Not Small

Image by Jon Tyson

I’ve experienced and witnessed countless “firsts” in my lifetime, so many beginnings. Some of them were glorious and media-worthy, but most of them weren’t. Most beginnings aren’t actually flashy and amazing. They are often simple, ordinary moments when we take a step in the direction we want to go.

Image by Efe Kurnaz

While I speak and write regularly about following our joy and pursuing our dreams, bringing those dreams into tangible form isn’t always easy. It can feel especially challenging when we allow our thoughts to linger on self-criticism, comparison, and doubt. When we allow our minds to wander those paths, we lose sight of our own potential and the potential for the situation, and can slip into begrudging the beginning. We may find ourselves seeing circumstances stacked against us and/or making excuses for why this-or-that isn’t happening, or maybe won’t ever happen (in our minds). When we engage in doubt-soaked narratives where we are somehow “not enough” and coming from “behind,” it’s easy to believe we will never reach our goals, and therefore, never even begin working toward them.

This is, of course, a travesty in my opinion. There is a reason that dream, that desire, that creative urge came to us. That thing wants to be expressed through us in a way only we can express it. And if we never begin, it will not come into this plane of existence in that unique way and the people who would have benefitted from its creation will get a facsimile of the idea somewhere else.

Sometimes, we keep ourselves from beginning something because we feel unequipped, unprepared, unskilled. We look at where we are and forecast our now onto our future reality. But the truth is, where we start does not determine where we’ll go.

There is no rule that says we have to stay where we are. No reason to subscribe to a belief that how we start is how we’ll end up. If that was the case, none of us would be walking, or speaking, or reading, or driving. There are countless opportunities to learn and grow and increase our skill sets along the way from where we begin to where we want to go.

We often “start small” so we can learn and grow incrementally. Growing up, I heard that Bible verse (Zechariah 4:10 if you’re curious) that said “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.” I’ve thought about that quote a lot throughout my life when I’ve begun new things, particularly creative pursuits. It’s easy to look at someone else’s career and see how ours differs rather than searching the similarities. It’s easy to count our beginning as “small” and perhaps inconsequential when we are in comparison mode, especially when it is something new.

Image by Efe Kernaz

Yes, we’ve all heard the stories of the viral this, or the surprise that. The six-figure deals, the massive overnight following. But even those people didn’t begin that way. What we may perceive as the beginning of someone’s career is often a culmination of several quiet, and sometimes “failed” attempts at the thing they were going for, along with some amount of experimentation and iteration. I can’t think of anyone whose first draft landed them a six-figure deal (or any deal for that matter). Everyone, everything, begins somewhere. Heck, even Jesus spent time in a manger and apprenticing with his carpenter dad before his speaking career took off at 33 years old – just saying.

My first pro gig in Celtic music was playing a listener venue in my town called, The Cactus Café. I remember thinking how amazing it was that I was performing on the same stage some of the greats in the singer-songwriter world had played. I remembered shows I’d seen there myself and felt such gratitude and excitement to be on that stage, sharing music I loved, like those artists before me had.

But though that was my first professional gig and it happened to be at a prestigious venue, it was not the first time I’d sung in public. It was not the first time I’d sung at all (in fact, I’d had years of singing in a variety of settings prior to that point). I didn’t know as a child making up harmonies with my siblings in the car, that I would be on that stage one day – or any of the stages I’ve played for that matter. I didn’t know that the joy of singing would take me where it has. I simply began singing. Over time, the dream of singing on stages and in studios took shape and when it did, I began taking steps to make that dream a reality.

In his beautiful book, As A Man Thinketh, James Allen writes, “The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.”

We get to have our dreams. And we get to make them reality. We do this by taking steps toward them. By beginning, again and again. What if those “small beginnings” weren’t actually all that small? The more I’ve experienced, the more convinced I’ve become that there is no such thing as a small beginning. There are only beginnings.

Here’s to many more firsts, and to knowing that our beginning does not determine our ending. It is only the start of the story.