“The beginning is the hardest part of the work” – Plato
It is such a simple statement that contains so much truth; yet it has been pounded into us so many times that its meaning has been lost.
There is nothing harder than beginning. Nothing.
Imagine that you are the person who has rock-hard abs, has just finished a session with the steel at the gym, and is about to go for a 10 mile run before settling down with a healthy dinner. Sounds like a lot of hard work, right?
But I will bet that it is considerably easier to be that person than it is to be that same person at the beginning of their quest. At the beginning, just trying to make one simple change, such as jogging in place for a few minutes, can be an incredibly stressful experience. The person with momentum and feedback, like the fit person mentioned above, has no such issues.
So throw away those motivation books that are designed to ‘pump you up’, because nothing can prepare you for just how hard even the ‘simple’ things will feel in those first few days and weeks. The only thing that can make you somewhat resilient to them is an understanding and awareness that they will be hard.
To that extent, try not to make too many sacrifices at once. Whether you’re planning to start exercising, or dieting, or making other tweaks to your life, they will all feel like sacrifices at the beginning. So start with one small change you can get on top of, whether it’s limiting your calories, or ditching junk food until a blow-out Friday, or doing session one of a fitness DVD a couple of times a week.
Just get started. You will be amazed at how a little success, a little momentum, a little feedback can leave you feeling so much more confident and optimistic. Then you’ll want to do things more intensely, and you’ll want more sacrifices in order to get more of this wondrous sense of momentum and rewarding feedback.
Keep your beginnings humble, and see how exhilarating it can feel in a short period of time…
