Before The Moment

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
– Benjamin Franklin

Dear Reader,

This past weekend I took a class on how to respond in an emergency situation at sea.

Here’s the thing. I’ve been on boats my whole life. I know my way around the water. And I still signed up.

Not because I expect the worst to happen, but because I’ve learned that the time to figure out how you’ll respond is not in the middle of the moment. It’s long before it.

There’s an old saying that’s stuck with me for years: we don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.

When the pressure hits, we don’t suddenly become sharper, calmer, more capable versions of ourselves. We default to whatever we’ve prepared for. And if we haven’t prepared at all, we’re left reacting, scrambling to try and think clearly in exactly the moment that clarity is hardest to find.

This isn’t just about emergencies.

I use this same idea throughout my life. Before an important talk or conversation, I run through it in my mind: the questions I might get, the tension that might come up, and how I want to respond. A quiet rehearsal before the real thing. So that when the moment arrives, I’m not meeting it cold. I’ve already been there.

It’s what athletes do when they practice the last-second shot a thousand times, so that when the game is on the line, their body already knows what to do. The pressure is real but the response is familiar.

Preparation doesn’t remove the pressure. It changes who you are inside of it. It’s the difference between reacting to a moment and responding with awareness.

Most people wait to figure it out in the moment. The prepared already have.

My question for you this week:

What’s a moment you know is coming and how might you prepare for it now, before it arrives?

Prepare from there.

– Ken