Lesson #4 – Get Started to Get Guidance

Have you ever tried to turn the wheels on a car that is standing still and doesn’t have power steering? It is difficult. Then when the car is moving, it is so much easier to turn the wheels, almost like you have power steering even though you don’t.

I don’t understand the physics of this phenomenon, but I know that it applies to much more than trying to turn the wheels on a stationary car. It applies in many ways to all of life.

These are lessons that I became aware of in my massage therapy practice. At the beginning of my training, I felt like I needed to know what I was going to do before I even started. I wanted to have a plan in place for what was first, what came next and so on until the finish.

In fact, in massage school, we had to develop and execute such a plan. The plan had to be written out and fulfill certain requirements like we had to work on every appropriate part of the body: the face, neck, shoulders, arms, legs, and back. This was a valuable exercise for learning massage and for being able to do a full body massage, where every part got at least some attention.

But in a real practice, clients frequently request focus on some particular parts of the body that are bothering them. In that case, the prescribed plan goes out of the window. As I began doing massages like that I found that I still wanted a plan and would spend several seconds putting one together in my mind before I started.

Then as I began, that plan would quickly be discarded. In the previous post in this theme, I wrote about the importance of using my hands to notice tight areas of muscle while I was using them to apply pressure to a particular area. And that’s why the quickly assembled plans were quickly discarded. Noticing where the tight bundles of muscle were changed my understanding of what was needed.

After a few such experiences, I realized the futility of trying to formulate a plan before I had begun. And I just began. As I worked on that first tight area I discovered, I seemed to get a sense of where I needed to work next. Moving to that next area, I would sometimes find another bungee cord of tight muscle to work on or I would get a sense of where to move next.

So the need for a plan was discarded.

My suggestion is that you consider doing something similar in your life.

To generalize this lesson, let’s go to an example we are all familiar with – driving to work. One day you are driving to work your old, familiar route. You’ve driven this way hundreds of times. You aren’t really paying serious, conscious attention because it has become a habit. Then up ahead are some flashing lights.

Turns out there was an accident and the police have the road blocked off. What do you do? Do you pull off, turn off the car, and wait for them to clear the road knowing that it could easily take an hour?

No, Of course not. You develop a new plan pretty quickly. Even if you don’t know that area of town well, you can find your way around the obstruction and pretty soon you are back on your familiar route past the detour.

There is another analogy from driving that we can all identify with. When you are driving on a moonless night, your headlights will only let you see 20 or 30 feet ahead of your car. And yet you can drive from Boston to San Diego (that’s 3000 miles) only seeing what’s right in front of you.

I find that this strategy applies to so many things in life where I want inspiration before I take some action. Writing is a great example of this for me.

Here is how writer’s block shows up for me. I plan to write at a certain time today, but I am not clear what I am going to write about. So, often I wind up distracting myself with other things that ‘need’ to be done around the house or in my office. I can easily spend an hour going down the email rabbit hole. Before long, it is too late to do any writing because I have to be somewhere for a meeting or I have to do an errand. Oh well, I’ll write tomorrow.

If I get more than one idea, the first thing I do is write them all down in my ‘Content Calendar’ the place where I keep those precious ideas for articles or books and record my progress on them. Then I will pick one and start. If I try to figure out what I am going to write about that idea before I start writing, the same problem will pop up again, what many call writer’s block. I have come to think of it as and example of intellectual or creative inertia.

I just have to start writing anything – it can literally be the word ‘anything’ or ’something’ over and over – pretty quickly I will know where to start. Starting there, I know where to go next. And so on. That is not to imply that the article comes out anywhere near perfect the first time, but it is a start.

There is an old expression that:

It is much easier to edit a crappy piece than a blank page.

I know it didn’t say ‘crappy’ but that’s the way I remember it and, anyway, you get the idea.

Summary

Whatever you need to do, don’t wait to get started. If you have the inspiration or even some vague idea where to start, START! Clarity will come, more and more, as you take action. Type a few words, do a Google search, make the first phone call.

Whatever your project is, you have some idea about a first step to take. It may not actually be the best first step to take, take it anyway and then you’ll find out. Better to take a step, even in the wrong direction, than to stand there waiting for inspiration.

“Don’t waste time waiting for inspiration. Begin, and inspiration will find you.”
~ H. Jackson Brown, Jr.