How to Start When You Don’t Know Where to Begin?
Goals are tricky things, you are definitely not alone in feeling unsure where to start. Particularly at the start of a year, as there can be lots to measure yourself against on social media, or in your social circles offline, and that can bring up of lots of emotions that make it even more challenging to start sometimes.
However, I’m not sure you need help creating a goal - it sounds like you have one (well more than one actually since you say it’s a pattern!). It sounds more like you’d like support in creating your first steps to reach that goal.
What you briefly discuss above sounds a bit like first step paralysis. The sort of stuckness that can come at moments of fear or anxiety or uncertainty.
Sometimes, when we’re flooded with these emotions it can be really challenging to get our brains to think clearly or be motivated to take any steps towards achievement. Sometimes, instead of being able to parse out steps to take, our brains swirl with stories about how we won’t get to our goal so why even start.
This is not going to be either of those sometimes, because below I’ve created a roadmap of sorts to help you create your own steps forward.
Here’s the ‘to-try’ pathway I would suggest to start:
Start with some research, researcher! Social media is wonderful for this - people are sharing series on their journeys to become nearly everything. You can watch videos on YouTube, find essays on blogs or Substack, watch short form playlists on TikTok & Instagram - whatever interests you. Look through hashtags or use SEO to your advantage to find people who are documenting their entire journey through reaching a goal. Look at the steps they took at the very beginning specifically. Consider the relevance of those steps to your goal. Then look at their entire journey and consider the PROCESS. Is that process something you can replicate as a ‘template’ of sorts for reaching your goal?
Jot down some notes or save the videos / essays / blogs that are relevant for you (even if the goal is very different). Like for example, there’s an account on TikTok for a matcha bar in Dublin that I’ve been following along with because I have loved watching her document her journey. So while I don’t see a matcha bar in my future, I am allowing her story to be a form of research for me in documenting a journey I am taking to publish my first children’s book. Learning and teaching in public can be so helpful for everyone!
Now after some research, do an activity or task that you can complete in a short amount of time (cleaning up the pile of clothes on your desk chair, unloading the dishwasher, doing a 15 minute workout) - this will get your brain & body feeling accomplished and confident. We want these types of feelings coursing through our bodies as we move to the next step.
Get a piece of paper or open up a blank document and start at the end. To which I mean, put your goal at the very top and then work your way backwards (down the page) through the steps you need to take to get there. Get as small of steps down as your brain can go right now (it’s okay if they end up being high level still but try to get how minute as you can this pass).
Play! Again we need to give our bodies / brains some distance from emotions that activate danger regions and make it hard for us to think clearly and have the confidence to act. Do something playful for at least 15 minutes (play fetch with your dog, do the NYT games, sing & dance to your favorite songs in your living room, cook something with a brand new flavor).
Now that we’ve completed our stress cycle, revisit your steps. This time, start from the bottom (rather than the top like step two). Write down every step you need to take to get to the next step. And I mean every step you can think of. Open laptop, start new email, draft email to X, proof read email, check links & attachments on email, send email, cross email off to-do list. Did your brainstorm of steps build out one task into seven steps, yes it did. What’s the benefit of that? It’s a practice for your brain to realize goals are tasks with lots of steps in between the next task. It makes the nerve wracking, uncertain, scary, large, goal into doable steps. Do this building out of steps for each task, working upwards.
Set a date for your first step. Once that date comes and you complete that step, set the date for your second step. (I like this method instead of setting dates for everything at the beginning because you can respond to the different factors that might come up. This way you don’t catch yourself feeling behind for a silly reason like you have more on your social calendar this week than last week, for example.) You may feel yourself on a roll (accomplishing things can be like that sometimes) and so keep going if you find yourself excited or motivated to go into the next steps (or even the next task). If you have only one step in you today, that’s okay, it’s a wonderfully huge deal that you started at all! Do set the next date though to help keep yourself to account.
There are also different goal setting structures that might be helpful once you build out some steps: 12-week year (breaking goals down by weeks for the quarters of the year - although there’s nothing saying you have to start on a certain day), SMART goals, SWOT analysis, and so on. These are tools and resources, see if there is anything helpful in them for you (feel free to mix and match) and your process. Most of these processes offer a timeline or an evaluation of your steps so it’s most useful to build out your steps before looking into a goal setting structure!
The last piece of encouragement I’ll leave you with, is to encourage you to think of your journey from starting to reaching your goal as it’s own form of research. Take notes, videos, pictures, fill up journal pages, mark your timeline on a calendar. Notice what works and didn’t work, what you were excited to try and what was harder to find motivation for. Then use to that to inform your next goal starting to achievement adventure. You may even want to dive into research papers about goals that can serve your own journey as well.
But don’t forget, you are your best case study!
Don’t discredit or avoid watching others journeys, or leaning into the research on goals, as we have so much to learn from each other, but don’t blindly follow someone else over the data points you have from your own experiences.
Ah one last thing actually, celebrate along the way! Not just at the end of reaching the goal. Celebrate your first step and completing the first task. Celebrate getting through the challenging moments. Particularly as the journey seems like it will be important for you - the start through the finish - that means it’s all worthy of celebrating (as is true of everyone but I just want to make sure I say that to you specifically.)
I believe in you!
Til next Sunday,
Dr. Sydney Conroy
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