Part of us is secretly waiting to be discovered.

We’re waiting for our big break – a gracious benefactor to spot our innate talent and sponsor further study, our boss to finally recognise all that hard work and grant a promotion, a venture capitalist to be wowed by our business nous over dinner and back the idea that we’ve been talking about for years.

But it just doesn’t seem to happen. 

The talent scout passes us over, the promotion never comes, the wealthy investor isn’t conveniently seated beside us at the networking event.

We wonder why. We shake our heads. We stick our ideas in the bottom drawer along with lumps of blu-tack, broken bulldog clips and dusty photoframes.

Meanwhile, in the background, the self-starters are on the move. Taking initiative. Failing forward. Putting their hands up. Scouting out opportunities. Not waiting for someone to come along and fire the pistol, they’ve already started running. 

These are the people who found a company, not only write, but publish their book, create art and get it into a gallery, start selling their homemade cookies to neighbours and then end up competing with Mrs Higgins, pitch an article idea, launch a clothing label, learn a new language, start a bookclub, pursue further education … self-starters use inner motivation to propel themselves, instead of waiting for approval, consent, or a helping hand from others.

And the fact is – it’s more appealing to gift water and encouragement to someone halfway through their purposeful marathon, than exhaust your muscles trying to push someone off the sofa.

Let’s not sit around wondering why other people seem to have all the luck. Let’s fulfil our dreams, backing ourselves the whole way, and starting off from the place we can at the speed we’re able to run.

Be a Self-starter