This is an old post that originally was written for another page I was asked to write for but I thought it was still relevant and worth reposting –

If nobody else benefits from this page and it ends today, from my point of view, it won’t have been for nothing.

Already from this process of helping to create this page, I have been able to recognise a lot of my own hang ups.

It’s highlighted a few key areas where I get stuck and what I can do about it.

A lot of the time, it’s not taking the action that’s difficult. The difficulty is often in recognising and breaking our own beliefs about how we think things should be, or how they will turn out.

What can seem like an uphill struggle or even an impossibility, can often only take a minute to implement.

Change is instant, it’s getting to that point of change that takes the work!

“Change is not easy, but it is simple.” Peter Drucker once said.

When I created this page I had 100 questions running round my head, including whether there was even any point.

How would the page look, what topics should I talk about, should I have a forum and on and on and on. Added to this was the worry that I would not be giving any real value with what I was planning to share.

Even after launching the site and seeing that the “start where you stand…..grow as you go” adage was true in this case, and that, “getting it perfect, but often never getting it done at all”, resonated with me, I still found myself getting bogged down in what to write about first.

What would be the most valuable topic to start with? What would be the foundation piece for me to open with? Should it be motivation, goal setting, fear of failure and how to overcome it, procrastination and so on? Or should I do something totally different that would be relevant but different from the mainstream? How should the show open!

Sometimes when we want to change something in our lives or want to achieve something so much, it’s easy to become overwhelmed with the details.

We can become so panicked that we psychologically freeze and metaphorically find ourselves ‘rocking back and forth in the corner’. We can find ourselves unable to do anything or just running away and giving up.

During the time I was thinking about this ‘The Voice’ final was on the television. One of the finalist was having a backstage breakdown. Throughout the weeks this particular contestant had been really built up because of her amazing performances which up until that point in the show had been ten out of ten.

Just before going on she said to her coach “my voice is very bad today! It’s not good enough!”

Her coach, Will.i.am from the Black eyed Peas brilliantly changed her focus in one sentence from what she believed, but could not control, into helping her concentrate on what she could both control and change. He turned to her and simply said:

“Let’s not stress out that your voice is not a 10. Let’s just make the very best out of 6”

Just with those few words she was able to refocus and it allowed her to go out and give, what was her very best in those moments.

By understanding the patterns that stop us, we can give ourselves an incredible insight and ability to use those exact same processes to actually achieve what we do want.

Ironically, by getting out of my own way and redirecting how I went about this first post by just talking about my own experience regarding the trouble with getting started, it has naturally and effortlessly given me the answer I’ve been looking for all weekend regarding what topic to start with.

“When old patterns are broken, new worlds emerge”