Not the end but a new beginning
The promise of a new day. The excitement of a new apartment. The nervousness of meeting a new person. Learning a new language. The first day of an activity you took up as a challenge. First day at work. The master thesis waiting to be initiated for half a year. The sight of a blank sheet waiting to be written on. Waiting for the sun to rise when you work up early. Beginnings are thrilling. And intimidating.
“You already showed up and are on your mat, so the hardest part is over…”
Adriene Mishler often utters such lines while getting ready to begin the guided Yoga at home video on her highly popular YouTube channel ‘Yoga with Adriene’. In the early days of my attempt to make Yoga a regular practice I wondered why she said this so frequently. I felt if she said it even one more time, she would kick reverse psychology in motion only to dwindle her own audience numbers. Till I struck the day I did find it hard to motivate myself to get on the mat. At first, I was furious at Adriene to sow this seed of impending demotivation in me only to slowly realize it was impending anyway and she on the contrary was attempting to motivate her audience instead of driving them away. Some say endings are the hardest part of the journey. I would say the trickiest part is the beginning.
As exciting as new things are in thought, in practice they can get equally intimidating. Because you are in an unfamiliar territory, your confidence is out of the window. You have never done this new thing before so you have no close precedents to guide you through. The initial stage involves a lot of effort of just trying to stay afloat and not get drowned in all the new information. Then there is the insecurity triggered if there are other people in the same boat (many unintended sailing metaphors) who are also technically out of their comfort zone but somehow seem to perform better than you? How are they immediately good at this? Why am I taking so much time? What if I never reach the end line? Where did my motivation go? Was this a bad idea? I should have stuck to my forte, what am I doing here?
The initial excitement quickly fades out to turn into a discomfort of being helpless which might convert into either frustration or escapism. You find yourself struggling to attend to this new project about which only weeks ago you were supremely thrilled but are now agitated seeing the end goal so far away with insufficient pace of progress. Frustration will lead you into convincing yourself that it was probably a bad idea or maybe it is not as fun or useful as you thought it would be. Your uncertain brain starts running cost-benefit analyses so as to judge if continuing with this activity will have any significant change in your life. Frustration might also deteriorate your performance because of lack of commitment, which will drive the abandonment cycle even faster. The other option of escapism is even worse. You avoid confronting the situation and end up procrastinating it to a stage where you might reach levels of damage through which recovery and timely completion might be almost impossible. Starting with new things is easy and fun, keeping at it is hard and demands commitment. I once read somewhere that majority of new podcasts never even make it to their second episode.
In cases where you don’t really have a choice and need to finish it anyhow, both these conditions are constantly and simultaneously at play making it even more stressful as most probably there also is a clock ticking on you. Peers and professors used to passingly say how tricky writing a master thesis is. And I always used to wonder why everyone was hyping it so much, I mean how hard could researching and writing about a topic of your passion be? Once you finalize the topic and the expected outcome you just need to follow the steps and voila! Six months in and I am eager for that dreamy day when I successfully defend my thesis. Narrowing a topic in itself is months long process. Finding your research objective, sub-objectives, figuring out the framework, deciding the methodology, preparing a proposal, getting it approved; these are just the preliminary stages of starting real work. And by the time you reach the stage of initiating the work, you are fairly familiar with what you want to achieve but don’t know where to start from or how to overcome spontaneous obstacles or how to keep yourself motivated to continue the research with vigour. When you initiate any new project, you are somewhat committed to the process and don’t want to give up easily despite the enthusiasm wearing off, so you try looking for help and begin seeking shortcuts and solutions outside the process. This search of course doesn’t lead to any resolution and you end up even more demotivated than before, because for your brain this shortcut-seeking outcome-less effort still counted as ‘effort’. You would also probably be going through the Dunning Kruger Effect which will of course add to misjudgment of the whole situation.
One can only grow in life by trying out new things. But new projects can be unnerving. Writing a seemingly simplistic blogpost as this one is also a test of dedication. Staring at the blank screen while your brain is teeming with ideas but somehow still unable to translate those thoughts into words is irksome at first. But as soon as you cross that one-page barrier, your typing gets continuous with your ideas flowing smoother with each line.
Only recently did I finally acknowledge that I was desperately looking for solutions to problems unique to me and only I can solve my issues by putting in the work required. Others can provide suggestions and feedback, but no one else can do what I am supposed to do for my own growth. We need to go through the journey sincerely to reach the destination. The excitement, nervousness, dissonance, self-doubt -- all will come and go because they are part of the process, but you need to keep moving forward despite these impedances. What you’re seeking in the world is already within you, trust the process; clichés right? Well, stereotypes are called so because they are true. All you need to forge ahead is to show up consistently and keep at it till the process becomes a habit and you ultimately reach enough confidence to begin getting a sight of the finish line which keeps you motivated to push through.
If there is something you always think of doing but can’t get past the initial hesitation and doubts, just jump into it and you’ll get there. Don’t get flustered if you don’t succeed at it instantly (because most probably you won’t); acknowledge it as a part of your journey. If you are in the initial stages of something new and feel out of place - before you decide to quit, just show up everyday and give yourself time to fully absorb the new surroundings, you’ll get there. If you’re on the threshold of starting a big project (like my master thesis!) stop procrastinating on the pretext of looking for expert opinions or shortcuts because only you can put in the necessary effort for a project unique to you. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn't ask for any help, or once you start with something you are bound to finish it at all costs. At some stage if you decide that the process isn’t worth your time anymore or isn’t as rewarding as you wanted it to be, you can sign it away. But it is only fair to give yourself ample chance and make this analysis in an objective state of mind only after you are out of the self-doubt and despair phase. Most importantly, never ever waste your time worrying over others judging your underconfident self, because in all likelihood they would be experiencing similar struggles in some or the other walks of their life.
In a world of random iterations, one of the few ways to create order out of chaos is to do consistent work. It will be challenging, but what would achievement mean without any obstacles to conquer?
You’ll get there.