Extract from my book “The passion factor”. LID Publishing, by Jorge Urrea

If you intend to fire an arrow, first center yourself, look carefully, check the wind, imagine the journey the arrow will make through the air, feel how it will penetrate the target, and then draw and fire. According to the Zen master archers, beginners should never have two arrows. The thought that if you miss with the first you can always succeed with the second means that your concentration is never complete. If you are not convinced about your business, then don’t bother to launch it, don’t waste your energy and your time firing your arrow. Wait for kinder weather. If you are not convinced then you will never devote yourself to anything or anyone, neither a partner nor work contract, but if you have already done so, then live it as though there was never any other possibility. “There are no arrows left,” should be your mantra. This is the only way that you will do your work correctly.

In this sense and contrary to what many think, seeking added time merely anchors you in the past and makes it harder for you to be absorbed into the present and the new adventure you’ve decided to embark upon. I recall an engineer who hired me because he wanted to get out of a loop of wasting hours every day wondering whether he should go back to his old company some months after he had left it. On the personal front, we all know someone who can’t stop sending love letters to the ex-partner in the hope that love lives on, and can be relied upon if the new partner fails to deliver. Let go of the mooring rope, explore other seas, because you can’t reach them from the harbour of the past.