You don’t have to be great to start but you have to start to be great

You don’t have to be great to start but you have to start to be great: This quote is all about action, taking the right steps to make your dreams a reality. In this article, we will talk about the need and urgency to start working on our dreams. While doing so, we will need to dispel fears about being perfect or not having adequate resources.

You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great

Zig Ziglar

Instead of losing yourself in the details and planning forever – the focus is to just define a cut-off point. Once you reach that stage, just start working so that you have feedback to build on. Or else, you can easily get lost in overplanning without any progress at all which is far worse!

Who said You don’t have to be great to start?

Zig Ziglar is most famous for his quote – you don’t have to be great to start. He is famous as a self-help, motivational speaker, author and salesman. He has written over 30 books and his first book was rejected 39 times. Maybe that’s a lesson to keep trying and be perseverant.

In this article, we will mainly focus on his quote and its meaning – you don’t have to be great to start. Some of his other popular quotes are:

Motivation is not permanent, neither is bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily

Failure is a detour, not a dead end

If you learn from defeat, you haven’t really lost

Its not what you’ve got, but how you use that makes the difference

Expect the best, prepare for the worst

Zig Ziglar Quotes

You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great meaning

Everything starts with a dream or a purpose/goal. This usually defines your endpoint which inspires you. The dream also tells us why we feel strongly about a desired outcome. You can equate the dream to a vision/mission that you want to achieve. It is equivalent to a north star or motivating direction that keeps you moving.

The next part of having a dream is to transform this into real actions and milestones. The beauty of planning is that it should help us break down this dream into realistic goals or targets. That’s it – after you’ve done this, we need to start. We can’t waste time trying to be perfect or wait till we have all the answers. The most important thing to remember while goal setting is that things change with time.

We have to move swiftly to achieve our dreams or else we end up losing time. This doesn’t mean that we blindly jump into working without thinking about the outcome. The quote derives its value when we need to go beyond thinking into actions. Also, the key is to prevent overthinking and the hindrance of micromanagement or perfection.

You have to begin to be great

I appreciate the fear of starting something when we don’t have all the answers. But that’s the reality, isn’t it? Most times, we will not have all the answers but have to trust something and move. It is only our actions that give us results. Our plans and strategy are supposed to change with time and feedback. The perfect plan is a myth. You will have better success with speed and constantly adapting with time.

What does the start mean?

• Sometimes, a start might mean gathering more information
• It can be about creating the right network
• Or scoping your projects

Starting on your dreams or goals doesn’t always have to give you the final result. It is a strong step in the direction. Remember, even the greatest was once a beginner. We all have to start from this place and keep getting better with time.

The unfortunate factor was, even though these dreams were fantastic, they were too big to actually make a difference. Slowly, the dreams took shape of a giant task which would overwhelm them and finally found a way to rationalise it to a closure.

Before you think I am driving into a negative spiral, I’d like to point out that there are dreams that don’t fall into a formal starting point structure. It is almost like saying you’ve got to start somewhere because the dream is too big to break down into a formal plan.

You don’t have to be great to start

As we have rambled in the previous subheading, this one is about splitting a large dream into multiple steps – bite-sized chunks from which you can focus on what you need to do. Most dreams fail right at the starting point because they are too large to fathom. This is precisely where you have to break down your mission and vision into tangible milestones.

You don’t need all the skills right from the beginning. If you want to be a top badminton athlete, you don’t begin by registering for the National Games. You begin by holding a bat, learning your stance, and building your stamina. You also work through identifying the competition, and the skills you need to develop and then pushing through. You will never be the top athlete when you begin, but you will when you start the journey.

Also, the most important thing is to assess your strengths and areas that need improvement. We all need to work on something to become a finished product. Assuming that we have everything is a rather poor way to set goals. Infact completely unrealistic as well!

References:

About Zig Ziglar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zig_Ziglar

Quotes by Zig Ziglar: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/50316.Zig_Ziglar