Starting Isn't the Hardest Part, Starting Over Is
If you’ve spent more than 5 minutes in the self-help corner of the internet you have heard some version of the saying, “A plane uses most of its fuel during takeoff”. The phrase is, of course, meant to be motivational to anyone who is starting something new. The idea that “just getting started is the hardest part” is comforting to those who are doing something new, and experiencing the challenge of that, because there's a carrot dangling just on the other side - and the carrot is covered in ease and money and success and all the things we’re trying to do the hard thing for in the first place. So we think of the plane analogy and tell ourselves, “Just keep going, sweetie, because all the good stuff will be waiting for you when you get up to 30,000 feet.”
And while this all may be true (again, feel free to sanity check this with the aviation geeks) there is actually a whole other hit-the-gas-in-order-to-get-through-it situation that comes up when people are taking something on - and this one, I’d argue, is even harder than “getting started”. It’s “starting over”.
Whenever we have gotten into the rhythm of something - whether that’s managing a new role at work or meeting and staying at a goal weight, or managing the bedtime routine of a toddler, or managing our own bedtime routine (known in my house as “Stop. Falling. Asleep. With. The. TV. On. Stephanie.”) - whatever it is, a habit, a routine, a skill, a job…it took time and energy (probably, if you’re anything like that plane analogy, a LOT of energy) to get there. And you’re so proud of yourself for achieving, for reaching your goal, for sticking to the new thing that when you fall out of it (an act known as “being human”) it can actually be really hard to get started again - even harder than doing it the first time around.
Example: Earlier this year I embarked on my own 75 Hard journey for the first time (to be honest, I didn’t totally dot every “i” and cross every “t” so I rebranded the whole experience in my mind as “75 Mostly Hard” and went after it. I know the hard core Hard-ers out there will call bullshit on me right away and want my head on a sugar-free platter but I stand proud in my Mostly Hardness and keep it moving). For the uninitiated, 75 Hard is a personal challenge whereby you follow a set of specific actions and constraints for 75 days (no alcohol, follow a diet, drink 1 gallon of water a day, workout 2x per day, read 10 pages daily, and a few other things I’m forgetting because “Mostly” hard, but I’m sure you get the gist, at least Mostly). While I’ll dive into the details of that experience in another post, I came away from that challenge with a few new habits, or habits I’d reinstated thanks to the challenge - in my case, daily reading (something I love and had moved away from in recent years largely due to Instagram’s algorithm knowing that I would ignore my own house being on fire if it served me up enough dog reels) and drinking a gallon of water daily (truly a miracle since I somewhat famously among my friends “hate water” and am usually drinking a minimum of 4 beverages at a time at my desk, none of which are H2O). These habits were beneficial to me in countless ways, felt great, and were something I was really proud of.
And then life happened. Succession was in its final season. Scandoval broke on Bravo. Taylor began dropping albums like it was going out of Style (see what I did there?? Oh, I have fun…), and a litany of other excuses worked their way into my routine so that suddenly my 10 pages of reading a day and 10-trips-to-go-pee-per-day-thank-you-water became fewer and fewer. My 75+ days of (mostly) hard habits were suddenly a thing of the past, and I let it happen, always promising that tomorrow, that Monday, that the 1st of the month I’d be back to reclaim them like Taylor did her own music. But somehow Reading and Water (Steph’s Version) never really happened.
So I sat, losing brain cells from atrophy and dehydration, trying to get myself to start again, beating myself up with all the usual “start again” mantras:
You’ve done it before, it’s not that hard.
You know what you’re doing, just do it.
Just take the first step.
Seriously, enough with Instagram. You’re a Gen-Xer, you had a life before the internet and it was well-read and hydrated for Christ’s sake….
It’s good for you.
You’ll be glad when you finish that you started.
Tomorrow you’ll wish you started today….
And still, nothing helped. I sat and scrolled and shriveled up from lack of liquids and let days go by with no sign of starting again.
The fact is, starting anything new or anything that requires effort is always going to be hard for our brains, because our brains are wired to save energy and avoid pain - that’s how we’ve evolved to be here today. And new things require exerting energy and are emotionally (and sometimes physically) “painful”. So our brains will always put up a bit of a fight (or a huge freaking fight, depending on who you are and how well your mind is managed) when you try to do something new, or something that is uncomfortable.
And this gets even messier for our brains when we’re trying to do something again. Because it can feel like all that effort and struggle and discomfort you overcame the first time was all for nothing. And you have the perfect excuse to fall right into the “See, I do suck” or “See, I knew this wouldn’t really work for me” thinking that your brain actually loves because it keeps you in those old patterns - and our brains LOVE themselves some old patterns.
Why?
Old patterns are familiar, and because of that they don’t take a lot of effort….and remember, your brain doesn't want to exert any more effort than it needs to. So any reason to keep you in a less-effort-more-of-the-same old pattern is a good reason for your brain (even when it feels like garbage, which thoughts like, “See, I do suck” or “See, I knew this wouldn’t really work for me” will definitely feel like).
So what do we do? Just try once and then wave the white flag? Give into our scrolling-and-shriveling selves?
Nah. Because here’s what I believe as a coach: we were made for a hell of a lot more than our primitive brains want. And I believe this because we have the other part of our brain (the prefrontal cortex) which evolved to help us see PAST the primitive “hide under a blanket and pretend we can do no more” ways and move towards the other things that our brain serves us up - the ideas we have about how much better we’re going to feel (and think, act, be) if we can do the thing we want to do again.
To do this - to actually overcome that primitive brain “Stay right where you are, young lady” thinking and into your prefrontal cortex, “Yeah but its so much cooler over there so I’m going to head that way” thinking instead - you first and always want to be on your brain. You need to know that your brain is going to freak out when you’re trying to get into a new habit, or pick one up that you once did. Once you start to expect the freak out, you can then realize it actually doesn't mean anything….Nothing has gone wrong, and it’s not specific to you - it’s just your brain running on auto-pilot, freaking the F out for no good reason, as brains are wired to do.
And once you become aware of the fact that that’s what’s going on, you can change your thinking to something that will help you more, like “I know this is uncomfortable, but it’s manageable”. Or “This doesn't feel great now but it will soon”.
I know I hate drinking the water but I also know if I put the gallon next to my bed and change my thinking from, “Just no, sorry, no way not gonna do it,” to something like, “Drinking this water is what my Future Self wants for me”, I have a better chance of drinking the damn water. I know that thinking, “Yeah I know I don’t want to put the phone down to read but just read one page and then you can scroll” is a great way to get me to actually read the book. Knowing that even the thought, “Yeah I know this is uncomfortable but do it anyway” actually does work to get me off the couch and back into whatever “mostly hard” thing I’m trying to do, again.
And knowing that needing to “start again” is not that big of a deal helps too. Yeah I need to exert that extra fuel, but this time I may be able to take off a bit faster because I’ve done it before. Yeah the flight may be bumpy but I know to buckle up because it’s not my first trip. Starting again is just starting with more knowledge. For me, I reminded myself that, “I’m not trying to split the atom - I just want to get myself to drink damn some water”.
And you can do the same, for whatever it is that you want to start again.
Expect the freak out
Choose a more useful thought
Do the thing already.
Then sit back, relax and enjoy the flight.