I have always struggled with being a beginner.
I like to be perfect and it’s very hard to be perfect when you don’t know what you’re doing.
Out in the land of the esoteric, there is a lot of talk about starting before you are ready and failing forward. I keep trying to start before I’m ready and it’s hard, I feel blocked almost the whole time.
But here’s what I’m learning about starting before I’m ready… usually I’m never ready. There has not been one big life change I’ve been ready for. There has also very rarely been small ones I feel ready for. But somehow I haven’t died through any of them.
When you start before you’re ready you figure out what you need to know in a hurry, and you start asking better questions. Before you start you don’t know what you don’t know.
There actually is some magic in starting before you’re ready. It’s not always the feel good kind of magic we are looking for, but there is a clarifying fast tracking kind of magic that takes you to a new understanding you didn’t have.
So if there is something you want to start but haven’t …. these are the steps I think you should take.
Plan now to start in spring (so you don’t wear yourself out like I have).
Give yourself a “do or die” date. A ready or not here we come date.
And start now…before you’re ready… even though it feels wrong and kind of sucks because you can’t be perfect.
And if you’re worried about what people will think or what people will say. Or if you’re worried about being a beginner and not being perfect. Read this quote from Theodore Roosevelt. I like to read it every so often to help me remember what really matters… and for me that is to not become a cold timid soul who knows neither victory or defeat.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. “