The hardest thing about reaching the stars is getting off the ground.
Perched vertically on the pad, the last of the U.S. space shuttle fleet to fly a mission, Atlantis, was twenty times the weight of the craft that returned back to earth.
Strapped to two solid rocket boosters and its external fuel tank, like a flea on the back of a dog, the shuttle is dwarfed by its transportation system.
On its own Atlantis weighs around 165,000 pounds, but fully loaded, with each of its two solid rocket boosters weighing 185,000 pounds and carrying 1.1 million pounds of fuel and its external fuel tank weighing 78,000 pounds and filled with 1.6 million pounds of fuel, sitting on the pad pointed towards the heavens, Atlantis weighs some 4.5 million pounds.
The reason of course is the tremendous amount of thrust that is required to clear gravity and once the external rockets which provide 70% of the thrust have done their job, within two minutes of launch they are cut loose, and using its three rocket boosters Atlantis positions itself in orbit for the remainder of its mission.
Hence, almost all of the heavy lifting is done in the first couple of minutes and from there the shuttle is gliding in the endless expanse of zero gravity.
The same is true with setting yourself on course for getting what you want.
In the early stages it can require a lot of heavy lifting.
You are beginning to get your mind around different ways of thinking and taking actions, thinking carefully about what you want, developing your process for getting it, and thinking about how you build yourself into the person who can do it.
Like Atlantis, all this heavy lifting is required just to get you launching in the right direction, and it can take a significant amount of lift just to get yourself on course.
This is where most people fail, and worse, they give up.
But if you persist and keep building momentum, soon you discover that your heavy lifting has blasted you off in the right direction, and like a black hole gobbling up stars as it expands, simply by continuing to take steps you are quickly building the momentum you need to finish your mission.
This isn’t to say that the path to getting what you want ever gets easy, but like exploring space, if it were easy, would it be worth it?