I’m just getting started

When was the last time you said that? When you were 18–graduating from high school, getting a car, heading out into the world? Or you just read Susan Powter’s “Stop the Insanity” or Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and thought, now I’m ready! Have your heard your children or even grandchildren say it recently?

It’s exciting isn’t it? Exhilarating almost. The thrill of really getting started on something new. I haven’t said it in a long time. I’ve been at the same university for over 20 years now. Each semester I do begin fresh and excited but I am far from thinking “I’m just getting started”. The same goes for my 31-year marriage. I wouldn’t trade it for the world, but it’s more of a work in progress, maybe even nearing that sweet spot of perfection. I don’t want to think of that as just getting started! We’ve come too far.

In Gretchen Rubin’s delightful and well researched book, The Happiness Project, she notes that “it isn’t the goal attainment but the process of striving after goals–that is, growth–that brings happiness.” When was the last time you started something new?

For this blog, I think of new fitness activities for example. I just started flat-water kayaking by myself. It’s fun, and challenging. And for the first time in a while, I do feel like I am truly starting to eat differently. Not rehash the same old diets, the ones that may have worked for me in my 20’s and 30’s, but certainly don’t now. Or the ones that never really worked anyway. I’m making some real changes. Not sure where it may all go, but I am moving forward and growing in my understanding of nutrition and how my body works at my age. I am just getting started!

What have you started? What could you start? What’s holding you back? Do you think it might be just the jolt you need? To say to yourself every morning, “I am just getting started!”?

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash