Some time ago, I stopped to visit my cousin and her two adorable daughters. As happens on most of my visits, the girls were excited to see me. This was especially so on this occasion as the older one had just celebrated her fifth birthday. After lunch and show-and-tell with all the new toys received as birthday gifts, the girls wanted to go outside and look at their garden. The corn was already taller than them, so they enjoyed walking back and forth in the few rows pretending that their mother and I couldn’t see them. Following that expedition, the older one announced that she wanted to go play on the monkey bars.

The girls’ technique the first several rounds of traversing the monkey bars was to reach out with one hand, grab the next bar, bring the other hand and the rest of the body with it so that both hands were holding that next bar, then repeat the process. It is an intuitive method, but it creates a problem—at each new bar, they came to a stop and had to regain their forward momentum. This requires a lot of strength, strength they don’t yet possess.

I gave some lessons on a new technique using only one hand per bar, continuing to swing forward, and maintaining forward momentum (all with the assurance of me holding them so they wouldn’t fall). The older child was more eager to try this new method, but her sister tried it too once she watched and saw that nothing terrible befell her older sister. The girls understood after a few go-rounds that I had shown them a superior approach, but it will take more practice for this new method to take hold.

Reflecting on that part of the afternoon, it offered a physical reminder of something I have heard in a few contexts—inertia is the most powerful force in the universe. This is not true in a literal sense as demonstrated by something as trivial as our ability to stand up from a seated position, but there is a deeper truth in the saying. After all, inertia was Newton’s first law of motion. Lockdown restrictions forced many things in life to stop, and now that a new normal is emerging, I have found that it takes a great deal of energy to start doing things again, whether that be reading, exercising, writing, or whatever else I want to be doing other than sitting in my recliner watching television. The hardest thing is to begin a new project, venture, habit, etc. Once you begin, you have a positive momentum that will help keep you going. It may not be enough to overcome every obstacle, but at least you will have a chance. This week, I encourage you to make a start at something you have wanted to do during the last few weeks or months. You may find that the act of starting alone takes you much further down the road toward success than you thought you would ever achieve.