Change can be intimidating. While we all want to reach our goals, expand our skills, improve our relationships, and follow our dreams, the sheer immensity of what needs to be done tends to keep us stuck. But what we don’t often realize is that the hardest part of change is taking the first step. And when we allow our fear to keep us from getting started, we deprive ourselves of discovering the thrill of stretching beyond where we are.
We resist truly getting started for many reasons. We have doubts about our abilities to see things through and whether we will be successful. We wait for some kind of assurance everything will turn out because we fear to invest all of our time, energy, and emotion into a pursuit if it’s doomed to fail. And very often, when we look at what we will need to do each day to make our dreams manifest we are intimidated by the revelation that not only do we need to change or adopt new habits, we need to keep at it “forever.”
How could we possibly maintain the willpower to last the rest of our lives when our New Year’s resolutions barely make it out of January alive? What we don’t realize is that when we take the first step toward our dreams, we have cleared the most difficult barrier to success. Once we start, we begin to create new possibilities and small successes. It’s in the progress that we find a continual spring of inspiration that pulls us forward toward our goal.
The truth about willpower is its meant to help us clear the hurdle of the first step, not to carry us throughout the journey. As many of us have discovered, willpower is effective, but it’s finite and it burns out fairly quickly. As you look at the changes you long to make, look for the daily habits you will need to form in order to make your success inevitable.
Then, use your willpower to take the first step, and not just any first step, but the effort to set up these essential habits. For example, if you want to transform your eating habits, your will-powered first step might be to create a meal plan and a weekly shopping list, to block off time each week for meal prep, and gather all the material like the containers and kitchen utensils you’re going to need to hit the ground running.
Often, our fear of getting started is we don’t trust ourselves to continue, and we’d like to avoid letting ourselves down. But taking a genuine first step which creates the framework for the habits that are going to carry us to the finish line can get us through the most intimidating part in the process of change.
The first step can be the most challenging, but it can also be the step that begins to build the momentum we need to stick with the daily routines that manifest success. If you’re waiting for the perfect time to begin: it’s now. If you’re waiting to find the perfect place to start: it’s wherever you can. Take the first step in faith.
