New year, Mondays, the first day of the month: All of them represent the desire to begin. Begin a new page, something you‘ve planned for so long, or just re-begin something you failed to achieve the last time.
But why do we set ourselves those specific days? Why is it so difficult, to start on a random day?
This is what I call the lacking courage to begin. Because it is not about the day we begin, it is about the distance between now and then, in which we have time to gather all the courage we need, to actually start something. It all starts with an “I‘ll start on Monday“ and if we are not as prepared as we wanted to, we‘ll reschedule it, sometimes on the next day, sometimes to the next Monday. Eventually, we‘ll never be as prepared as we want to be. And this has one reason: Nothing turns out the way you‘ll imagine it will. Because you can’t predict the future, how unknown things will turn out, or how they will change into something you‘ve thought about in the first place.
But that’s okay because this is what makes life enjoyable and adventurous. Imagine a world in which you would know how every single thing will turn out, even before you started. This would just keep you away from what you wanted to do: No need to explore anymore, it’s already set.
But this is not the world we live in. Things happen, which we would call magical, unpredictable or even impossible before they happened.
Still, we wait. We wait for the time, our mind is ready for changes, for something new. It is not possible for us to actually start until we have all the courage we think we need. Not to be a deal breaker, but you know what? There is no courage needed, just a few seconds, a literal countdown from 5 to 0, and you‘ll start immediately.
The only thing which will reassure you and ease our mind is the direct contact with what scares you. There is no better evidence in what is good or bad than your own experience. You will never have enough courage because nobody can define the amount of courage you‘ll eventually need. But you need the determination to actually start. You need to know your goals and the reason for your starting. Remind yourself of them, and start.
