As some of you may know, I take dance lessons and have been doing so for 1-2 years. In this time I have been social dancing, competed and performed. 

My friends who are much more experienced than I am pushed me into participating. At first I was terrified. Were they crazy? I was only a beginner, I wasn't good enough. I needed to get much better before I even thought about performing in front of people.

But they managed to convince me. They explained how they knew people who said that they would wait until they were good enough and kept putting off participating. Eventually when they felt that they were finally good enough, the thought of performing was still so scary that they were unable to do their best. The longer you wait, the harder it gets. 

This is something that I've experienced myself. One thing that I've never been able to do is invite friends to my netball games. While this seems like something so insignificant, the extra pressure of an audience always throws me off my game. But now that I've started dancing in front of friends in earlier, I've managed to break this mental block before it got too strong. 

There will always be ways that you can improve. You can always be better. There will always be a reason to say "I'll wait until I can do X before I do Y". But why should that stop you? If you keep waiting for an arbitrary point in time when you're 'better', you may never end up participating. 

This can translate to many different scenarios other than dance or performing; giving a speech, applying for that job, signing up for that marathon. Sure you may not be at your best yet, but it's better to have a go and smash down those walls that could hold you back as early as you can.

Is there anything holding you back?