Finding Your Light Within

13 October 2025 - The Power of Starting: Why Taking the First Step Matters Most

Feeling stuck in planning mode? Discover why taking the first step — even an imperfect one — is the key to growth, learning, and creative progress.

When Starting Feels Hard

For nearly two weeks, I’ve been trying (unsuccessfully) to make a video about the power of journaling. It’s an important topic, one I wrote about in my previous post, yet I keep spinning my wheels. I move forward, change direction, plan again, and end up back where I started. Sound familiar? It’s the classic creative struggle: knowing what you want to say but feeling stuck on how to start. Still, every small effort matters, because even imperfect action is better than endless planning. This is where the real power of starting begins — the moment you stop over-thinking and simply begin.

The key here is that I have started. I might be making very little real output in terms of success — although, I do have a completed sixteen minute video that I recorded and edited. What is happening is that I am not satisfied with the outcome of my endeavours. It doesn't feel right, incomplete, lacking something. But I am creating and I am in the process of working towards my goal.

Why Starting Matters More Than Perfecting

That is important. In everything that we do, whatever project or goal we are working towards, making a start is absolutely necessary. Taking that first step sets us off on our path and it is on the path that we have a chance to learn. And if we learn, then we grow. When we grow, we begin to evolve and become more than we were. This is life. This is how living is done and it is what we must continuously strive for in everything.

You see, my journal video is not a life project but it is a project to which I give some importance. I want to succeed at it because journaling is fundamental in helping to unlock your truth. I need to get my message out there to help others. That is my bigger goal — helping others.

So, for each misstep, or deleted effort, I have learned, I have figured out what it is that I don't want and honed in onto what it is that I do want. I have to take a step back, sit back and take a breath and see that although my video is not yet complete, I have nonetheless moved forward with the project. I've made a start.

The Lesson — Begin, Learn, Grow

Making a start is vital and necessary. Once you begin down the road, momentum will kick in, you'll quickly learn and adapt, grow and develop new skills, tweak and improve others that may have become rusty through disuse. If you never begin, you can never learn. If you never begin, you can never succeed. Beginning is what matters.

And by giving voice to my frustrations, I have created a new blog post. Win-win. My creativity remains positive.

Whatever you plan on doing stop planning. Begin to do. Do some, plan some more. Move forward. Always one step and then another. That's how walking the path is done. That is how life is done. Learn, grow, evolve. But always, make a start.

Personal Growth, Motivation, Journaling, Creativity, Self-Discovery