Start at one | Deeper | Post

Start small. Start with what you have right now.

We have all heard these words to some or another variation.

Due to the context of my revelation of the meaning, I choose to say 'start at one'.

Every year I learn a significant lesson. This is definitely the year 2020 lesson for me because of the number of times I've seen it played out, and interpreted in my life.

In my 'before the revelation stage', I believed in realising final products. To give you context, I basically thought that if I wanted to be an entrepreneur, for example, then I needed to start the business and it was bound to grow quickly. Whatever I started, the end result was really what I was in it for because it was the end result that had drawn me to starting the project.

The problem of looking at life only from an end result perspective is that it's easy to lose sight of the reality of the everyday process involved between the start and end. And that is where I often found myself. I was left discouraged and frustrated because after day 10, for example, the end result was still nowhere to be seen.

Let me give an example of how deep this lesson has been for me:

This year I've seen more significant results in my body than I have in the last 3 years accumulated. This while doing the least amount of exercises than I have done throughout this duration.

The secret ingredient was never doing as many exercises as I could possibly do, or the most intense ones either. The ingredient I had missed all along was CONSISTENCY.

And I have started applying this lesson in other areas of my life too.

The key take-away from this is:

Start small, almost insignificant steps if need be, as long as these are steps you are encouraged to do over the long term rather than just for the next week. And as you see improvement in your performance in this first step, you will almost naturally, gradually advance your steps to 2,3 and 4 overtime.