beginning badly

Why is starting so hard? It's as if my brain has infinite excuses why not too.

Some are more complex and reflective of my inner child insecurities, others are as simple as the plucking of eyebrows or trimming of nose hairs in the mirror is far too enticing.

I’d consider myself a disciplined person in many ways, but when it comes to stepping out on a limb and writing the words or recording the podcast or posting the photos to a secondary instagram account as a foray into health blogging, I blamelessly procrastinate to the ends of the earth.

I’ve always told myself that if I just had more free time I’d be totally doing the damn thing, totally immersed, totally consistent, totally enamored with creating my craft. Yet here I am, no school, no real job, no true responsibilities, a WEALTH of free time to play and explore and enjoy, and the words have not written themselves, the podcast has not broken ground.

The change in external circumstance means nothing if you haven’t worked out what's going on inside. I think in more eloquent terms, this could truly be the golden rule of life. “Treat others how you want to be treated” is lovely, but where does that get us?

Wistfully waiting for others to treat us how we treat them feels opposite of empowering. It's kind and sweet but kind and sweet are the niceties of the people pleasing you picked up in an attempt to find your self worth and capacity to love and propensity for success bestowed upon you by an outside source.

It all comes back to the inner, the change has to come from inside you.

You give yourself the love, the attention, the affirmation that you can and will succeed. You treat you how you want to be treated because if you don’t it's a whole lot harder for other people to.

I love to write, I always have, I find it so therapeutic, my journal is my safe haven. Yet when I begin something with even a twinge of ‘I could share this somewhere’ my brain starts spinning and weaving a complex spider web of excuses for why not:

It’s not worth starting if you won’t stick with it… are you sure you can commit to this ENTIRE OPERATION

Yep, it’s commit right now or don’t bother! Quitting is a failure, quitting reflects negatively on you as a human. 

Its not good, its definitely not perfect

No one will read it

What is the angle, what is the cohesive theme, you need a niche. 

Aren’t you hungry or thirsty?

Remember that other thing you said you’d get done today let's do that first

I just need to respond to one text message

or pick at this clogged pore

The space is oversaturated. 

And on and on and on until the wheels fall off and I’ve been driving donuts in the parking lot of my mind so long I’m too dizzy to move in a straight line so being the responsible, safe and cautious driver I am I just get out of the car and declare I’ll try again another day. And scene. 

Any interruption to my inspiration is decidedly derailing.

I’ve proclaimed I’ll write a book one day and I can’t even get through one silly little blog post? 

Yet, as I write this my own advice blazes off the page, silently signaling at me to practice what I preach.

It’s the internal changes that shift the external results.

It’s allowing my recovering perfectionist and people pleaser to be the beginner, to be ‘bad’, to not have a plan. To celebrate the badness because it is proof that I have actually begun. 

It's rewiring the beliefs that it's not worth it unless it's perfect, that starting and stopping is the failure, when I've heard more times than I can count that the true failure is never trying and wishing you had. 

It’s getting at the roots through psychoanalysis only to realize that all the analysis in a lifetime of therapy won’t be enough if you never actually turn on the car and pull out of the parking lot, learning the mechanics of the car and the rules of the road as you go. 

So this is me pulling out of the parking lot without proclaiming any huge commitments or plans or lessons learned because I’m just starting.

and I’m allowed to be bad.

Maybe I’ll never post another on here again. 

But what I’m no longer allowing is the fog of my excuses and distractions to keep me in a haze of justification.

It’s okay to own it. It’s kind of fun to call yourself out on your own shit.

Maybe fun is the wrong word choice, but I think it's better than sitting around wishing other people would.