I want to take a moment and talk about the power of starting, of beginning. I’ve always struggled with starting new things and I find it to be very scary. I believe that many people are plagued with a fear of starting and are all waiting for the perfect time to start their dreams that never come.
I’ve found myself doing this over and over again and have just recently begun putting extra effort into taking action. A lot of times our problem is not that we don’t know what we need to do, it’s that we’re waiting for the right time to do it. We don’t tell ourselves that we can’t make our dreams come true, we tell ourselves we will make them come true. When they don’t come true due to our lack of action, then we tell ourselves we can’t.
Why Starting is Important
Why starting is important may seem glaringly obvious but I think it’s important to really understand the why behind starting something new. Obviously, nothing happens if we don’t start, ut why is it so important that we be proactive at starting and taking action? Starting is more than finding a new TV show to watch or a book to read. That’s not the kind of starting that I’m talking about. I’m talking about taking action on the things we want to do and the people we wish to be
I have an exercise that I’m borrowing from Jordan Peterson that I’d like to share with you. This is something I read about and while it’s very simple I think it really helps you visualize your decision-making. His is a writing exercise but I’m going to simplify, and tweak it for this article and have you just use your imagination.
When you’re trying to decide whether or not to start a new goal, think about your current life trajectory if you do not take action on whatever goal you have. Imagine your life in 5 years. What’s it look like? Is it where you want it? Is it much different than your current life? Now do the same thing but imagine your life in 5 years if you did take action on your goal. What’s your life like now? Is it better or worse?
This exercise has really helped me find the power to start. Starting can be incredibly scary but it’s how we get to where we want to go. Visualizing where I’ll be if I take action has helped me get over the fear of starting because I can also visualize where I’ll be if I don’t start. And I don’t want to be there. This forces me to get over my fear and take the action.
When to Start
Far too often we get caught up trying to find the perfect time to start that we never end up actually doing it. We say things like “I’ll start working out when it gets warmer,” “I’ll start my own business when my kids are in college,” or “I’ll finish writing that project when work gets less stressful.” These are all serious things that all merit consideration. You don’t want to get so caught up in your entrepreneurial dreams that you neglect your kids and work can take its toll on you and zap you of your creative energy so that writing feels impossible. These are real concerns and I’m not here to tell you “good excuses don’t exist, you can do anything.” This isn’t that kind of motivating post.
At some point, you really have to ask yourself what it is you’re waiting for. When I was 18 I was thinking about opening up an investment account. The reason I hadn’t yet was that I only made minimum wage and didn’t have much money. I told myself “I’ll start investing when I work a real job and I have real money. This was just an excuse that I gave to myself to allow myself to be lazy. I needed to take action. I had done my research on investing and I knew exactly what I wanted to invest in and how important it is to start early. So why didn’t I start? I really think it was just an excuse to do nothing. To be lazy.
I had a similar experience with my business. I told myself that I would start a business when I was out of college. But why? When I got out of college I would tell myself that I’d start it when I get settled at my new job. After that I’d tell myself I’d start it after I get started after I save up enough money. The list goes on and on. It’s never ending.
You can’t wait for the perfect time. You have to make the time. How important is this new goal that you have? Your time is taken up by all sorts of things. School, work, kids, TV, hobbies, etc. If this is really important to you then it should start to take time away from some of those areas. You’ll exchange TV time with research and development time and your hobby time will be for planning and building your MVP, or minimum viable product.
It isn’t that we don’t have enough time, it’s that we do so little with it. If you don’t start now it’s only going to be harder to start later on. Stop looking around you and seeing all the reasons you can’t start. Look around and see all the reasons you can. I did open up an investment account, not because I had a lot of money but because I wanted my $50 monthly payments growing even if it was only $50. I did start a business, not because I had money but because I had a lot of free time.
How to Start
We know we need to start and we know that now is the time to do it. But how do we do it? This is something that I’ve learned the most about and hopefully what I’ve learned will help you too.
I have a tendency to get caught up in the planning process of a new goal. I don’t want to start until I have everything perfectly planned out. For example, I don’t want to start working out unless I have every workout perfectly planned out with every exercise and rep laid out. I don’t want to sell my first product until I have every product perfectly made.
There is a business term that I mentioned earlier called the minimum viable product or MVP. The MVP just means the smallest version of your product that you can make to see if your idea is even valuable. If you’re making an app then your MVP would be a very crude version of the app that you can show people and generate interest. If you have a physical product such as unique wooden pipes then make a crude pipe and try to sell it before spending time and money on something that people may not want.
Most companies start small with an MVP and grow from there. It’s rare that companies start big and stay big. We can apply this concept to more than just business. For example, let’s say that you want to start working out. Don’t worry about all the different exercises and figuring out how many grams of protein to eat or how much volume to do, just go to the gym for an hour and lift some weights. Start with your MVP. For the gym, your MVP might be going for 30 minutes a day and walking on the treadmill. That’s ok. Once you can see that it works and you’re doing well, do more. If you want to start writing a blog, start with your MVP. Start writing articles about a specific topic on Google sheets. Then once you have some written and you like what you’ve written, work on getting them published on a website.
Don’t try to do everything now. Start with your MVP and then build from there. If you’re anything like me this can be very challenging because you want everything now. But you’re wasting time planning how and when you’re going to start, you could be taking action with your MVP.
Start simple, start small, and grow huge.
Conclusion
I’ve struggled with starting for a long time and if I’m honest I still have a hard time with it. I still catch myself saying “I’ll start this when I don’t have this or that on my plate.” Time isn’t waiting around for you. You get to choose how you use it and what kind of person you’ll be in the future. If you want to be an early riser you have to start now and use your MVP. If you wait, you’ll only find another excuse waiting there for you.
Don’t wait for life to give you the opportunity, start with the opportunities that you already have and take action.
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