“If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done.” Ecclesiastes 11: 4, the Living Bible.
I think about the analogy of driving somewhere in my car and how absurd it would be to wait until all the traffic signals on my route were green before I started my car… Amazing how some of them are red when we start or first see them in the distance and turn green as we approach or not long after we get there…we would actually miss the green lights in the distance if we waited to begin until they were no longer red…
C.S. Lewis writes, “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.”
When it comes right down to it, it really doesn’t matter where you start, only that you start. It is imperative that you begin. Where do we begin? Early in the morning, as I make my way to get my first cup of coffee and walk outside to sit down and go over my Core Four with God and myself, even as I’m wandering around in the morning, I know what’s most important. It’s lingering in the back of my head.
My word for the year is the word flywheel. Flywheel is a concept illustrated by business author Jim Collins, who describes how success in life, or making movement into who we are and what’s most important to us, is really a matter of doing a few things very well that compound over time. A few simple things that we do consistently over time produce big fruit. So during my desperate quiet times of reading, reflecting, and writing, I review with God: What’s most important now? I write them down. I put them on my calendar. I pray through them with God in the morning, and I begin. You can do this too.
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What do you need to begin today? Write it down. Do it. Don’t stop until you are finished. Refuse any distractions.