You Don't Have To Be Great To Get Started, But You Have To Get Started To Be Great

I know all of you have probably heard this saying at one time or another in your life. You Don't Have To Be Great To Get Started, But You Have To Get Started To Be Great.

Sometimes greatness is not as calculated as you think it is.

Sometimes it’s even created out of ridicule.

While this story can’t be fully verified and has a hint of urban legend to it, one of the most accepted versions goes like this ...

In 1968, guitarist Jimmy Page formed a band after the breakup of the Yardbirds.

Page was hanging out one night in a New York Club called Salvation with The Who’s Keith Moon, John Entwistle and some other now famous musicians.

"What will you call this new band?” Page was asked.

“The New Yardbirds,” he said. "Jokingly"

“Oh, that should go over like a lead balloon,” Moon is said to have replied, sarcastically.

Page took note and decided to replace the word “balloon” with “zeppelin,” a word which, according to one music journalist, brought "the perfect combination of heavy and light, combustibility and grace" to Page's mind …

… and thus the name Led Zeppelin was born.??

The group dropped the 'a' in lead at the suggestion of their manager, Peter Grant, so that those unfamiliar with the term would not pronounce it “leed.”

And that is how Jimmy Page's greatness was born. Just remember, if you tap into your creative side you can even turn sarcasm into something great.

So try to look at things with a creative eye and hear things with a creative ear and not a negative view, you may just stumble on something great.

A 10-year-old boy was trying to write a report on birds that he had been assigned three months earlier.

Procrastination’s bill had come due and the boy sat at the kitchen table close to tears.? He was surrounded by paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the size of the task ahead.?

The boy's father sat down beside him, put his arm around his son and said, "Bird by bird, buddy, just take it bird by bird.”

The boy took that single piece of advice and got through his assignment.??

This one incident made such an impression on the boy’s younger sister Anne, that she later used that story as the foundation for an entire book.

Titled, “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life,” it’s considered one of the best books about writing ever penned and Lamott has gone onto a distinguished career that includes a Guggenheim Fellowship and an induction into the California Hall of Fame.

So if your having trouble getting started on a project or you feel overwhelmed, I say to you just take it bird by bird.