What I’ve come to realize is that there is literally no perfect time, and most times are very imperfect as a choice.  Right now my daughter has a broken finger that is not healing, my son has the flu, my husband is overwhelmed by work and badly needs a haircut, and I have a sore throat and feel guilty I’m not spending time with my sick child (who just wants to be on his iPad anyway because he feels so lousy.) But my dream is to get my writing and coaching out more fully into the world, as well as relaunch my performing career. I have some important deadlines, so I am at my desk working.  Have I washed my hair?  No.  Have I been to church much in the past few months?  Um nope.  Are dinners starting to look strange again, because they consist of odds and sods from the fridge?  Yes.  But I feel alive in a way that I would not have if I hadn’t insisted that NOW is the time to commit 1,000% to work that matters to me, even if I drop some balls. Now is not the time to rearrange my spices or spends hours on Facebook or offer to volunteer for something.  Just as going to Target is, what my husband calls, “death by 1,000 paper cuts,” since all those cheap items add up to A LOT at the register, all of the little things we do on our “to do” lists add up to a whole lot of nothing unless we’re careful.

It helps me to remember that Mozart wrote beautiful music while mostly broke, and he didn’t wait to get all of his finances in order to compose.  Beethoven wrote while deaf, and he didn’t wait for a cure to get going.  He sawed the legs off his piano to hear the floor vibrations.  Louisa May Alcott didn’t wait until she recovered from mercury poisoning or had found a suitable husband in order to write.  Eleanor Roosevelt didn’t wait until she was pretty or had others’ approval before she became one of the greatest stateswomen of our time. And, great artists ranging from Alvin Ailey to Jackson Pollack to Nina Simone to Frank Sinatra all had bi-polar disorder. But they did their art anyway and the world benefitted from their genius.  Instead of hiding, they did what Carrie Fisher advised: “Take your broken heart and turn it into art.”

The fact is, someday when we die, are people going to comment on how organized your desk was or how detailed your packing lists were?  Or, are they going to remember that your face lit up when you saw your kids and that you took that trip to travel the world and that you started that business and wrote that book and got back onstage and sang? To find your world stage, remember that the time is now, even though nothing is ever perfect about right now.  Grab this moment anyway, in all of its messy imperfection, and don’t let go.  This is your chance to make your mark.  Now go do it.

Two years ago, just after having read this book for the first time, I flew home with my two children but without my husband from Tokyo to Newark en route to Boston.  The 13 hour flight from Tokyo had terrible turbulence the entire flight and the food was terrible, so that when we landed, the kids felt sick and exhausted.  But because of our quick lay-over, we had to push our way through customs and immigration and then run for our next flight.  My 11 year-old daughter felt panicked and sick when we boarded the flight to Boston at the last minute.  (We were so late, everyone was seated and ready to go and the doors were closing.) We were just about to sit down in our seats when my daughter collapsed in the aisle. In that moment, everything went to slow motion as I looked at my child, out stone cold.  I had no idea what had happened and was terrified.  I turned to a plane packed with 300 people and shouted at the top of my lungs, “Is there a doctor on board?”  Another few seconds went by slowly with no one responding, until finally a doctor’s hand went up, a pediatric cardiologist, and then a nurse.  (The flight attendants, who are trained for emergencies, had zero interest in helping.)  The nurse asked the flight full of people who had Benadryl, since my daughter was awake by then but having an allergic reaction. 25 people raised their hands.  I surveyed the hundreds of people witness to this emergency, and most people were looking down at their phones, pretending that nothing was happening at all.  And 10% looked actively pissed that this little girl was getting in the way of their travel plans.  And there it was:  10% helped, 80% ignored the problem, and 10% got in the way.

The good news is that my daughter was fine– she had fainted and was having a mild allergic reaction to something she had eaten.  I later learned what happened to the nice doctor who helped us and even advocated for us to be able to stay on that flight since my daughter was now fine.  (We were ultimately kicked off the flight and had to wait another few hours until my daughter was deemed safe to fly).  But when the Middle Eastern doctor went to the cockpit to talk to the pilot, they thought he might be a terrorist, so they pushed him back to his seat.  I learned about this because he is colleagues with my friend’s husband. I never forgot how people acted on that plane.  And I remembered from the book that in a life or death situation in which you are trying to survive, some people will be there to help, but most people will get in your way, so you need to be able to advocate for yourself and have a plan.

As you think about what your world stage is, however large or small, remember that you want to always be and surround yourself with the top 10%, not just in emergencies, but in life in general.  There will always be the 10% who get in the way of your dreams, as well as the 80% who don’t understand the urgency of your dreams, thinking that you have all the time in the world to do what you love, so why not just wait another 10 years? 10% will be supportive of you and act on their own dreams as well.  Those are the people to surround yourself with. If you commit to being the top 10%, nothing can stop you.

I founded World Stage Coaching because I believe that so many of us are afraid to show our true light, so we hide and sometimes settle for less.  Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” As a singer/songwriter/vocal coach who has helped people to find their voices in a literal and figurative way, I started World Stage Coaching to encourage clients to claim their world stage, in whatever way that means to them.  (See www.worldstagecoaching.com).

Now that my blog, Your World Stage, is finally live to extended family and friends, I encourage you to ask yourself and your friends, “what is your world stage?”  We all have dreams, but some are more buried than others.  The first step to claiming your world stage is to dust off those dreams or create new ones if the old ones no longer apply.  What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?  What would you do if you had one year to live? How do you want to be remembered? What were you born to do?

As you step onto your world stage, remember how important generosity is to your success. Remember to be the spark for someone else.  You don’t even have to wait to do that.  You can do that right now, giving money or time to a charity or organization that matters to you.  Even if you’re not sure what your dream is yet, you can be part of someone else’s dream in the meantime by giving.

The first step is to stop waiting for the world to change and imagine that the world is waiting for you to take the next step.  What would happen if you were the spark that ignited real change?  Today, be the spark and see what happens.

As business philosopher, Jim Rohn, once said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”  Some of us have dreams we haven’t taken seriously because the people around us are too busy expecting us to be there for them, or to just sit around and be stuck, because that will make them feel better.  Making changes and going to the next level of success can be very tough, because it sometimes means making new choices about how you spend your time and with whom.  If people expect you to be the friend who is always there for them and you’re now working 24/7 to finally get that novel done or to launch the new business, they may be hurt.  This is where setting kind but firm boundaries and saying no more often is helpful.  If we don’t set those boundaries that allow for our dreams to flourish, we can easily get pulled back into what is comfortable and easy–which is not writing, not working, not achieving.  We want to be the good friend, the caring parent, the helpful person who never says no.  But is it worth it, just so that we can be the person who is always there no matter what for everyone?

At the end of your life, do you want to have gone for your dreams or pleased everyone around you?  You get to choose, but it’s not possible to do both. The family and friends who really care about you will respect your new boundaries and cheer you on as you say yes to yourself, one step at a time.  The others will fall away. In order to move to your world stage, you have to consciously choose who gets to come with you and whom you need to leave behind.  So this week, raise your standards for what you can and will achieve and notice who is still standing beside you.