The Courage to Begin EP 300

Welcome to Daily Dose of Folk.

I'm Phyllis Nichols and I'm glad you're here.

First of all, I wanna just share that today,

this episode that I'm recording right now

that you're listening to,

is the 300th episode of the Daily Dose of Hope.

And nobody's probably more surprised than I am

that we got to 300.

So if you've been here for a while listening,

I wanna thank you for your support

and for being part of this.

And, or if this is the first time,

I'm glad you're here too.

I'm not sure where this is gonna go or how long

I'm gonna keep going.

I'm gonna keep going for a while.

But I feel like getting to 300

was a milestone worth acknowledging.

And so today I wanna talk about the courage to begin,

which feels appropriate when hitting a milestone.

So no matter when you're hearing this,

I want you to know that you have more courage

and resilience than you think.

You know, we often underestimate what we can do

and what we can accomplish

and how we can impact our personal world

and our daily lives.

It requires courage,

but not the big dramatic kind of courage

that we see like in action movies

or people that run into fires or, you know,

it's the everyday kind of courage.

Like the courage to try, the courage to start,

the courage to move forward,

even when you don't have all the answers.

Every meaningful change begins with someone

deciding to take the first step.

And maybe that's someone is you.

You don't have to fix everything.

You don't have to know every answer.

You don't have to even be 100% certain.

You just have to start

because once you start moving,

something powerful happens.

Hope begins to move with you.

You begin to see new options or opportunities.

You find a resource that's helpful

or a potential solution that feels right.

Or you run into somebody else

who's been on that path

and can show you the way or wants to join you.

You know, years ago I read a book called The Courage to Start.

It was written by John Bingham.

He was a middle-aged guy, I think out of shape,

who started running.

And well, to hear him tell it,

he started jogging, slash walking, slash waddling.

I think he referred to himself as the penguin

because he caught his reflection one day

and was like, oh my gosh,

I just sort of waddle when I'm running.

But the most important part of the whole story

is that he started.

He was moving.

He was showing up for himself.

And he was doing something that was hard

and something he wasn't very good at.

Something that was uncomfortable.

I think of that story often when I'm facing something hard

or maybe just facing something I don't wanna do.

Something that I'm not good at

or something that's gonna make me a little uncomfortable.

Sometimes the energy we spend avoiding,

what we need to do is so much worse

than just taking some action.

If you've got something hard to face

or something uncomfortable that keeps shifting

from today's to-do list to tomorrow's to-do list

to next week's to-do list,

maybe this is the day that you can find the courage to start.

You don't have to have everything figured out.

You just need to keep moving forward.

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