Begin Where You Are

Transcript

Today I’d like to talk to you about beginning where you are.

So as a great man once said “There’s no greater mistake than to do nothing because you believe you can only do a little” as the songwriter Paul Kelley said. From little things big things grow.

As a writer I often find that it’s hard to sit down. Well I lie a little, I’m exaggerating, I don’t have this problem so much anymore.

But a lot of writers have this problem. They don’t necessarily have a problem writing, they have a problem starting. A lot of people that identify as writers but actually so rarely they’ll sit down and actually stare that beautiful blank page in the face and put the pen to the paper.

A lot of the time when a writer begins with the habit of saying “Ok, I’m going to write one paragraph a day, or even 10 lines a day or something like that. A lot of the time, if they have a habit of writing 10 lines a day they will write a lot more because once you start going and you don’t judge yourself so much then stuff starts to come out, stuff starts to happen.

This is part of the creative process but I think it goes deeper. Its also a kind of principle of life. This is the thing about being a writer if you’re too critical of what you’re writing, you’re probably going to stifle the creative process.

There’s a great book on this it’s called Impro by Keith Johnson. I highly recommend it if you’re interested in the arts, drama, writing or songwriting basically anything this applies.

Because if you’re being too critical it’s like you’re using a different part of your brain, like the editor of your brain. But the writer, the real writer, just wants to get something down. And it doesn’t really matter if it’s good or bad. It doesn’t really matter if it’s perfect. In this world nothing is ever perfect, nothing is ever complete.

So it’s good to embrace that fact and move with it.

Likewise when it comes to meditation, a lot of people will say “I try to sit down to meditate and after 30 seconds they say “No, I can’t do this, it’s too much, my mind is going in overdrive. I’ve never or so rarely begun the process of confronting my own thoughts and when I look at them directly when I’m alone with my thoughts, so intimately, I just close my eyes and listen to them I find it unbearable.

That is a part of the process it’s completely normal. Completely normal.

That’s why I say to people if you’re going to start meditation if you haven’t done it before and you have that experience. Sitting down and after 30 seconds finding it intolerable. Begin where you are.

So you might set a timer for 30 seconds or 1 minute.

Or my friend link used to say when he began meditation he would just sit down and say “I am not going to move for 5 minutes.” It didn’t really matter too much what happened after that. This very low bar of success here, setting a low bar for success is something that winners do sometimes.

Setting a low bar for success means that you can feel a little sense of accomplishment when you do it. Then little by little propel yourself to further depths.

Begin where you are, you can’t begin anywhere else. Begin with a small thing. Begin with what you can do.

Maybe you can’t change the world today, but maybe you can be a little bit nicer.

I don’t know exactly how this refrain from, I think refrain was written by the founder of Reiki and he said “just for today I will be kind, just for today I won’t be angry, just for today I will be patient.”

You can’t always guarantee what will happen in the future maybe ten years down the track but you can try do something just for today. Or just for an hour. Just for a few minutes.

In the temple Temple Tam Krabok in Thailand they like to take oaths and when they take them, say you take an oath you might say “I want to stop smoking” but you don’t have to do everything all at once.

You might say I’m going to go one day without smoking or I’m going to go 2 specific hours of the day without smoking, without getting angry, whatever it is.

And of course when you gain that little bit of self control and you practice in that little arena, that toy game you’ve created for yourself, you could get better at the bigger game.

Piece by piece.

Some people have said that nobody stumbles on a mountain. They only stumble on small pebbles. Once you’ve crossed all the small pebbles you’ve find that you easily crossed the mountain.

Just takes small things, small steps. Begin where you are.

Thank you for listening, thank you for taking a small step today or tomorrow to improve your life and to make your life better, so it rubs off on other people and they’re more happy to because they can see your example and take their life to the next level .

Have a great day, I’ll talk to you soon.