Starting something, anything, is often the hardest part. Not getting started one week, of course, became not finishing, which made it easier to not start the next week, which got me into a cycle of not doing something that I had decided was important to me.
Isn't that the way most important and at-least-a-little-difficult things are?
Eating well/getting in shape is another great example. At various points in my life, I have literally gone many months saying "Tomorrow I am going to to start eating healthily; but today I am going to have candy and soda."
I have also said "tomorrow I will" about specific items on my daily to-do list, about exercising, about cutting down on TV-watching, and about many other things in my life.
In every case, the act of not getting started has been the key impediment to succeeding. In business, I have long said -- and this is absolutely one of my personal soapboxes -- that the number one reason most businesses fail is because they never get started at all.
Starting something can be so hard, but the fact is that starting is almost always totally in our control. Then, once we get started, moving forward in one way or another tends to be much easier -- like the fact that I am about to finish this blog post, after working for less than a half hour.
Getting started allows us to start building forward momentum; it allows us to start seeing progress, which definitely makes everything easier. It allows us to start seeing and solving problems. Sometimes, getting started let's us see that the activity is something not really worth doing, which allows us to move on and start something else.
If something is worth doing, we can't let "tomorrow" stand in our way. Waiting for tomorrow is the best way to make sure tomorrow never comes. Not starting is a path to stagnation, one of the surest paths to unhappiness.
Just. Get. Started.
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