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On first blush, it looks like it’s a really, really good time to be in the workforce: there’s more opportunity than ever for flexibility, travel, income growth, and happiness in your work!

If you’re happy working for someone else, your company has the ability to make you even happier by letting you work from home, making your own hours, or offering you rad benefits (think: unlimited vacation! On-site childcare! Full tuition reimbursement!) more than any other time in history.

Or if you’ve been jonesing to become your own boss, you can’t throw a stone on the internet without finding 60 blogs, Facebook ads, or webinars about millionaire solopreneurs, successful side hustlers, or millennials retiring at the ripe old age of 37.

There are more resources out there than you could read in a lifetime about helping people find and create career paths they adore. It’s almost like work’s become this crazy inverse Game of Thrones episodes: everyone is happy, has plenty of wealth, wants to share, and gets along beautifully. (Just imagine: Cercei and Daenerys hug it out, everybody gets a chance to ride a dragon, and the White Walkers are happy having snowball fights and sitting around bonfires with the humans.)

But even with all the possibility today, employee satisfaction in the United States hasn’t improved since…2000. (The Big Willie Style Will-ennium.)

Depending on which study you look at, between 50 and 70% of workers like you are actively dissatisfied with their jobs. Less than half of all American workers — that’s 63,000,000 people(!) — are even “satisfied” with their job! (And let’s face it: satisfied is not exactly a high bar…)

Widespread job dissatisfaction is in spite of companies spending over a billion dollars on employee training, development, and retention initiatives every. single. year.

What gives?

Creating a career path that you want — and actually getting to have the perks and flexibility everybody talks about — takes more than information. It takes guts.

The glut of how-to blogs and webinars on creating your dream job doesn’t replace the courage it takes to ask for it and make it happen. It’s brave to ask, be rejected, and ask again. Or to fall on your face, rework your strategy, and get back up again.

(Need to read more on career courage today? Check this out.)

The guts/courage disconnect might be because asking for what we want requires planning, strategy, and effort — but it also requires us to be willing to take a risk. And taking a risk — even a calculated, thoughtful, strategic one — is inherently scary.

(Want to read more about psychological risks of career change? Click here.)

In this world of almost limitless abundance, it’s easy to become contented with a less-than-ideal reality. Because even though it seems like there are a zillion “how-to” guides and it seems almost impossible that you’d fail if you just try, risk feels threatening because it tells your brain…“so you’re saying there’s a chance?” of failing. There’s a pretty darn small chance you’ll fall on your face, but it’s there.

But on the flip side, it’s easy to overlook the huge risk in staying where you are.

Take a moment and visualize that you’ve finally made a gutsy move toward the kind of career everyone else writes about. Where would you be two years from now? Would you be finally managing a team of employees you love, getting paid what you’re worth? Or, might you be in a jungle coworking space in Bali, sipping on a fresh coconut, doing conference calls via Skype? (If you end up in Bali, I recommend working from Hubud, Outpost, or Dojo.)

How would that feel? Who would you be if you start taking action toward building that future for yourself?

And then, imagine that it’s two years in the future…and you’re in exactly the same situation as today: you have the same supervisor and the same team. You’re wrestling with the same problems and have the same level of dissatisfaction.

How does that vision feel?

You’re two years older: does that potential future embody the feelings of empowerment, freedom, and growth you’re looking for in your life? In that vision, are you still reading the same articles on how to get that next promotion or how to find the foolproof idea for your side hustle?

What kind of progress could you have made on those dreams if you had the guts to get started today?

That’s the real risk: delaying making a decision to take action (any action!) until you feel 100% “ready.” It’s a trap we fall into every day: we forget that deciding to delay is a choice in itself.

We’re never completely ready. It’s never the perfect time to make a change in your life.

Truth be told, no one who’s made a career change has ever told me, “I really wish I’d stayed in that old job and waited another two years before taking action.”

My own career transition action-taking started in 2013, but I didn’t launch my most recent (and profitable) business until 2015. I needed two full years of trying things, messing up, starting over, and learning until I could successfully start and grow a profitable business. And I didn’t end up fulfilling that dream of drinking from a coconut while working from Bali until 2017.

(Luckily, with those years of courageous experiences and experimentation under my belt, I now coach folks how to avoid most of the mistakes I made so they can create the career they want — whether working for themselves or working for an employer — more efficiently.)

But none of it will start if you don’t.

Envision that new job, that new career, that digital nomad dream, that move to Bali, that new business, whatever. Let yourself relish that vision of where you could be in two years — even if it feels as unreasonable as Tyrion and Cercei having a pleasant afternoon tea together.

And then, step away from the how-to articles and make your move. What gutsy idea can you start today?

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Lisa Lewis is a career change coach who helps unfulfilled individuals create lucrative, soulful, and joyful new career paths. Don’t love your job? We should talk. Learn more at GetCareerClarity.com or check out The Career Clarity Show podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and Google Play.