Is This Your First Time Doing Something? It Is No Big Deal

One of the things I noticed that I tend to do is build up a milestone I want to achieve, especially “the first x” and make a big deal about it in my head. Like when I was building Proxies API, I would build this narrative that I couldn’t wait to finish developing. It creates weird anxiety that helps nobody. Then when I finished it, I would make a big deal about “the first customer.”

“If only I can get my first customer…. then it would be xxx”, I would say to myself. Then if it didn’t happen, I would feel desperate for nothing. It is funny, but I wouldn’t make such a big deal about my second customer. Why? There is something weirdly superstitious about the 1st time of anything.

This very act of giving it space in my mind makes it somehow more and more challenging to achieve. Now I have changed my attitude towards the 1st anything.

My first customer happened soon after, and so did the next hundred.

I want to notice milestones in my rearview mirror, never as I reach them, and not anticipate and look for them. I wish to acknowledge signs but never focus on them. I don’t even want to celebrate them too because that tells my brain that the next one is even more difficult and yet significant a deal, and my mind then makes it real. Now when I achieve them, I stand my own as if to say, of course, I realized them.

If you can’t stop making a big deal about the 1st of something, counter it with making a big deal about the 2nd one to mess with your head.

Let’s celebrate the 88th customer rather than the 100th one. The brain will then realize the ridiculousness of its belief and will let go.

The author is the founder of Proxies API, a proxy rotation API service.