Stop Waiting for Other People to Start Living Your Life

There may be an entirely different version of your life waiting for you on the other side of one decision you keep postponing because nobody else wants to go with you.

Maybe you've wanted to travel somewhere, but your friends can't make it happen. Maybe you've thought about moving to another city, starting a business, signing up for a race, getting serious about your health, changing careers, or doing something completely outside your normal routine. You keep talking about it, thinking about it, and telling yourself you'll eventually do it, but there's always one condition attached: you want someone else to do it with you.

The problem is that the people around you aren't necessarily going to want the life you want. They have their own priorities, fears, responsibilities, interests, and comfort zones. There's nothing wrong with that. The mistake is allowing their decisions to determine yours.

If you keep waiting for other people to share your vision, you can lose years of your life without realizing you're actually choosing to stay stuck.

I've seen the opposite play out repeatedly in my own life. Some of the most important things I have today came from decisions where I didn't have somebody standing beside me saying, "Let's do it." I couldn't see where those decisions would eventually lead, but I was willing to move anyway.

That's the lesson I want you to take from this: invite people into your life, build great relationships, and find a strong circle—but never make somebody else's willingness to go a requirement for you to live the life you know you want.

What Are You Waiting to Do Because Nobody Will Go With You?

Before you read any further, answer that question honestly.

What have you been talking about doing that you still haven't done?

Maybe you've wanted to visit another country for five years. Maybe you've wanted to leave the city you've lived in your entire life. Maybe there's a business idea sitting in your notes. Maybe you've been talking about getting back into shape every January. Maybe there's a marathon, hike, competition, class, career change, or adventure you've repeatedly postponed.

Now ask yourself why.

If the answer has anything to do with waiting for another person, you need to recognize what's actually happening. You've given somebody else influence over a decision that belongs to you.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't consider the people affected by major decisions or honor your responsibilities. It means you stop using other people's lack of interest as an excuse for avoiding something you know you want to pursue.

There's a big difference.

Sometimes we call it waiting for the right time when we're really waiting for enough outside validation to make us comfortable.

Eventually, you have to decide whether your vision matters enough to pursue without an audience cheering you on.

You Can't Predict What One Decision Will Lead To

One of the reasons taking that first step matters so much is because life doesn't move in a straight line.

One decision changes your environment. A different environment introduces you to different people. Those people expose you to new ideas, relationships, opportunities, and possibilities. One conversation can lead to another opportunity, which can send your life in a direction you couldn't possibly have predicted when you started.

You can't see those connections beforehand.

I certainly couldn't.

At one point in my life, going to Mexico was simply part of getting out into the world and living. I wasn't waiting for everyone else's schedule or looking for somebody to give me permission to go. That decision ultimately put me on a path where I met the woman who became my wife and eventually led to the family I have today.

The point isn't that you should go to Mexico.

The point is that you have absolutely no idea who or what exists outside the environment you're currently refusing to leave.

Your next decision might not lead to your future spouse. It might introduce you to a business partner. You might discover a career you didn't know existed. You might find a place you eventually decide to call home. You might discover something about yourself that completely changes what you want from life.

Or maybe you simply have an incredible experience.

That's valuable too.

But none of those possibilities exist if you insist on knowing the entire outcome before you're willing to begin.

Movement Creates Opportunities That Standing Still Cannot

This is something I've seen in business just as clearly as I've seen it in my personal life.

You can sit at home trying to design the perfect career, but sometimes the opportunity you're looking for isn't something you can discover from your current environment. You have to get out into the world, meet people, ask questions, take chances, and put yourself in situations where opportunities have a chance to find you.

That's essentially how merchant services entered my life.

When I was younger, I was traveling and trying to figure out what I wanted my life to become. I didn't have some perfectly mapped-out career path. I was meeting people, experiencing different places, trying things, and getting outside what was familiar.

Along the way, I met contacts and received introductions that eventually helped me find an opportunity in merchant sales. That opportunity became a career and business I would spend years building.

I couldn't have planned the exact chain of events.

What I could control was whether I was moving.

That's why I believe movement creates opportunity. It doesn't guarantee success. It doesn't mean every trip changes your life or every risk works out. It means you're dramatically increasing the number of people, ideas, experiences, and opportunities you encounter.

If you're unhappy with the possibilities in your current environment, sometimes the answer isn't thinking harder about the same possibilities.

Sometimes you need a different environment.

Stop Requiring Certainty Before You're Willing to Move

One of the biggest traps people fall into is believing they need to know exactly how everything is going to work before they begin.

You probably won't.

There's obviously a difference between taking a calculated risk and being reckless. I'm not telling you to quit your job tomorrow, drain your bank account, and hope everything magically works itself out.

I'm telling you that there comes a point where planning becomes hiding.

You've researched enough. You've thought about it enough. You've talked about it enough. You know what you want to do, but you're still looking for another reason to delay because uncertainty makes you uncomfortable.

I've been there too.

One of the biggest forks in the road of my life came after I had already left Seattle and moved to California. Eventually, I decided I wanted to go to Florida.

I packed some clothes, grabbed my laptop, got on a motorcycle, and headed into the unknown by myself.

I didn't know exactly what Florida would become for me. I didn't have every future relationship, opportunity, and business decision mapped out. I simply knew I wanted to move forward and wasn't willing to sit around waiting for somebody else to have the same vision.

Looking backward, that decision became connected to so much of the life that followed.

Had I waited for someone else to have the time, courage, money, interest, or desire to come with me, I could have spent years waiting in Seattle for somebody who was never going to be ready.

Now apply that to yourself.

What if the person you're waiting for never becomes ready?

What happens to your plan then?

Stop Expecting Other People to Have Your Vision

This may be one of the most important mindset shifts you can make.

Other people are not wrong because they don't want what you want.

Your friend may love living in the same hometown forever. You may want to see the world.

Someone you know may value predictability above almost everything else. You may want entrepreneurship.

Your friends may have no interest in waking up early to train for an endurance event. You might love having something difficult on your calendar.

Someone else's idea of a great life might genuinely sound miserable to you, and yours might sound insane to them.

That's okay.

The problem begins when you need everyone around you to understand your vision before you feel confident enough to pursue it.

If you need universal approval, you'll eventually build a life designed around other people's comfort.

You don't need to convince everybody.

You need to know what matters to you.

God Gave You Your Life — Not Your Friends

My faith is a major part of how I think about personal responsibility.

I believe God gave each of us our own life, abilities, responsibilities, opportunities, and purpose. I don't believe we're all called to build identical lives, which means you can't expect everybody around you to understand what you feel called to pursue.

There are times when you should seek wisdom. There are times when you need counsel. There are decisions you should pray about instead of impulsively jumping into them. Having people you trust who will tell you when you're making a bad decision is extremely valuable.

But counsel and permission are not the same thing.

At some point, your life becomes your responsibility.

If there's something you genuinely believe you're supposed to pursue, you can't spend the next decade blaming your friends because they didn't want to come. You can't blame your circle because nobody volunteered to become your accountability partner. You can't require someone to hold your hand and say "good job" every time you make progress.

God gave you your life.

What you do with it is your responsibility.

The Right People Often Appear After You Start Moving

Here's the other side of this lesson that I think people miss.

Going first doesn't mean you'll always be alone.

In fact, sometimes moving first is exactly how you find the people you've been waiting for.

Think about how relationships actually develop. If you want friends who are serious about fitness but never enter fitness environments, where are you supposed to meet them? If you want entrepreneurial people in your circle but never attend events, build anything, network, or enter those rooms, how are those relationships supposed to happen?

If you want adventurous people in your life but never go anywhere because your current friends won't travel, you've created a trap for yourself.

You are waiting for the people you need before entering the environments where you're most likely to meet them.

Reverse it.

Go to the gym.

Sign up for the race.

Take the trip.

Attend the business event.

Join the hiking group.

Walk into the room.

Become active in the community.

Start becoming the person you're looking for in other people.

Your circle can change dramatically when your environment changes.

I'm Not Telling You to Live in Solitude

None of this is an argument for doing life alone.

I love sharing experiences with people I care about. I believe relationships, family, friendships, teams, mentors, and community are some of the most important parts of a meaningful life.

The right circle can completely change you.

They can challenge you when you're getting lazy. They can expose you to ideas you've never considered. They can make difficult things feel normal because everybody around you is doing them. They can hold you accountable and push you through moments when you'd probably quit alone.

I want more of those people in my life, not fewer.

What I'm against is using the absence of those people as a crutch.

There is a massive difference between saying, "Life is better with great people around me," and saying, "I can't start until somebody comes with me."

Build the circle.

Just don't wait for the circle before you begin building your life.

Change Your Environment If You Want Different Standards

If you're struggling to find motivated people, stop looking only inside the same circle you've always had.

Change your environment.

This is something I've become increasingly intentional about myself. I want to spend time around people who are actually doing things. People training for events, building businesses, traveling, challenging themselves, improving their health, raising their standards, and trying to become better.

Environment has a way of resetting what you consider normal.

If everybody around you skips workouts, skipping workouts feels normal. If you're surrounded by people training for races, suddenly five miles on Saturday doesn't seem extreme.

If everyone around you complains about work but never changes anything, staying miserable feels normal. If you're surrounded by entrepreneurs and people actively building something, taking initiative becomes normal.

Your environment doesn't control you, but it absolutely influences you.

That's why finding the right people matters.

Join the Own Your Life FITNESS Accountability Group

Part of the reason I created the Own Your Life FITNESS WhatsApp group is to give people another environment where action and accountability are normal.

It's completely free, and you don't need to be some elite athlete to participate. The group is for people who want to become more active, challenge themselves, share workouts, set goals, put events on the calendar, and spend more time around other people who are trying to improve themselves too.

The point isn't to wait for someone in the group to motivate you every morning. The point is to surround yourself with more people who are moving so you're reminded to keep moving yourself.

If that's an environment you want more of, you're welcome to join us.

Join the free Own Your Life FITNESS WhatsApp group

What Could Your Life Look Like If You Stopped Waiting?

That's the question I want to leave you with.

Not what would my life have looked like if I had stayed in Seattle. Not whether you should move across the country, ride a motorcycle to Florida, travel to Mexico, or build a merchant services business.

What are you waiting to do?

Where could your life go if you stopped requiring other people to go first?

There are people you haven't met yet. There are opportunities that don't exist in your current environment. There are places that may completely change your perspective. There are challenges that could introduce you to a stronger version of yourself.

You can't know where all of it leads.

Neither could I.

I can only look backward now and see how one decision connected to another. Going out into the world ultimately put me on the path where I met my wife and built my family. Traveling and meeting people created relationships that influenced my career. Leaving what was comfortable and eventually heading toward Florida created an entirely new branch of my life.

Those are my examples.

Yours are still waiting to be written.

So invite people.

Build relationships.

Find a great circle.

Ask people to come along.

Enjoy the hell out of the people who do.

But stop giving the people who don't want to go veto power over your life.

If nobody is ready and you know it's time to move, go anyway.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I stop waiting for other people before taking action?

Start by identifying the things you've postponed primarily because nobody else wants to participate. Invite people when it makes sense, but separate their decision from yours. If something genuinely matters to you, decide whether you're willing to pursue it independently rather than indefinitely postponing it.

What if my friends don't share my goals?

Your friends don't need to share every goal you have. People can care about each other while wanting completely different things from life. Instead of demanding that your existing circle change, expand your circle by entering environments where people already share your interests and standards.

How do I become comfortable doing things by myself?

Start smaller. Attend an event alone, take yourself somewhere new, join a class, enter a fitness event, or participate in a group without bringing someone you already know. Independence becomes more comfortable through experience, and you'll often meet new people once you're there.

Why is getting outside your comfort zone important for personal growth?

New environments expose you to different people, perspectives, experiences, and opportunities. Comfort isn't inherently bad, but never leaving what's familiar can dramatically limit what you're exposed to and what you discover about yourself.

How can I find more motivated people to surround myself with?

Go where motivated people are already doing the things you want to do. Fitness events, hiking groups, races, professional organizations, business events, volunteer groups, and accountability communities are more effective than simply hoping your current circle develops the same interests.

What is the Own Your Life FITNESS group?

The Own Your Life FITNESS WhatsApp group is a free accountability community for people interested in fitness, personal growth, challenges, events, and surrounding themselves with others who want to improve. Members can share their workouts, progress, goals, and upcoming challenges while connecting with others doing the same.

About Joe Wagner

Joe Wagner is an entrepreneur, author, sales leader, and advocate for building a life around freedom, experiences, family, health, and personal responsibility. His philosophy is simple: success shouldn't only be measured by how much money you make. It should be measured by how much control you have over your time and the choices you're able to make with it.

A major part of Joe's own journey has been learning how to build income that isn't permanently tied to hours worked. Through more than 16 years in merchant services and payment processing, he built a substantial recurring residual portfolio and became passionate about the idea that passive and recurring income can create something more valuable than money: options. The ability to travel, spend more time with family, pursue difficult physical challenges, explore the world, and decide how to spend your days is what financial freedom is ultimately supposed to provide.

Today, Joe's work connects those lessons across two areas. Through his personal development content, he writes about mindset, discipline, fitness, faith, adventure, leadership, personal responsibility, and his Own Your Life philosophy. Through his merchant services education, he teaches entrepreneurs and sales professionals how the payments industry, recurring residual income, and portfolio building can become vehicles for creating greater financial and time freedom.

For Joe, these aren't two unrelated subjects. Building financial assets creates choices, but what you do with those choices determines the life you actually live. The goal isn't simply to make more money or work harder forever. It's to become stronger, build assets, create freedom, surround yourself with the right people, and use that freedom to experience more of the life you've been given.

To explore Joe's merchant services education and articles about building recurring income through the payments business, visit the Merchant Sales Training Blog.

To connect with Joe, follow his social channels, and find his latest projects, resources, and content, visit Joe Wagner's LinkMe page.

You can also join Joe and others focused on fitness, accountability, challenges, and becoming better through the free Own Your Life FITNESS community.