Start Today

It Starts With You

Start today.

Come on, you know what I’m talking about.

Thinking about how you should start working out? Start today.

Want to start eating healthy? Start today.

Decided you want to start your own business? Start today.

Whatever it is that you want to do. Start today.

It starts with you.

It doesn’t start when the stars are aligned, when you have everything perfectly prepared, and when it’s the ideal time. No, it starts when you decide to act instead of sitting around pretending it will magically happen by itself.

Everyone is always waiting to start something, but each time you push it off until tomorrow it becomes less likely that you ever do it. You’ve already put it off for the last 3 years, so what’s one more? It’s the same mentality you had the first time you procrastinated starting, but the resistance threshold has increased significantly because you’ve habitually avoided starting it.

So, let’s make it simple.

You need to start.

You need to move forward.

You need to take a step.

A step toward the unknown is a step into discovery. A step toward fear is a step into bravery. A step toward difficulty is a step into strength. A step toward effort is a step into growth.

You may fail. You may get embarrassed. You may feel stressed. You may feel anxious. You may feel discomfort. You may sweat. You may bleed. You may even break down and cry.

But this is how you get somewhere.

If you want muscles, then you also want the hard work that comes along with it.

If you want to be rich, then you also want the stress that comes along with it.

If you want to be able to defend yourself, then you also want the hours of combat drills that come along with it.

If it were easy to have then you would already have it, but you probably wouldn’t want it as badly because everyone else would already have it.

Just because you avoid difficulty doesn’t mean that it won’t find its way into your life. Similarly, just because you have less difficulty in your life doesn’t mean that you’ve suffered less.

There’s a balance to this world, a yin-yang. Life is constantly moving between day and night, light and dark, good and bad, joy and pain, and chaos and order. Those who want more “good” will naturally have to overcome more “bad”. But through this process they build themselves into stronger people. They’ve voluntarily endured difficulties and challenges, and now when they are forced to endure challenges and difficulties involuntarily, they are better equipped to respond to them. So now, not only have they achieved their goals and acquired goals through their voluntary suffering, but they are also less affected by involuntary suffering than those who avoid voluntary suffering.

To live means to suffer.

Therefore, to live more means to suffer more.

To be a starter on your high school baseball team you needed to put in hours of practice both with the team and by yourself.

To get into your dream school you did volunteer work, went to class and studied daily for years to meet the school’s requirements.

To get that job you wanted you had to endure years of university, study as an apprentice, go through rounds of interviews, develop skills through training, or have experience through years of grueling work.

To be able to travel around the world without financial concern requires you first work extremely hard, take many calculated risks, and acquire some degree of financial freedom.

These things that you dream about in life aren’t easy to have, but that’s what makes them worth having.

All the things that you want in life require effort and progress is never linear. You grow rapidly before a plateau, then learn a new trick or method which causes you to develop exponentially, but soon you plateau again and maybe even decline due to complacency before your progress levels-out permanently or you decide to continue pushing forward.

It is hard.

But it’s nothing that you can’t handle.

You’re just consciously deciding that you don’t want to handle it.

It’s why most people are mediocre at everything.

Most of you have never even tried hard in your entire life.

You think you work hard, but that’s just you occasionally putting in more effort than usual.

Overall, you do the bare minimum that is required. Where have you given it everything you had for a prolonged period? School, sports, the gym, or at work?

Probably none of the above.

Instead, you probably give more effort to activities that don’t even progress your life.

I’d be surprised to hear that most people haven’t spent more time on Netflix, videogames, or Pornhub than on things that improve their lives. If your free time is spent primarily on unproductive instantly gratifying activities, then you are failing yourself and it is why you will never get ahead in life.

Or you can change.

Today.

You can start right now.

Prove that you have the self-discipline to take control of your life. No more taking time to plan it out, no more thinking about every way that things could go wrong, no more worrying about being afraid or embarrassing yourself, no more procrastinating, no more complacency with your shortcomings, and no more settling for mediocrity.

People stagnate once they reach adulthood because they stop facilitating their own growth. Mom and dad can’t force them to go to practice each day. Your teacher won’t scold you for not reading anymore. You don’t have a coach telling you exactly what to do to become better. So, most people only grow with age after high school. They act as if the person they are now is who they will always be. Then they tell fairytales of who they could have been if they had just put in more effort, taken more risks, and had acted on more opportunities when they were younger. Completely neglecting the fact that those are all things they could still be doing.

But that’s not you.

You know that you’re not even a fraction of who you could be.

You understand that your potential is infinite and that you can obtain anything if you decide to put in the work to get it.

So go on.

Take a step and start.