Start Somewhere: That's All We Have To Do

It's easy to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of what we'd like to do, experience, or achieve, especially when we have setbacks, lack of resources or conditions that also need to be managed.

Yet, amidst the chaos of desires, needs and personal challenges, we can create a map—if we can name the common factor compelling our vision for a reality other than the one we're experiencing. Naming our hopes, desires, and aspirations allows us to break down everything we want to do, experience, and achieve into realistic steps forward.

Using one word to describe why we want to do, experience, and achieve the specific things we most value is helpful. For example, collaboration, independence, or freedom might be at the heart of what motivates our vision. Whether a career goal, a creative pursuit, or a personal dream, the keyword to our vision can serve as a beacon. To know the reason we want these things for ourselves empowers us. Being able to articulate our vision in a sentence and why that reigns supreme in our values illuminates with greater clarity the way to a desired destination. For example, we can talk about it to relevant people who can point us in the right direction, provide a realistic understanding of what's involved, and help us manage our expectations of how long specific steps can take. 

But how do we actively begin creating a reality that matches our vision for ourselves when it seems dauntingly far away, near impossible, and we've already tried a many things that have yet to work? 

We choose to continue trying now, engaging new approaches, and nurturing the details currently working. We also surrender to the universal truth that there's no guarantee in anything. Again, we choose to try anyway—one step at a time and to the best of our current knowledge and ability. 

The alternative is to remain exactly where we are and not dare to fail. But why not say to ourselves, "This might not work, and that's fine. I'll have moved forward in understanding from having tried and be able to identify the next best thing I can do or try." If we succeed in simply choosing to try, we can't fail at trying. To try to do things to the best of our ability is succeeding in doing our best. That will always take us further than we were.

It Benefits None to Compare Ourselves to how Others Appear to be Tracking and at what Pace.

Often, it can appear that others are doing and achieving things at lightning speed and effortlessly because all we observe is the outcome. The amount of work, persistence, and personal obstacles behind the achievement are invisible. We'll only know if they tell us their story.

For example, I always used to think that if I didn't have the conditions I do, I'd have had a completely different life and done, achieved and experienced my full potential. Since 2019, I've increasingly met people I admire. They have shown me how to improve my life and well-being. All I want to do, experience, and achieve going forward seems possible because of how who they are inspires me. 

These individuals live, do, and experience what remains my heart's unfulfilled desire. However, the more I have gotten to know them, the more I realise they struggled in similar yet different ways. They never gave up or accepted things as they were. Instead, they kept trying and succeeded in finding ways. They also persist with the obstacles they still face in their further desires. 

Their existence in my life is a gift. They are a living example that there is always a way—never the way you anticipate but the way you discover along the way. The adventure is endless, and the vision takes on new heights and horizons.

Take the Time to Choose.

The choice is always ours: to try again or not to try again. It's only up to us to dare to pursue the reality we envision as an adventure and proceed with an open mind to learn better ways forward. 

Fifteen years ago, my psychoanalytic psychotherapist said, "Angelina, you have to start somewhere." He was referring to my distress over the amount of trauma I had to unpack and somehow work through. The words "Start somewhere" have profoundly impacted me ever since, aiding me in various situations. Because it's true whenever there's unknown territory, mess, distress or confusion, we must start somewhere. And take it one manageable step at a realistically paced time for us.