The Hardest Part Is Before You Begin

I love to waterski. I learned when I was seven or eight years old and spent a lot of time behind the boat as a teenager. I got really good at it.

When I’m behind the boat, carving up the water, there’s nowhere else my mind can be. I’m fully present, feeling the slack come into the line, the ski cutting through the lake, anticipating the bounce over the wake, then timing my body to do it again, carving back the other way as long as my muscles will allow.

But every time I sit down on the dock to strap on my vest and ski, my stomach turns over. I get desperately nervous about the ride. I worry that I might crash (which I’ve done many times), hurt myself (again, lots of times), or just have a bad ride (countless times).

For some reason though, I push through and plunge into the water, at which point I know there’s no turning back. And once I’m out behind the boat, there are few moments in my life when I feel happier.

Even after 30+ years, I still get terrified before every ride.

Thank God I push through and do it.

There’s something in this that I never fully understood until this year. It’s something I wish I’d realized much sooner.

The best things in life feel scary before you begin. But once you do… they’re the best.

I can’t shake this image of standing outside a dark cave carved into the side of a rock wall. I can see myself hesitating at the entrance, stomach turning, imagining all the nasty things that could be hiding in the darkness.

But how could you possibly know what’s inside until you go in? What’s so clear to me now is that the cave is the scariest it will ever be before you light a torch or turn on a flashlight and step inside.

I realize now that this fear of the “hypothetical” is a big part of why it took me so long to start my own business and chart my own path. And it’s very likely what’s holding you back too.

Making the choice to start something new is like dropping into the water and getting ready for the boat to take off, or turning on the flashlight and stepping into the cave. It’s embracing uncertainty and risk and just going for it. It turns the hypothetical into reality, and suddenly things you never could have anticipated begin happening in your life.

When we take the first steps to create something new, we change, and the world around us changes too. Friends who know us in our comfort zones (and try to keep us there) become harder to spend time with. Instead, we look for people who inspire us and help us grow. Routines we’ve always known start being shaped by the work we’re striving to do. We chase the muse. We protect the time we need to create and build. The title or profession that used to define us starts to feel less important.

But until we start, the benefits stay hypothetical, while the fears…especially the feelings of fear…remain very, very real.

That is, until you begin.

Before we started Vienna Waits, if you’d asked me whether I’d be willing to cut back on spending, whether it’s on food, travel, or other luxuries, I’d have been reluctant. Life had become steadily more comfortable, and I’ll admit, I enjoyed being the “young executive,” holding prestigious roles that were easy to explain at a dinner party.

But now that we’ve started, cutting back on some luxuries doesn’t sound bad at all. I’ve learned to accept the awkward looks when I try to explain what we’re building.

In fact, I’d be willing to do almost anything to keep going. What once felt scary now feels like… just part of the ride. And I’ve come to realize this experience isn’t unique to us.

In our recent podcast conversation with Jon Nordström, he shared a similar story. He was making a good living in marketing, ticking many of life’s boxes. But as he described it, he’d find himself falling asleep at his computer. He wasn’t engaged. He had back pain.

Now, his whole work life is about play.

He’s grown his public persona to the point where he makes his living as a professional podcaster talking about one of his favourite things: football. The European kind.

“It’s just play, basically. And I think that’s something adults these days do not have enough time for.”

His day-to-day engagement has skyrocketed. He can’t fall asleep now with the number of ideas spinning in his head. Even his back pain is gone.

And when we asked what he’d be willing to do to keep this going, he said it plainly: “I’d be willing to eat canned tuna and beans if it meant I got to keep doing this.”

We feel the same way. We’re in for the canned tuna and beans, if it comes to that.

But here’s the thing: it is really hard to get to that mindset until you begin.

The truth is, anything worth doing requires sacrifice and will feel so scary before you start, because the benefits of what could happen are still hypothetical. That makes not starting feel easier, more accessible, more logical. Maybe you delay for a year or two. Maybe indefinitely. It just… doesn’t happen.

It feels scary to imagine the sacrifices you might have to make before you begin. But once you start, what seemed scary evaporates. It’s not only not scary - it starts to feel crazy not to do it.

The key is just to begin. What feels terrifying now fades almost immediately once it exists. Once you start building, you’ll need to keep building. It will get easier.

I know how hard it is to begin. It took me 15 years, and almost all of my reluctance came from the fears of what I’d need to let go of.

I’ve missed the lesson that waterskiing tried to teach me every summer for 30 years. I wish I’d recognized it sooner.

If you haven’t started yet, I hope you’ll believe me enough to try it for yourself.

Just begin.