You know, more or less, and that’s all you need
If you know stocks — or a stock trader as I do — then you know that stock prices frequently flit about in a trading range. This is a tight range in which a stock, or an entire market, will fluctuate in. As soon as the price approaches the high it retreats. When the price hits the bottom of the range, it bounces up.
I’ve gone beyond my normal weight trading range. I know this because of my pants. My pants are telling my girth in clear signals — through increasing discomfort — Get thee off some pounds!
Since I refuse to advance into a new weight trading range by buying larger-waisted pants, I must take other actions.
Here’s the most excellent thing. I know more or less what to do. I could read and research. I could debate and discuss. But I know the basics and that’s all that is required to begin moving in the right direction.
In my waist case, the formula has ever been the same. There are only two real factors in body maintenance: Energy expenditure and food consumption. You can nuance it for a lifetime — and there are many who make good livings doing so — but that’s it.
Exercise and food intake. I’m choosing to work on both sides of the equation, a little more exercise, and a little less of the guilty food products (if I may dare call Mountain Dew and bagels food).
Not that I won’t read and research along the way. Not that I won’t debate and discuss while I’m already moving in the desired direction!
This is true of everything. You know more or less how to start. It matters not where you start, it’s the doing that engages the body-mind. Your engagement turns on the engines of colossal good fortune.
The thing is to start. I know, more or less, what I seek to do. And I know more or less what I need to do to get there.
I write this because I’ve noticed so many people simply don’t start. Starting is easier than you think. You just do something daily, however small, to move you in the direction of your vision.
Leo Babauta from Zen Habits has said that when he sought to de-clutter a messy life he started at the kitchen sink. And slowly moved outward, keeping the gains (clean areas) as he went.
Begin. Everything will become clearer as you go. All you need you will find. Beginning is simple. It is doing something, daily.
You are the pebble that gathers into a rock slide! You are the drip, drip, drip that becomes a trickle becomes a rivulet becomes a stream becomes a river that can’t be stopped.
You, you, you. You got it, baby. Begin it.
Now.