Happy New Year and wishing you all a healthy and prosperous 2018!
As I got ready to write the first blog of 2018, I was reflecting on how excited I get at the beginning of every new year. I’m always excited when a new year begins because to me it always represents a fresh start.
I always feel that no matter what has happened in the previous years don’t matter because I get a chance for a fresh start at the start of the new year .
After all, the new year is a time to think about starting or doing something new that you’ve never done before or repeating something you enjoyed doing in the past.
The start of a new year is known for the tradition of people making resolutions and setting new goals. Some people will start working on their resolutions and goals, but will also quit right away because they are not fully committed to them. This normally happens when someone makes a resolution or sets a goal that’s truly not important to them. The more important the goal or resolution is to the person, the better chance they have of achieving it.
There is nothing more important in reaching a goal or doing something you truly want to do than to get started doing it.
Sometimes, other people will have a goal that is important to them, but will never take the first step in getting started to accomplish it. It’s then no surprise that there are so many people in the world that will never have their dreams realized because they failed to get started.
If you ask entrepreneurs or successful people what the most important thing was that they have done to become successful, the answer you get the most is that they just got started. And there is no such thing as the perfect time to start. The only perfect time to start is the moment you start. You can’t wait for everything to be perfect before you start to do something.
If you wait for everything to be perfect before you start, you will never get started.
I can’t tell you how many people tell me they’re going to start a business and never start one. Some of them start to get all the things they need to start a business except they forget to start the business itself. They will come up with a business name, have a logo designed, have a website designed and get their stationery printed, but will never develop a product or service to sell to a customer. When you ask them how everything is going with the new business, they always have the “I’m just waiting on (fill in the blank)” answer.
If you want to be successful you have to start. No one has ever become successful without starting first.
The other day, Brian Tracy was talking about the study that Dr. Robert Ronstadt did while he was a professor at Babson College. U.S. News and World Report ranks Babson College the number one entrepreneurial college in the United States. Dr. Ronstadt noticed that only 10% of Babson College MBA graduates started their own business after graduating, while 90% of the MBA students took jobs working for companies. Of course, most were high-paying jobs. What Dr. Ronstadt learned after interviewing the graduates was that the graduates who became entrepreneurs credited their success of being an entrepreneur to one fact: they just got started.
You can tell by reading this article that I’m a big advocate of not waiting for everything to be perfect to start something, but to just get started and figure it out as you move forward. If you want to be successful or accomplish anything worthwhile in your life, it is the number one thing you must remember: go get started.
I want to end this article with two of my favorite quotes on getting started.
“The secret to getting ahead is getting started.”
– Mark Twain
“You don’t have to be great to get started but you have to get started to be great.”
– Les Brown
What are you going to start today?
