Living Well

The Living Well Archive will grow each month into an online resource containing; reflections, thoughts and simple self-help ideas. Click below for more pages from the archive:

An Emotional Storm - Beginnings - Running Free - The Hazelnut Shell - Letting Go
The Scratched Diamond - Help! I've Lost The Plot - Joots - The Flashback - Food... For thought

Beginnings

Starting anything new for the first time can feel a bit scary for some people, and this is especially so when thinking about starting counselling for the first time.

I hope that you will find this quote helpful for any new beginnings in your life.

"Beginnings often frighten us because they seem like lonely voyages into the unknown, yet in truth, no beginning is empty or isolated. 

We seem to think that beginning is a setting out from a lonely point along some line of direction into the unknown. This is not the case. Shelter and energy come alive when a beginning is embraced. We are never as alone in our beginnings as it might seem at the time. A beginning is ultimately an invitation to open towards the gifts and growth that are stored up for us.

To refuse to begin can be an act of great self-neglect. Sometimes the greatest challenge is to actually begin; there is something deep in us that conspires to remain within safe boundaries, to stay the same. 

One day a man set out to build his new home.  He had just stripped the sod off the field to begin digging out the foundation, when an old man from the village came by. He blessed the work and said, “You have the worst of it behind you now”. The man laughed and said, “But I have only just begun”! The old man said: “That’s what I mean. You have begun, and to make a real beginning is the most difficult act."

From Benedictus by John O’Donoghue