it's important to stop thinking about the future and worrying about what could happen, and instead focus on how amazing 'right now' is. How many people do you know have the courage to live their dream? Celebrate and be grateful for the now. You're on the journey to something incredible. 
• Build a network - talk to people who have done what you want to do and build a network. Whatever journey you are about to embark on, you are going to need the support and insight of people who are empathetic and will give you the motivation to keep going forward. Whenever you take a leap of faith, there will be naysayers. It's important to let them go and surround yourself with people who have done what you are doing and can help you stay on your path. 
• Research - there is so much material on anything and everything out there. So if your goal is to start a knitting company or skydive or like me, take a month to go to India and meditate in an ashram - get online or start learning more about what you need to do, how to prepare, and who to reach out to.

For me, the biggest factor in making any sort of leap is the realization that you are doing something that you were meant to do. It's scary and it might not be the right decision for everyone but I feel that it's better to chase your dreams than live another five years regretting it. The more people I speak to who have taken a risk, the more I hear, "why didn't I do this sooner?" Take that leap of faith, however large or small, before it is too late.

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