Hey Reader,
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Have you ever sat down to work on something and ten minutes later felt completely overwhelmed?
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⇢ You open a blank document to write your offer.
⇢ Or you sit down to craft some social posts.
⇢ Or you finally decide it’s time to figure out who your ideal client actually is.

And soon after, the pressure appears…
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“I’ve been working on this for weeks and it still feels messy.”
“Shouldn’t I be further ahead by now?”
“Why can’t I just choose one direction and commit to it?”
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I know this feeling well because, for years, I approached every new project as if it was already supposed to be finished. As if I had to know the end result before I had even started.
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​What I felt was resistance. Frustration. Irritation.
Not exactly a fun place to create from.
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And for a long time, I couldn’t understand where it was coming from. Until I realised that I expected myself to see the end result before I had even started.
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​That I should be able to see the final picture from the beginning.
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As if sitting in front of a blank page meant I was failing.
As if my job was certainty.
To know everything from the start.
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Then I realised something that is so obvious.
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​ Projects have stages…​
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⇢ A website has stages.
⇢ A new offer has stages.
⇢ A strategy has stages.
⇢ Clarity has stages.
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​And my “mistake” was that I approached every project from the end. I’d sit down on day one expecting the clarity that belongs to day thirty.
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Creativity doesn’t work like that (and yes, if you’re in the game of entrepreneurship, you’re a creative whether you like that label or not).
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There’s a stage for exploring.
A stage for collecting ideas.
A stage for talking things through and going down random rabbit holes.
A stage for changing your mind seventeen times.
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And only then comes the building.
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​And for years, I treated those early stages as if they weren’t real work.
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​⇢ I’d call it procrastination.
⇢ I’d tell myself that I was wasting time.
⇢ That I should already know.
⇢ That I should be further ahead.
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​ But maybe our resistance in business comes from expecting execution when the project is still in exploration.
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​And I think that’s why new projects created so much resistance in me.
Not because I disliked creativity, but because I disliked what I made the beginning mean about me.

Whenever I started something I’d never done before, I’d unconsciously attach all sorts of labels to myself:
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⇢ I don’t know enough.
⇢ I’m behind.
⇢ People will see that I’m inexperienced.
⇢ I should already be further along.
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Then, in a coaching session recently, I had a simple realisation.
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​I’m not the beginner. The process is.
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The website is at the beginning.
The offer is at the beginning.
The strategy is at the beginning.
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But I don’t have to turn a phase of the project into an identity.
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Because when something doesn’t work, it’s no longer…
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​“I failed.”
“I should have known better.”
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​It’s more like… “Interesting. That experiment didn’t work.”
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​One becomes identity. The other is just information.
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And honestly, I still don’t think I’ve fully made peace with being at the beginning. There is still a part of me that wants to skip the awkward phase and arrive straight at mastery.
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But at least now I can see what’s happening. I know that it’s the process that’s having a beginning, not me.
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So maybe the question isn’t “Why don’t I know yet?”
​Maybe the question is “What is this project asking me to discover first?”
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​I’d love to hear about your relationship with being a beginner. Feel free to hit reply 😉
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Happy creations
Inga ✧
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