How to start well

[00:00:00] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Well, hello! This is The Daily Five with Aurooba, that's me, where we reflect on creating our best lives a little bit every day. Here we go.

[00:00:15] Folks, today is the last day of the first chapter of this season, The Start. I've been thinking about this for a couple of days. If I had just five minutes to talk about a good way to start doing things. What would I say? What is the main lesson here? Well, I don't know what the main lesson is, but Here are a few I can fit into 5 minutes that are top of mind.

[00:00:48] You don't have to have everything figured out in order to start, but you do have to decide on something. Know where you want to go, not because you won't adjust course or even the destination as you go, but because to start going somewhere, anywhere, you have to have a destination anyway.

[00:01:08] Your start will look different from someone else's middle or status quo, so Don't go comparing. If I compared my podcasting start with SyntaxFM or the Startup's First Season, I would be doing myself a huge disservice. You're never done starting, so get comfortable because you will start again and again. Every day is a new start. Every conversation is a new start. Every time you sit down at your desk, it's a new start.

[00:01:38] Life will pull at you and stretch you, so get comfortable.

[00:01:43] Become okay with failing, and then getting up and restarting. I fail every day. I kid you not, I fail at something every day. I fail so much, it is wild. And then, I have to get up and restart. I'm a work in progress, so it doesn't always work, but I practice it every day, so I'm a tiny bit better every day.

[00:02:06] I heard something today that made me stop and think. When you do things you don't like, it's stress. When you do things you like, it's passion. So find a way to like what you're doing, some part of it. There's always something to like. And yes, it's okay to try to find a way out of it and into something you like more. You don't see me trying to take up running for fitness, no. I'll take yoga, weightlifting, or dance over running any day, every day. But I was in school once upon a time, and I had to run in gym class. And I remember one day concentrating on just my stride. And the more I focused on it, the more in awe I was at how well my muscles could stretch and contract to create a stride. And it was kind of fun. I remember enjoying the wind in my hair. I still hate running, don't get me wrong, and I will always hate running, but I found something to like about it in the moment.

[00:03:03] Stress loops and learning to complete them will change your life. Bake them into how you start anything. Figure out how you'll close a loop consistently. I would argue that my life is more stressful and filled with more new things now than it was six months ago. And yet, I am far more relaxed, happier, and at peace than I was then because I close my stress loops every day.

[00:03:31] But, you know, ultimately, you just have to want it. You want to start well? Just want it. Want it intensely. When you really want something, you are far more likely to stick with it and make something happen. I'm not talking about passion. Passion fades. It ebbs and it flows. But want? Want is something you can maintain. I want to love my spouse, and I choose to love my spouse every day. I make that choice day in and day out.

[00:04:03] Granted, he makes that choice very easy, but I have loved him even on the days that are hard, the difficult days, and the days when it wasn't just happiness and laughter, because I want to. If you want to, you will. And if you don't want to, you won't. Everything else is kind of secondary, because if your survival doesn't depend on it in some way, then the only true motivator is desire.

[00:04:31] Desire for something, perhaps. Desire nevertheless. I don't know if I'm right or wrong there. That's just what I think right now. So, that's what I'll say. If you want to start something and start it well, you have to want it, and you have to want it quite a lot.

[00:04:54] Thanks for listening! Same time tomorrow?