Issue 1: Getting Started

Making the first move to start something new can be harder than the thing itself. I’ve wanted to write a blog from day one of Conker, so in January 2015 I made it my resolution… well that year passed quickly!

So here goes: Conker Blog Issue 1: ‘Getting Started’

When something new and important is in front of you and you want to do it right, you procrastinate, plan, and outright avoid doing it. But if I’ve learnt anything from the agonising jump from the day job to launching Dorset’s first gin distillery, it’s that you’ve just got to take the leap and learn later.

My first move as a desk-bound quantity surveyor to get the proverbial Conker rolling was to pick up the phone and make that first call. Before the Conker light bulb had landed I’d read somewhere that no matter how daunting it might be and how much of a plonker you’ll feel (and sound), making that call will set an exciting chain of events in motion. They weren’t wrong. That one call led to three others and soon I had a to-do list that I was itching to tick off.

It seems apt to talk about this now, a time when we all start to reflect and draft up our new rules for the year ahead – but why do we only do this in January?! Why are we so happy to ignore those niggles of discontent for the other 11 months of the year? And if it’s only January that we do this, why do we so often not follow through or persist with our new wills and wants?

If you think about it, the only thing stopping you from starting something new is fear. Fear that your first blog post will be a flop. Fear that you’ll be laughed off the other end of the phone. We place such an incredible amount of importance on other people’s perception of ourselves that we all too often take the safe road. I did this for years: pouring everything into getting qualified and climbing the career ladder in the way I thought I should.

So much is placed on success that we forget that the road to the greatest success is the road less travelled; the road that’s full of unknowns and riddled with the potential for failure.

You can max yourself out on wise proverbs telling you that ‘a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step’ and that ‘it always seems impossible until it’s done.’ But for me, the simplest mantra you can tell yourself is that it’s OK to fail, because it’s the getting back up that matters.

This realisation is incredibly liberating and will empower you to follow your deepest buried ambitions. After all, the surest way to avoid failure is to do nothing at all…

That’s the Spirit®