Between Already and Not Yet

Why your best days are in front of you no matter what is behind you

Listen here.

Julia Child could not cook.

When she graduated from Smith College, she couldn’t make a meal worth eating. She went into advertising. Then she worked in government intelligence during the war. Somewhere along the way, she landed in France, tasted real French food, and was all in.

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She published her first cookbook at 50. After that, she became one of the most famous chefs in the world.

You read that right. Fifty years old. After a whole career that had nothing to do with food.

Here is what she said about how she pulled it off:

“The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.”

That quote stopped me. Because I am well acquainted with doing everything I can to NOT fail.

The older I get, the more I have to fight my tendency to hit the easy button. To remain comfortable. It takes effort to push against 50+ years of bad habits.

It sounds so reasonable, right? We can tell ourselves that life as we know it today is as good as it gets. The cake is baked, and that’s just how it’s gonna be. I knew someone who tried what you’re trying, and it didn’t work. They had to get a real job again. Might as well play it safe and avoid the pain of starting over.

But that is not wisdom. That’s sliding safely into a life of comfort. A life of settling for less.

This brings me to a gap I think about a lot. It’s the space between who you already are and who you’re not yet. Most of us want to build our home in the “already” and call it good. We decide that we aren’t taking any more risks. It’s time to accept our lives instead of leading them.

But what would you attempt if you knew you wouldn’t fail?

I’ll share three things that helped me lean into the “not yet.”

The first one sounds simple — because it is. I’m careful about what I let into my head.

I don’t mean standing at the mirror reciting Stuart Smalley affirmations. I’m talking about filling the first part of my day with people who see a glass half full life. Scripture. Books. Podcasts. The ideas of people further down the road than I am. When I can’t find my own belief on a hard day, I borrow theirs.

The second is whitespace. I have never once shut down Instagram feeling better about myself. Holding my life up against everyone else’s highlight reel is a losing battle. Every time. So I take a walk instead. My best ideas don’t show up at my desk when I’m grinding away. They show up on the trail when I’m thanking God for what I already have, thinking about what’s possible.

The third is my journal. There’s no right way to do it. I just get whatever is swirling around in my brain onto the page. I use a cheap notebook from Amazon. Half the fears I write down lose their grip the moment I write them in plain sentences.

None of these methods is complicated. That’s the point. You don’t need a new plan. You need to stop feeding the voice that keeps you parked in a perpetual state of “already.”

Your “not yet” is already inside you. But you must give it room to grow.

So let me ask you the question I keep asking myself: whose voice are you letting speak into your life right now? The one telling you that you can, or the one telling you that you can’t?

I don’t care if you’re 20, 30, or 50, like Julia when she went all in on her calling. You will always feel fear saying “you can’t. Why try. Give it up and just settle.”

Do it anyway.

See you next Sunday.

P.S. If you’ve never watched this classic Julia Child SNL skit, today is the day.

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