If you are always wondering on how to get things right, then I would sincerely share with you the concept of a ‘good start’. I profoundly believe whenever we want to perform something, despite easy or tough, as long as we have a beautiful start and know to enjoy the process; things will most likely be ended wonderfully. Just imagine you have prepared deliberately before initiating a project in your life, I am sure you don’t want to jeopardize your effort with a bad start, right? In this article, I will be raising three examples to reinforce the statement here.
First Example: Bringing Up a Child
A new born baby is just like a piece of blank paper. It is totally up to you to turn it into a masterpiece or a waste paper. Again, ‘having a good start’ is playing a vital role here. If you neglect your child in the beginning, your child’s character can hardly be molded into a better one again, as the character is already rooted. Many psychologists affirm that, on the average, habits are formed from the ages of three to fourteen. If a boy, who, at the age of fourteen, is rude and selfish, he is likely to retain these habits as a man. I have a friend who started educating her children since they were young. She keeps imparting good values to her children even until today. For example, she used to read newspapers to her children on different news and share with them the positive and negative values behind the news. Her children seem to be more thoughtful, obedient and mature even at the very young age. On the contrary, I have another friend who always neglects her child due to her work. Her over-concentration on her work has inadvertently polarized her relationship with her child. Her child tends to be more rebellious especially during adolescence. ‘Start beautifully’ and ‘start unthoughtfully’ can make a huge difference in nurturing a child. How to bring up an outstanding child? Explore some useful tips here.
Second Example: Starting Your Career at a New Workplace
In my opinion, the impression you give to your new colleagues within the first month is significant. Let me provide you a positive and a negative example. In Dale Carnegie’s famous book – How to Win Friends and Influence People, he shared about a point ‘remember that a man’s name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in any language’. That’s true. If you happen to step into a new company in your near future, there is a very important practice you may consider, which is remembering your colleagues’ names as fast as possible in a short period. It will stand you in good stead especially in a big company. I do not have a very outstanding memory, but I managed to remember approximately 20 percents of my colleagues’ names during my first working day. During the next day, I saw one of the colleagues from other department, and I greeted her by addressing her name. She was so surprised and said, “I never expect you can remember my name.” Since that day, she seems to treat me extraordinarily friendly compared to the others, while some of my colleagues are still griping about her unfriendliness. It makes me realize the importance on how you portray your first impression and how you start your ‘working journey’ in a new company.
My second example is concerning my friend, Jean. She is a rather responsible person, and she is also my ex-colleague. As far as I know her, she is an assertive person. If you manage to raise a logical statement, she will surely accept. But if she thinks your opinion is not convincing, she may disobey. That what I feel about her, so far I never encounter any problem working with her, as most of the time we have almost the same opinion. Because of this character, she may easily offend someone who may have an assertive character like her. Recently she grumbled to me about encountering a superior who always likes to be against her. She told me her superior seems to have bias on her in the office. What has Jean done on her superior that makes her superior being hostile to her? Jean has admitted that she tends to ‘debate’ with her whenever she thinks her superior’s statement is incorrect and unpersuasive. It makes her superior always has the presumption that Jean will argue with her even before a communication starts. Whatever opinions raised by Jean may sound jarring to her superior. It ends up the big boss also has a less ideal evaluation on Jean. In this case, I will attribute such consequence to ‘having a bad start’ with her superior. Due to this reason, no matter how many conciliatory actions she does later may just be in vain, as the previous agonies between both of them can hardly be eliminated within a short period.
No doubt Jean is still able to sustain good relationship with other colleagues in the company, but that particular superior is already ‘powerful’ enough to upset her in the working place. But recently, Jean has become more optimistic after embracing my ‘gems of wisdom’ (hehe…). I told her, she should be appreciative towards her superior, because her superior is the one who turns her to be a stronger, smarter and more mature person.
Third Example: Taking Part in a Marathon
I assume you may be an amateur marathon runner like me. I used to take part in marathon. From my lightweight experience, I get to realize that if you want to win in a marathon or maybe I should say if you want to complete the run (as not many amateur runners have the chance to grab the top three places except for those professional runners), you definitely cannot start your run in full swing as if you are a short distance runner. My personal experience has told me that forging ahead with full speed at the starting point will undermine my energy to maintain running successively. You may end up’ running and stopping’ repeatedly throughout the run. Yes, you may still manage to complete the run but the result won’t be as ideal as those who maintain the speed persistently. Start the run beautifully by decomposing your energy averagely throughout the run can definitely add odds of success into your favor.
A good start may not guarantee your success. But from the personal experience of mine and my friends, crafting ‘a beautiful start’ will help to get things at the right path and prevent you from getting stuck at the starting gate. So I earnestly believe as long as you start something beautifully and proceed to the destination joyfully, the success rate would be higher than you start the work badly. In fact, the concept I share in this article is closely related to the 90/10 rule, which is a rule that helps us to react to our life more positively in order to obtain a more ideal end result. You may find out more from this article – The 90/10 Rule.
