There is a scene in the film The Princess Bride where Vizzini stops in the middle of his carefully drawn out plan to wait. He leaves Inigo to wait for the Dread Pirate Roberts to get to the top of the cliff. He leaves Fezzik to wait for Roberts to catch up. He waits to have his final battle of wits with Roberts — to the death!

Almost all of us choose the most inopportune times to wait. We have a plan, we have the resources we need, and yet we wait. I’ll bet that 99.99% of the time it is pure fear (the other 0.01% being fear mixed with something else).

Are you afraid to “fail”?
Are you afraid to show that you are not perfect?
Are you afraid of what others think?
Are you afraid of change?
Are you afraid of success?

How do all of these things change when we recognize that there is no such thing as failure — only feedback. That if we were perfect we wouldn’t be here. That people are so stuck on their own issues that they rarely think about you. That change will happen and working with it is much easier than fighting it. That being “successful” doesn’t mean you can’t keep your valuable relationships — it means you can serve more people by leveraging your assets.

What Dread Pirate are you waiting on instead of following your plan?
You do have a plan, right?