A Life of Waiting and “Life on Hold” Syndrome: How to Stop Waiting for the Perfect Moment

AVAlexander Volchek

People often ask themselves: what's the ideal moment to do something? The ideal moment to get married, change jobs, start a business, begin building a family and have children. The ideal moment to change the setting of your life. The ideal moment to start working on yourself. When does that ideal moment arrive? Or you keep waiting for it, checking every action and saying, “Now this is the ideal moment. This is ideal now. This is the ideal moment.” Or the ideal moment never comes in your life. Never comes at all. Years go by, and it doesn't arrive. Because it never arrives, you alter your dreams, goals, tasks, and actions. Should you live by relying on an ideal moment? It's important to examine and distinguish two states. On one side, there's a realistic perception of the right moment to do something. There is, generally, a right moment to make a decision or leave a job. I recently made a video about that, for example. Or there's an ideal, right moment—well, not necessarily ideal, but generally a good moment—to start your own business.

In theory, you could probably even find more or less appropriate moments to conceive a child. At the very least, there's physiology. In general, there's probably a moment. Is there an ideal moment for your relationship with another person to be good? I don't think so. Is there a good moment to restore a relationship with someone now? There may be a good moment to restore it. Some ideal moment. You haven't spoken for a long time, you go somewhere, meet that person there again, and there's a reasonably good moment to do it. This probably applies to almost any event or action. But that's a realistic perception and understanding of the ideal moment, a normal, realistic perception. On the other side, a person turns the ideal moment into a race after what's going to happen and tries to rely on that ideal moment. They say, “If this isn't the ideal moment, I won't do it.” They define the very fact of the ideal moment by telling themselves, “I know what an ideal moment is. I know how to identify it.” If someone relies on an ideal moment, they've given themselves the internal premise that they know how to define it.

They're telling themselves, “I completely control all of life, absolutely every event happening around me. I know how the whole world works, how everything is, so I'll choose the right, ideal moment.” That's an illusion. On one hand, ideal moments really do exist. On the other, it's important not to fall into an illusion. Where ideal moments exist, you need to understand, for example: today is the right, ideal moment for us to conceive a child. My wife and I must immediately allow for the possibility that we're mistaken and something may go wrong. Or this month is the ideal moment to start a business. I've become available, a partnership has emerged, or things have aligned. I say, “Yes, it's a good moment. I'll start now.” It may even be ideal, but that doesn't mean the business will succeed. I haven't seen someone for a long time, and now I meet them. This is the ideal moment to restore our relationship. Yes, it's probably a good, perhaps ideal moment to do that. But I understand that the relationship may not be restored. Or it could be restored and turn out very badly, or bring many negative things into my life. The point is that an ideal moment can bring both good and bad things.

If we rely on an ideal moment as an absolutely guaranteed truth we've established for ourselves, we can become profoundly mistaken. It's important to maintain a distinction. Then we move on and ask ourselves: should we proceed at all from the idea that ideal moments exist, or simply live in a state of trust, flowing with life? But even if you truly trust life and flow with it, observing, feeling freedom, and perceiving everything, you'll make particular decisions at the right time, at that very ideal moment. You'll begin doing it automatically, and more and more and more events will occur at particular moments. Those events will be considered ideal. In fact, you aren't choosing a space for yourself. You live in a state of the ideal moment and the search for it. Or you live in a state of absolute freedom and detachment. But when, from that freedom and detachment, you say that an ideal moment doesn't exist, you're denying certain other things that are essentially obvious and generally reliable.

Again, when you say that the ideal moment doesn't exist, you're entering a state of believing you know everything about everything: how everything works and happens everywhere. It's easy, after good things happen following an action, to say that it was the ideal moment to take that action. For example, you bought shares in a company, they went up a year later, and you say, “I bought them at the ideal moment. At exactly that point, the shares and the company were going through this change. The company did certain things, and the shares rose. I bought at the ideal moment.” You also happened to have the money then, and so on. It's easy to assess things and speak that way after the fact, when good things have happened. They happen in every person's life. That's why you need to remain observant. When examining the ideal moment, you need to understand that other people exist around us. An ideal moment for me doesn't mean it's ideal for my business partner. An ideal moment for me doesn't mean it's ideal for my employee. An ideal moment for me doesn't mean it's ideal for my boss.

An ideal moment for me doesn't mean it's ideal for my wife, husband, children, mother, father, or anyone else. The right point in a sequence of events may be needed specifically by you, bringing you good, genuine forward movement at that moment. It may bring other people deterioration at the same time. Development for you, deterioration for others. I was an owner of Business Molodost, a large company many of you know, one of the largest business education providers in the Russian-speaking market. Initially, I was simply an owner and partner. Some time later, I became CEO. Then I stepped down as CEO and remained in the single role of owner. I had two roles and was left with one. I remember that when I stepped down as CEO, a teacher close to me said, “You made the right decision for yourself.” Essentially, it was the ideal moment for me to decide to step down. Relationships were one of the foundations of that business, and at the time Petya Osipov wanted me to leave the CEO role. So it was the ideal moment for me to do it.

At the same time, my teacher said, “This will end very badly for the company. For you, it was the ideal moment, a good and right decision at that time, but not for the company.” That's what subsequently happened, in terms of certain circumstances. It's very important to see and understand these things when making decisions, and to be ready for the different consequences that follow. If you're making a decision now based only on yourself, on the understanding that this is your ideal moment, will you be ready for things not to work out or happen for other people? Could you be mistaken in making this decision? Might it be better for you not to make it now? When we use the word “ideal,” perhaps we mean ideal across life as a whole, as right as possible from life's perspective. When we say “ideal for me,” it may be an exalted state concerned only with—

An effect for yourself alone, your own gain. If we understand an ideal moment as ideal within the life of planet Earth and other people, that's a very good movement forward. What can you pay attention to when studying the ideal moment, after taking that first comprehensive step of understanding what it is? Look at how these moments connect with other people and with other events in life. When we make decisions, we very often affect the people around us. People today often don't notice this. They act only from their own perspective. Someone will object, “Alexander, when I make decisions, I don't think about myself at all. I think only about others.” That needs to be observed in the same way. I'm not saying doubted, but observed: look carefully to see whether there's some deception in it, whether you're actually saving yourself this way. You simply don't want to take responsibility when you say you're making a decision for other people. Perhaps you're just saving yourself because you're running away from one of the most difficult aspects of human life.

That's responsibility, and above all responsibility to yourself. Be responsible in life. See you soon!