Be READY so you don't need to get READY

 

Be READY so you don't need to get READY

Why do we face countless and endless surprises a.k.a. 'SHOCKS' in life? Why is urgency becoming the norm of the day? Why is it 'ASAP' has become a byword for almost everyone regardless of his calling?

READINESS. That's it.

Yesterday, I had to wake myself up early morning to catch up Game 4 of the NBA playoff game between Miami Heat and the Indiana Pacers. And for an avid hoops fan, we got surprised when Kendrick Nunn, one of Miami Heat’s prized rookies, was surprisingly fielded in by Fil-Am Coach Erik Spoelstra [after that prized rookie was a starter all throughout during the NBA regular season but ended up in the ‘freezer’ ever since the NBA playoffs kickstarted at Orlando, Florida.

Lo and behold. Most basketball analysts were expecting Kendrick Nunn to be ‘rusty’ after remaining on the bench for the past month but he proved naysayers wrong when in fifteen minutes on the court, he managed a trey and two quick assists. And after the game, everyone from his team patted his back, tapped him, gave HIGH FIVEs because he performed with aplomb instantly. What was his recipe for that instant success? Everything blurted, you gotta be ready so you don’t get to be ready. As the late Steve Job, Apple’s Genius Founder, said, ‘Be ready to catch the ball when it is thrown by life’.

Over into our lives, when did we ever remained ready so that we don’t get to be ready [when the need arises]? Unfortunately, procrastination creeps across most of us. We scamper to get ready when the clouds get dark, when smoke billows from the volcano, when water seeps, when the water dam’s level goes lower, when we receive failing marks either for academics in school or at work, that’s the time we get triggered to get ready. Note, life is akin to a poker game. ‘One should always be ready for a bluff’.

BUT, here’s the big but. At the very least, you are one step late, one step behind. And when you are that a laggard, you can’t grind at a normal level, you can’t accelerate and drive at a normal speed, you can’t walk at a normal pace. WHY? Because you’re ‘behind the pack’, you need to catch up and catching up means exerting a higher octane of fuel to trigger your engine to throttle off at a much quicker acceleration.

Like it or not, life is not a flat terrain. You would be climbing up the ladders in life. And there will be numerous times there will be missteps and quite often, missing steps within the ladders in life. And this is why it pays BIG to be ready because when you stumble across those missing steps, you have the countermeasure and workaround before you fall into those pitfalls in life.

As Dilma Rousseff, the Populist Former President of Brazil once said: ‘You got to be ready for everything in life.