Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.

Change is often postponed to a future when you will be ready, but the person you hope to become is built out of what you do before you feel ready. Waiting to become patient, generous or disciplined until conditions improve means rehearsing the opposite in the meantime. The future self is not a separate person but the sum of present choices.

Pick one quality you hope to have in five years and ask how someone who already had it would handle a specific situation today. Handle it that way, even imperfectly, and count that as the beginning.