I didn’t use to wear makeup.
Well, I guess I did wear makeup, but not often and not well. My oldest sister, Christina, was and is a makeup aficionado. Her hair was big and blonde, and her eyeshadow was flawless. I should have followed suit, but she’s nine years older than me, so I missed the boat on the whole tutorial thing. I suppose that explains why a quick swipe of mascara was the best I could come up with in my teenage years. And, unfortunately, acquiring hair or makeup skills is not something magically granted to you on your eighteenth birthday, like the ability to buy lottery tickets.
All of this to say that just because I was a legal adult didn’t mean I was any closer to appearing pulled together. But necessity is the mother of invention, and as the years progressed I managed to work a “day face” into my routine. A bit of shadow, some liner, a little concealer, and a clear lip gloss became part of the uniform that I put on when I had to go into my office every day. But at night or on a weekend? No way! Makeup or curling my hair was for something special, like a date or a party. The rest of the time you could find me in yoga pants with my hair in a bun.
Then one day I was planning to meet some friends for dinner, and on my way past the bathroom mirror I had a moment of pause. I didn’t look great, but I didn’t want to fuss with getting ready. I thought, Is having dinner with my girlfriends enough of a reason to take the time to do my makeup? And almost immediately I answered my own question.
“If not now, then when?” I asked my ill-kempt reflection. I was living my entire life waiting for a moment to be special enough for me to look, feel, and act my best, and the truth is, you don’t need a special moment, or any reason at all, to do that. If not now, then when? This saying became my mantra and the answer to a dozen different questions.
Should we eat off the nice wedding china or paper plates?
Should I dress up for a date with my husband or just wear jeans again?
Should I take the time to write a note to a friend?
Call Mema and Papa?
Bake some cookies for the neighbors?
The answers to all of these questions is the same: If not now, then when? You could spend forever planning out your someday when right now, today, this second, this is all you’ve got. Someday isn’t guaranteed!
So stop waiting for someday; someday is a myth. Don’t wait to have the time; start planning to make the time.
EXCUSE 4:
I’M NOT ENOUGH TO SUCCEED
I’ve talked a lot in my writings and my speaking about my lifelong battle with not feeling good enough. It is one of the topics I get the most notes about, so I know I’m not alone with those insecurities. For many of us, the list of not enough comes in every size and shape. We battle with feelings of lack in almost every major area of our lives. But it’s a whole different ball game when we are setting out to achieve something we’re unsure we can actually do.
The lack of enough in other areas of our lives is hard as it is. I’m not pretty enough to find a spouse. I’m not thin enough to be beautiful. I’m not old enough to pursue that. I’m not young enough to pursue this. We’re already grappling with feeling like we’re not enough simply in our existence, and now we’ve got to throw a goal out in front of us. Are the insecurities we feel about regular life supposed to be absent in this area? Of course not! In fact, when we set out to pursue something, we’re often dealing with our fear of what we lack multiplied by a factor of nine million.
You think you’re not fit enough in general, and now you’re supposed to run a half marathon? You think you’re not smart enough in school, but somehow you’re going to build a successful business? You think you’re not dedicated enough, but you’re going to attempt writing a book? And so, what happens too often is that you subconsciously decide that you’re going to fail before you ever even attempt to succeed. The irony, of course, is that the thing you’re attempting to take on might be the exact thing that proves your misconceptions about yourself wrong. If you successfully run the half marathon, it would affect the way you feel about what your body is capable of. If you build an incredible business, it would adjust your beliefs about how smart you are. If you stick with it and finally finish that manuscript, it would prove that you are dedicated. It’s a catch-22, because your feelings of not enough keep you from proving to yourself that you are. You haven’t yet achieved the things you hope for, and so you decide that you’re unable to.
Why do we treat only certain areas of our lives this way? When you fall down while trying to learn to walk as a toddler, you don’t stay down. You get right back up and try again. The first time you drove a car, you were probably scared and nervous and holding on to the steering wheel with a kung-fu grip and a proper placement at ten and two. Nowadays you could likely steer with your left knee while handing a sippy cup to someone in the back seat without missing a single word of the Dora the Explorer soundtrack you’ve got on repeat for school drop-off. We fail and slip up and screw up and fall down over and over again in our youth, and yet we keep on going. But ask a thirty-seven-year-old woman to take up CrossFit for the first time, and she’ll immediately start to imagine all the reasons she’ll suck at it, and before she knows it, she’s talked herself out of even trying a single time.
I think this is because the younger you are, the more failure is expected and the less aware you are of what other people might think if you fall. But, girl, the things you’re attempting to do now aren’t things that you’ve accomplished before, so they should get toddler status. It’s not that you’re not enough to cross the finish line; it’s just that you haven’t yet figured out how to run this particular race.
But I get it. This is something I have also struggled with. The thing that has hindered me from chasing down one of my biggest goals in life has been the belief that I’m not smart enough to build a big business. Or I guess I should say that I’ve felt like I’m not educated enough. When I admit that, it tends to surprise people, I suppose because I recognized this limiting belief years ago and have since worked hard to shift my perception of myself. You see, anytime we feel lacking, the only way to successfully fight back against that lie is with a truth that makes it irrelevant.