Three things to remember about new beginnings

There are a few things I think we can remember about new beginnings that can help us manage at least a little of the anxiety.

First remember the feeling you are “starting with nothing” is simply not true. The idea of staring at a blank page with a blinking cursor, you're starting with something, not just a blank page and the truth is, even when I begin to write a new blog post I do not begin with nothing. I come to the page with invisible libraries of knowledge, experience, research, understanding, essence, personality, and voice.

You don't start with nothing. You are starting with YOU—the very most important thing you could have, and all you need to begin. Remind yourself: I have everything I need to begin.

And second, while you can acknowledge the feeling like you don’t know where to begin, it might help to remind yourself that nobody knows exactly where to begin when they’re starting somewhere new. It might seem like everyone else in your life has incredible clarity about their purpose and their plan and their intended outcome in this new season, meanwhile you’re floundering around just trying to get off your couch—but that simply is not the case.

I know because I talk to people all the time who are the most confident, accomplished, organized, efficient, productive, happy people I know who admit, when they get really honest, that they do not know for sure exactly where they are going or what they are trying to do. NOBDOY DOES! We are all just doing our best, feeling around in the dark.

Of course, there are ways to gain more clarity. But the point is nobody just gets clarity or direction without really fighting for it. Nobody out there magically has more than you have.

You have EVERYTHING you need to begin.

When I start to get myself worked into the “I don’t know where to start” frenzy, I remind myself of a phrase a friend repeated to me at a conference this past year. It has become a mantra for me. It’s technically three phrases linked together, and while it’s been attributed to several different

people, as best as I can tell it was first said by a man named Arthur Ashe.

It goes like this:

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

1. Start where you are. You can’t start anywhere else but where you are. You can try, but you won’t be very successful. You can spend a lot of time wishing you were someone else, so that you could start from where they are starting, but that will just make you feel badly about yourself and will just become time you later regret wasting. The only place to start is where you are. It makes beginning really easy!

2. Use what you have. You have resources at your fingertips. We all do. And we could spend a long time dwelling on the fact that somebody else has more resources than we do, or better resources, or that our resources are not what we wish they were, but I’ll be honest: the most truly successful people I have known in this life do not waste time complaining that they don’t have more. They simply use what they DO have and get going.

3. Do what you can. I’m convinced that one of the main reasons we experience so much disappointment in our lives and burn out before we reach our goals is because we expect way too much our ourselves. We have these crazy ideas about what we can accomplish and then we wonder why we feel like such losers when we can’t do it all. Perfect house, killer career, obedient children, loving marriage, fulfilling sex life. Who has that? Anyone you know? I didn’t think so. All you can do is all you can do. Stop beating yourself up for being human. You are not a superhero. Sadly, neither am I.

Be excited for new beginnings as you never what the future beholds!