One of the most daunting things in life is starting something new. It can be starting a new martial art, starting a blog article, or starting a project at work. While getting started and taking the first step is easily the most difficult thing to do, it is the most important thing for you to do.
Many times starting is difficult due to one thing: fear. Oftentimes we are afraid to start something new because we are afraid that it won’t work out. Attending our first class can be a very difficult thing. We can intimidate ourselves into thinking that we need to do everything all at once. In reality the worst thing that can happen in most cases, is an experience and a good story to tell afterwards.
When we take a look at a martial arts example for this, worrying about doing everything all at once sounds very silly. Picture a white belt getting nervous for their future black belt test rather than focusing at the immediate task at hand: testing for Orange Belt. If a white belt worrying about a black belt test is silly, then so is someone worrying about finishing a 3 month work project that just started, or someone worrying about closing on a house before reaching out to a real estate agent to start looking at properties! Reaching out to a real estate agent and taking the first steps on a project by creating a work plan are not scary things after all.
Another thing to remember in all of the above examples, is that there is always a team to help you along the way. You are not going at it alone. The white belt has a class full of students to support them. The house hunter has a real estate agent, an inspector, the lending team and the legal team to assist along the way, and of course, at work there will always be coworkers to assist with completing a project.
Sometimes in creating articles, I get writer’s block. I know it can be hard to believe, but sometimes I start writing these articles and I drift off in thought. Oftentimes, the trick to success for me is to create the word documents even if I feel like I cannot write the whole article at one time. That new word document is the first step on the road to reaching my goal of completing the article.
We’ve seen Ana’s article on “Little by Little”. You can find that article here: https://urbanmartialartists.com/2022/02/08/little-by-little/ Yes we need to take things in small steps but sometimes the first step is the most difficult. Don’t think about what step 8 or 9 is. Just get ready to complete step 1. With your white belt enthusiasm to anything that you approach, you can come back and attack it, yes, as Ana would say, “Little by Little”.
