One of my very favorite inspirational speakers is Zig Ziglar. He was a wonderful man. He brought encouragement and support to many, many people through his words. An outstanding salesman with impeccable business savvy, Ziglar made his biggest impact through the values he shared with millions of fans and listeners through his books and public speaking tours. His example proves the adage that dollars and cents alone don’t make the man – it’s what he does to benefit others that determines his real legacy.
Ziglar summed up his formula for success as follows, “You don’t have to be great to start, but you need to start to be great.”
He was so very right that the first step in a new endeavor can very often be the most difficult. It can be very easy to be overwhelmed at the prospect of launching onto a new journey – whether it is writing a book from a blank page, starting up a new company from scratch, or learning how to master a brand new skill. It isn’t important that you are a master or expert (or maybe even all that good at all) when you are first launching a new endeavor. The important thing is that you simply get going. Many of us can endlessly delay and dawdle on getting moving on our work, even if we know that running out the clock only makes It even more likely that we will never get started.
There are a lot of theories out there for why so many of us persist in delaying taking action, even while knowing that it is only hurting ourselves in the long run. Many simply lack confidence and think that going through with their ambitions will only expose their weaknesses or failings. Others want to avoid the pain of failure so badly that they cannot even rouse themselves to make an attempt.
And, of course, some folks are just plain lazy. No need to make it more complicated than that simple rationale. To be fair, we as human beings often seem to have a general tendency to embrace laziness, but it is still no excuse – especially in a day and age when the entire concept of “average” is essentially over and we all need to be hustling and thinking creatively to get ahead.
It’s okay to feel vulnerable or prone to failure when you are taking a chance on yourself and a new venture. You should really see this feeling as a sign of growth. Anytime you are venturing out of your established comfort zone in pursuing personal and professional growth, it is bound to feel a little unsettling. So take heart – feeling unsure of yourself is a sign that you are not just ambitious, but taking concrete action on your ambitions.
So what are some potential strategies we can consider to get past the internal barriers holding us back from making progress on our goals?
It is much more doable to tackle a new field if you break it up into smaller chunks along the way. By focusing upon making consistent and incremental goals – little by little each and every day – you can help to minimize the odds that you will feel overwhelmed by all that you are now attempting to do. Have an achievable goal in mind – a medium number of push-ups if you are looking to get into shape; an achievable page count if you are cracking the keyboard as a writer; a savings goal within reach if you want to rebuild your financial portfolio. The net effect of meeting a goal is that it will provide you with a sense of confidence on how you can go about continuing to make progress and meeting the next goal that you set along the path of your journey.
It is wise to put in points of encouragement along the way to keep you motivated and engaged. This could most tangibly be translated into rewarding yourself for progress you make, as long as the reward is not something that will breed complacency and prevent you from moving forward. Rewards have been demonstrated by studies to be much more effective than punishments in keeping folks on the right track. So give yourself a healthy treat once in a while, when you have actively said “yes” to your personal goals. Tying rewards to positive behavior will only help you to further associate your work ethic with pleasurable experiences. These don’t necessarily need to be major, game-changing milestones either – small ones are just as vital. The rewards can be simple as well – they can include good food you enjoy or a comfortable bed.
Simple organizational behavior can help as well. Maintaining a daily task list of everything you want to accomplish in a day will give you a helpful snapshot of everything you want to tackle in a day, helping you to sort it out into an achievable blocks of action. Checking off items on your list will also give you the energy and gusto to keep making progress on the list.
It only takes a matter of a few weeks for a new habit to become instilled as a routine you will do it without even thinking about it. So keep at the things you know you need to do day after day – before long you will very likely turn to these items on auto-pilot without even needing to stop to tell yourself to do it.
It is okay in some instances to still be building the plane even while you are taking off. If you are insisting on waiting until you are fully comfortable or informed on the field you are tackling, you may well never get started. With growing complexity in the world, there is always something to be learning about, especially in the multifaceted world of business and start-ups. The good news is that the best way to learn often involves learning by doing as real world scenarios pass your way. This will likely be a far more effective way of teaching you lessons than doing endless research and reading. If you are comfortable with some degree of ambiguity and not being a total master as you get started, you have conditioned yourself for a terrific learning experience as you kick off your new venture.
It’s been observed many, many times that people are far more likely to regret the actions they didn’t take than the ones they did. The lesson here is that it is far better to get going and to make some mistakes, rather than to never try at all and endlessly wonder what might have been. Life is short and tomorrow is never assured – rather than allowing this to be an excuse to not try hard things, it should remind you that your life is a precious window through which to pursue the goals and ambitions that you can’t block out of your mind – the ones that keep you up at night and launch you out of bed in the morning. So just go ahead and get started. You’ll be glad that you did in the long run – trust me.
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