I recently started reading Jon Acuff’s new book, Start.

And, seriously, I can’t put it down. I’m eating it up. Highly recommend it!

So, naturally, yesterday I started exploring Jon’s blog at JonAcuff.com. And since I always love to see what popular bloggers wrote as their first post, I did a little detective work and found this post (Jon’s first post on his personal blog).

It really spoke to me because, like Jon, I too have been blogging elsewhere for 3+ years.

Then I decided I wanted to blog here at my own domain where I could talk about anything I wanted to.

And the hardest part of starting this blog?

Yep, just like Jon, it was writing my first post.

Because after you’ve been blogging for years somewhere else, you know what it takes to have an awesome blog (or else you should have given up a year ago).

And it’s been a struggle to add posts to this blog too.

Why?

For the same reason.

I want everything to be epic! (Thanks a lot, Corbett Barr and Think Traffic.)

But reading Jon’s blog, I’ve started to wonder something and I’d like your opinion on it…

Is it possible to try TOO hard to succeed?

I mean, does trying hard to succeed sometimes hold you back?

I think so.

Trying too hard can come disguised as many things:

It comes disguised as fear.

It comes disguised as perfectionism.

If you’re afraid of failing or of not being perfect, you’re trying too hard. Simple as that.

The moral of the book and this blog post

I guess what I’m saying is exactly what Jon has (literally) written the book on: just start.

Don’t worry about how epic it is, how perfect it isn’t or how much better it could be. Just do it.

Do your best and it’ll be great.