Beginning is the Hardest Part of the Journey

Why You Can ALWAYS Begin Changing Your Life

For weeks I’ve now been thinking about something I’ve been postponing for a while now. Writing. Each day again. A real simple, yet still challenging task.

For the past months, I’ve been gone. Gone from writing, uploading on social media, and creating videos and podcasts. Controversially to what many people on the internet tell you, this was the right move.

Working more, uploading more, writing more, wasn’t an option. I was at my peak. I was wearing myself down. The only way forward was backward in this case. To retrace my steps and see where I took a wrong turn. Away from who I am, away from what I stand for, away from how I wanna live.

Busted

It was 8 p.m. I was playing some video games with my friends when my father entered the room. This couldn’t mean anything good. If I was playing games no one would enter my room. They didn’t want to bother me. Only my dad sometimes entered my room, and when he did, something was wrong.

He signaled me to turn off the microphone and pause the game. Obviously, I couldn’t pause the game because it was an online game, but he wouldn’t understand. But just the look on his face was enough for me to know that he was serious. No messing around, no postponing.

I switched off the microphone, and I just barely took off the headphones as my father began to speak.

“Are you done?” He asked.

“With what?” I responded, not sure what he meant.

“You know damn well.” He answered. He was angry. Now I understood. I knew enough now. I knew what he was talking about.

“HmHm” I hummed with a kind smile on my face. “I’ve done all my homework already.”

“Well, how come you got a 4 for maths then?” He asked. My face turned white. I didn’t even know yet.

“I made that test three days ago, and I…”

“It doesn’t matter” He interrupted me. “It doesn’t matter if you knew or not, what matters is why you’re playing video games instead of doing more math equations or reading through your summaries.” I looked at my hands. They were shaking, both out of fear of my father’s anger and the disappointment and anxiety about my math grade. I hadn’t seen it yet. The teacher must have just uploaded it, but that didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was that my dad was angry and the only way to soothe him was to turn off the computer and go study.

So I did. I said goodbye to my friends, not explaining anything. They must have been beveled, but I knew I would explain all of it the next morning whilst riding our bikes to school. With trembling hands, and a fast-beating heart I grabbed my notebook and a sheet of math equations and began solving them.

During high school, I unknowingly learned to push. I learned to do more. I learned to put in more time. Even though I needed time to relax. Even though my body was fighting an internal battle every day. Even though I was deeply sad, and still grieving the loss of my uncle that happened a year ago.

I was only 13 years old and had no clue on how to handle my own emotions. So, I learned to set aside fun things just to improve myself. I learned to ignore my own emotions to please those of others. I learned to push away emotions to keep pushing, to keep working.

Over time, stopping, doing nothing, enjoying time to relax, began to fade out of my vocabulary. I was always working, I was always learning, and I was always doing something to improve myself. It began to be hard to relax, to enjoy doing fun things. I started to float away from who I am, from what I stand for. And I began to doubt whether pushing and working hard was the right call.

A ‘Never Enough’ Mentality

I want to start writing again, and I have done so, otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this. It took some time, maybe more than I liked to. My dad’s voice had become mine. His constant drive to work, to do more, to push, and to keep going became my own. With it, his relentless dissatisfaction with my work ethic became part of me as well. I couldn’t do anything right for myself anymore. The only thing I could do was do more, whatever that meant.

It could mean writing more. It could mean recording more videos, uploading more on social media, or improving my website. Whatever I did it had to be improved, it had to be more, it had to be better. There was no stop to it, no brake, no balance.

For a couple of years, I’ve blamed my dad for instilling in me his ‘never enough’ mentality. I thought that he had made me doubt myself so much, that he had made me question whether I did enough or not. I blamed him for making me feel like I wasn’t enough. It created a form of living that only made me feel loved if I did more, or did better, never just for who I was already. He isn’t to blame for anything. Maybe there’s only an opportunity for me to learn from this.

I realized it was time to find a balance. A balance between pushing and relaxing.

I realized it was time to find a balance. A balance between pushing and relaxing. I needed to learn how to refuel myself, and have fun in life as well. It’s why I stopped pushing. I stopped following both my father’s and the countless other inspirational speakers on the internet for their advice. I wasn’t gonna do more, I wasn’t gonna work harder, I wasn’t gonna betray myself.

I stayed silent for a while. I didn’t write. I didn’t create. I didn’t do anything. I watched a lot of movies. I wrote a lot of journals. I had many ideas, and I felt many emotions. I needed that time off, more than I needed my writing career to succeed. Because without that break any success as a writer would have almost instantly led me to burn myself out.

Taking a break, the moment the thought arises of taking a break is almost always more important than pushing on. That break can, and will always rejuvenate you. It will refuel you, and give you new insides. It showed me that setting goals for myself every day wasn’t gonna cut it.

Taking a break, the moment the thought arises of taking a break is almost always more important than pushing on.

That’s Why This is So Hard

When I first sat down to write this story, I had no goal for myself. I had no goal of writing a marvelous story, or a captivating and encouraging life lesson. I just wanted to write. I didn’t set a goal for myself to write something good, or impactful. I just wanted to be honest and vulnerable as I write. I just wanted to begin writing. But that’s the thing actually, I ‘WANTED’ to begin. But I couldn’t. I was lacking a goal, or so I believed. Because if there’s no goal why would I even bother writing? This was the mentality I had learned throughout those years in high school. I had to be pushed to do my work. I had to be hard on myself to start. The things I enjoy weren’t enough in themselves. It had to have a purpose of improvement. Gaming wasn’t something to improve me with, and without a goal, writing too didn’t feel like an improvement.

Cutting away the goal-oriented mindset and relearning the mindset of writing for fun was uncomfortable. I wanted to write, but I just didn’t have that same fear-based motivation. Because that’s what a goal was to me, it got me moving because I was afraid to miss the goal. Whereas if you start by enjoying it, the goal will always be reached in the time it needs to be reached. It is ambition and our relentless drive to do more or finish things quickly or on a tight schedule that’s doing us more harm than good. At least for most of us. Cause it is creating a lot of unnecessary stress only for a goal that doesn’t matter in the first place.

That’s what a goal was to me, it got me moving because I was afraid to miss the goal.

That’s why this is so hard. Why it’s so hard to start writing again in this new goalless way. It’s why it’s so hard to begin any new journey, because you don’t know what to expect or do, or where to begin. I am about to start something entirely anew and I am not sure what to expect. I am not even sure about what it is I’m doing. I am about to begin writing something each day again. The only thing is, I am letting my life decide what it is I am writing about each day. There’s no goal for it, other than making the most of it. It’s all just a bit of a blur. Because what I am about to do and am doing right now is following what life is right now. Writing with my heart instead of my head. Exploring life. There’s no structure or anything. No goals, no pushing, no pressure. That makes this a challenging journey for me.

I’ve always wanted to know the future. Control it. Direct it. Make sure everything goes right. I want to know the future before it starts. And thus not starting something is oftentimes easier and more comfortable. Because I know that place, I know what it means to do nothing or to keep doing the same thing you are used to. This is something different, something new, and because it is I’ve noticed that I tell myself that starting will constrict me, confine me, make me a less free man. But I think that that might just be an illusion. Cause my heart is telling me that freedom is something entirely different.

Cause what freedom do you have if you’ll always need to do that which makes you feel comfortable, that you have always done, that you are used to? Maybe, just maybe, to start something new means to let go and fall freely. Terrified obviously, but also exhilarated. Unclear, but also with a mission of doing something worthwhile. Worried, but also excited to start something new.

What freedom do you have if you’ll always need to do that which makes you feel comfortable, that you have always done, that you are used to?

Without a goal, without pressuring myself, without having a goal of always doing more I set myself free to enjoy writing again. To enjoy doing what I love doing most. Writing, and only writing. No more worrying if it was good enough, what was right or wrong. All I had to focus on was writing, and that made starting a whole lot easier. I just had to show up, each day, with a pen and paper and start writing. Leaning into the things I didn’t know yet. Leaning into the silence and stillness of life itself. It’s terrifying but at the same time the most beautiful experience I’ve had in a long while.

Three Final Words

Maybe you will never know what will happen before you start. So you might as well begin, right? The journey will take you to unexpected places, and once you get going it isn’t as hard to follow the path anymore. What’s hard is to begin, to make the first moves, to start walking, to begin doing the things you want to be doing without knowing how or what to do exactly. But what could happen that’s so bad, that you fear so much? Other than the fact that you’ll discover something new about life. Maybe it will be like all the other attempts you’ve had, but maybe this one is different. Maybe starting or doing that thing you’ve been terrified of might make you feel more alive. Isn’t that worth the risk?

What’s hard is to begin, to make the first moves, to start walking, to begin doing the things you want to be doing without knowing how or what to do exactly.

All I used to convince myself to start on this new journey are three simple words. Three simple words to change an illusion I’ve been telling myself. “Well, until now.” Instead of saying, I haven’t been able to do that before, or I will never be able to start, I just add those three words. Well, until now.

“Well, until now.”

I can’t start writing each day. Well… Until now. The start of a journey may be hard, well… until now. Because today I have a chance to end my day and say, Today I Lived. Writing something today, that’s only gonna make the most of it.