I used to think that if I won £1 million, most of my problems would disappear.
Not all of them. I wasn’t completely unrealistic.
But enough of them.
The mortgage would be dealt with. Retirement planning would become a lot less complicated. Decisions that currently required spreadsheets, calculations and trade-offs would become much easier.
I’ve spent a surprising amount of time working out what financial security actually looks like. That’s where the number came from.
The lottery didn’t create the fantasy. The maths did.
The lottery simply offered a shortcut.
What I didn’t realise at the time was that I wasn’t really daydreaming about money.
I was daydreaming about rescue.
And I suspect most of us have our own version of that story.
The Adult Fairy Tales We Don’t Call Fairy Tales
Most adults would never describe themselves as waiting for a fairy tale ending.
It sounds too childish. Too unrealistic.
Yet if you listen carefully to the stories many of us tell ourselves, the structure often feels familiar:
The details vary from person to person, but the underlying logic is remarkably consistent.
Something happens >> Then life gets easier.
Something arrives >> Then movement becomes possible.
The breakthrough. The opportunity. The confidence boost. The perfect timing.
The thing that finally changes everything.
Why These Stories Feel So Reasonable
These stories rarely feel like avoidance when we’re living inside them.
They feel sensible.
For a long time, I believed confidence was supposed to arrive before action. Not dramatically. I wasn’t sitting around waiting for a lightning bolt of inspiration. I simply assumed there would come a point where things felt clearer than they did now.
A point where the doubts quietened down.
A point where decisions seemed more obvious.
A point where I felt more equipped to deal with whatever happened next.
I can see how much faith I placed in a future version of myself.
She always seemed to have the answers.
She was more organised, more decisive and somehow less bothered by uncertainty than the person making decisions today.
The strange thing is that I kept handing difficult decisions over to her, as though she was eventually going to arrive and take responsibility for them.
Of course she never did.
The future version simply became the present version, carrying exactly the same questions forward.
That’s what makes these stories so persuasive.
They allow us to believe movement will become easier later.
Not because anything has changed.
But because we imagine we will.
The Problem With Waiting For Rescue
What I’ve come to realise is that rescue stories have a hidden cost.
Not because they’re unrealistic.
Because they encourage us to keep shifting movement into the future.
I thought I was being patient, practical, sensible.
I wasn’t avoiding decisions. I was waiting until I felt better equipped to make them.
There was always another reason to wait. One period of uncertainty would pass and something else would take its place. A different challenge. A different concern. A different reason why now wasn’t quite the right time.
I never consciously decided to postpone things. It happened in much smaller ways than that: A conversation that could wait until next month. An idea that needed a bit more thought. A possibility I’d come back to when life felt less busy.
Each individual delay felt reasonable and that’s why they were so difficult to notice.
The waiting never felt like waiting.
It felt like preparation.
But life has a habit of carrying on while we’re preparing for a future that never quite arrives.
And that’s the part I find most interesting now.
Many of us assume we’re standing still because we’re waiting for the right conditions.
What if we’re standing still because we’ve accidentally turned those conditions into a requirement for movement?
The Thing That Changed My Mind
The biggest shift for me wasn’t realising that lottery wins are unlikely.
I knew that already.
The shift was recognising how often I’d applied the same logic elsewhere.
Not to money.
To life.
I assumed certain feelings were supposed to arrive before important decisions. Confidence. Clarity. Readiness. Some sense that the timing was right.
I wasn’t consciously waiting for permission.
If you’d asked me at the time, I’d probably have said I was being thoughtful. Responsible. Making sure I was making good decisions.
I can see something different now: I kept assuming there would be a moment when the uncertainty reduced enough for the decision to become obvious.
A point where I felt ready rather than conflicted.
A point where moving forward seemed easier than staying where I was.
In reality this rarely happened:
- Starting university pregnant didn’t feel obvious.
- Building a business alongside a full-time job didn’t feel obvious.
- Leaving accountancy behind certainly didn’t feel obvious.
Most of the significant changes in my life arrived carrying a degree of uncertainty with them.
The decision came first.
The clarity tended to arrive afterwards. Not all at once. Not completely.
But usually enough to take the next step.
That’s what changed my mind.
I stopped expecting uncertainty to disappear before movement became possible..
What this made me wonder
The older I get, the more I wonder how many decisions we quietly postpone because we’re expecting a future version of ourselves to feel different.
As though one day we’ll wake up and discover that the doubts have disappeared and the answers have become obvious.
Maybe that’s why rescue stories are so appealing. Not because we genuinely believe a lottery win, promotion or breakthrough will solve everything. But because they allow us to imagine a future where decision-making feels easier than it does today.
A future where we know enough and trust ourselves enough.
The trouble is that the future version eventually becomes the present version.
And she usually discovers exactly what every previous version discovered before her.
Life still needs living.
Decisions still need making.
Uncertainty still tags along for the ride.
Which makes me wonder whether the people who appear most confident aren’t the ones who found certainty first.
Perhaps they’re simply the ones who stopped expecting certainty to arrive before they moved.
Your Next Step
The goal isn’t finding the perfect answer.
The goal is finding an answer that fits your life.
If you’re waiting for confidence, clarity, motivation or the perfect opportunity before you move forward, it may be worth asking a different question.
What if the thing you’re waiting for isn’t coming in the way you’ve imagined?
From Thinking to Doing isn’t designed to give you another breakthrough moment. It’s designed to help you choose one thing, begin, and work with what happens next — without needing confidence, clarity or the perfect opportunity first.
What’s Coming Next?
Next week we’ll explore a different kind of waiting.
The belief that if we don’t act, everything stays exactly as it is.
Life rarely works that way.
If You Take One Thing From This
Sometimes the fairy tale isn’t the lottery win, the promotion or the breakthrough.
Sometimes it’s the belief that something else is going to arrive and make the decision easier.
Many of us aren’t waiting for an answer. We’re waiting for something that we hope will make the answer easier.
Sometimes that’s the real fairy tale.
People Also Ask
Why do I keep waiting for the right moment?
Because the right moment promises certainty. The challenge is that certainty rarely arrives in advance of action.
Is confidence something you wait for or build?
For most people, confidence develops through experience rather than appearing beforehand.
What is a rescue fantasy?
A rescue fantasy is the belief that a future event, opportunity, breakthrough or feeling will remove the need to make difficult decisions now.
How do I stop waiting for everything to be perfect?
Start by identifying what specific thing you’re waiting for and asking whether movement is possible before it arrives.
References
American Psychological Association (2025) Self-Efficacy: The Theory at the Heart of Human Agency. American Psychological Association.
Han, Q, Quadflieg, S and Ludwig, C (2023) Decision Avoidance and Post-Decision Regret: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. PLOS ONE.
Bandura, A (1997) Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. W.H. Freeman.
