Get Through The Beginning

Ever experienced this?

You know you should do something – e.g. writing – but you postpone it, because you have other stuff to do. 

Maybe procrastination, maybe you really do have other stuff to do.

Then, after some arguments with yourself, you finally sit down to write.

But it’s hard. Ideas don’t come.

You feel like you should get up again and do something else.

You’re restless.

Every sentence feels like having to walk through honey. You’re not getting anywhere.

But somehow you find the perseverance to keep going.

You battle your distraction thoughts, and you keep walking through honey.

And all of a sudden – maybe you don’t even realize it the moment it happens – it gets better. Your thoughts vanish or quieten down, you’re more concentrated, you feel lighter.

The honey is gone.

You’r just… Writing.

And then when your time is up… You don’t even want to stop. 

You want to keep going.

But you can’t. You need to do other things. 

And all of a sudden you can’t find a reason why it was so hard for you to get started.

But it’s a common phenomenon.

The brain needs a while to adapt.

When we try to focus on something, all these distracting thoughts are there, the mind is still occupied with everything that we fed it before.

So when we sit down to write, it doesn’t want to focus. It’s like a little child that wants to play.

But after a while, if we keep at it, it realizes that it doesn’t have any power because we just don’t react to it.

And so it will quieten down and realize it’s place.

The mind is not commanding us, we are commanding the mind.

So, the next time you have a hard time sitting down and getting into the writing routine, remember this.

The mind is like a child, trying to distract you.

If you don’t let it, it will quieten down.

Just keep focused on your work and inspiration will come.

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