The Courage To Start

I come from a family who builds things.

My parents are both electricians, and when they aren’t building for other people they are building for themselves.  Not long ago they came on a holiday to Australia to visit us.  Dad was building a little walking bridge over our creek. Of course it looked like a seamless job, he quite easily constructed it, and added a nice hand-rail that Mom painted blue to match the house. It’s a beauty!

Once the job was complete I saw him taking apart some other construction similar to a part of the finished bridge.  He shrugged and said, ‘this one didn’t work…’

I had just assumed that from vision to build, he had just put it together without flaw.  But he said ‘not every idea works, you sometimes have to just start with something and see how it goes.’ And I thought about this, it’s one of the attributes I most admire about my parents.  They are willing to give something a go… even if they don’t quite know how it will work out, even if they have to take it apart and redo it.

Often, and I’m speaking for myself too, we get overwhelmed before we even begin.  We aren’t sure how a whole process will unfold so we opt to procrastinate or even worse, fail to start. We let the fears take over and get stuck there.

My top life experiences have been the ones I’ve been scared to start.  Becoming a parent (definitely wasn’t ready for childbirth!), making an album, backpacking alone in a foreign coungry, leaving a job, starting a relationship, renovating a kitchen (haha, doing this one now!)… From all these things I took a giant leap of faith and I learnt the unexpected. I embraced the adventure of the process realizing that part of any worthwhile journey is navigating the unknown.  We pick up the skills or find other people who can help.  We trust that the pieces will fall together, or we might have to backtrack and find another way.  We definitely have to abandon the notion that things have to be perfect.

Most importantly, we can’t always wait until we feel ‘ready’ because we might never feel perfectly ready!

And so I ask you… what dreams, tasks or goals are sitting on your shelf, waiting until you are ready? Would it make it any easier to know you could learn your way through?  Just like when we were children we tried so many things we weren’t experts in?!

What it does take is courage.  Courage to dive in and start before we are ready. Courage to show up and begin. And, knowing we may have to ‘take it apart and redo it’ and learn along the way allows us to get past the fears and move into the realm of doing.

XO

-Terra