A New Beginning

"All glory comes from daring to begin." - Eugene F. Ware

             Daring to begin, as Mr. Ware once said, is one of the most difficult decisions we all must make. Be it waking up in the morning to get ready for the job that you despise (or conversely, love) or starting anew after mourning the death of a dear loved one. The broad spectrum of beginning is a fundamental awareness achieved through experience, trial, failure, and ultimately success. Thus, the connection we may draw from this is: to dare to begin, we must first stop. However, in order to stop, we may have to fail. When we have developed the courage to accept failure, we have (with or without our own knowing) developed the courage to begin! But... If I have to fail to discover a new beginning, then what is beginning, really?
             Without sounding too archaic and mysterious, the latter question is a question only you can answer for yourself. Often, we only need a push in a specific direction to realize what our beginning is, which can require the help from a very specific teacher or friend. However, whether we realize this or not, that is the end of it! The teacher or friend who led us to the doorway no longer has any bearing upon the decision that we must make as we approach said doorway. An important distinction upon reaching the doorway of our dreams is that our teacher or friend is no longer above us, as a mentor or guide, but is a comrade walking a similar path as ourselves. This is of extreme importance! Often, we move into our own knowing, or wisdom (e.g. the doorway), and find ourselves looking back for  help from our mentor who helped us for so long. Inevitably, this happens, and we must realize that this is the end, and thus the beginning, and is the first among many failures that we must learn from in order to progress further.

            As a future personal trainer and current soul coach and reflexologist, I'm consistently presented with situations that display all of these important stepping stones. The key to our success is indeed this failure that I brought up so frequently. However, there is one key concept (among the above) that we may want to reflect on that moves along the same wavelength: perseverance. Without perseverance, our failures can all be for nothing. With perseverance as our foundation, and failure as our fuel, our success is guaranteed in this world and the next.