Keep Your Progress Small

Small steps, take small steps to achieve your goals. I know we all have grand dreams and great big plans of where we want to be or do, but we often (like all the time) forget that to achieve those big dreams we have to work through a lot of process and procedure. And in order to successfully do that, you need to take small steps as you go.

Our first instinct is to run full speed ahead towards that goal. Give it everything we have and go, go. You see this with children who are learning to walk. They get up and start to move and instantly are attempting to run towards whatever thing they see. Usually this results in their falling flat. But that is not the way to approach a goal. In police work that’s how you get killed. In life that’s how you set yourself up for failure. Running headlong into something will not work in the long run. It may feel like it initially, but you will quickly find yourself stumbling into unseen objects, becoming tired and worn from the effort. Eventually, you will give up, leaving a half-started mess like you have done many times before.

Let’s stop that cycle by remembering to take that great idea, or activity, or habit, and turn it into a series of small, actionable (big word there, just means something you will actually follow, track and do) steps. Make sure you make these small steps easily doable. It may feel like you‘re wasting your time and you will never achieve your goal, but trust me, taking your time and making these steps doable, repeatable and small will bring you to the finish line so much faster then you could ever expect. Hell, it’ll get you there, which your other methods have probably never done.

This concept is nothing new or exotic and it just feels way too easy or inefficient, and your mind is going to reject it because of this. But you have to resist this dismissal. Don’t push too fast or try to go too far all at once. This concept doesn’t stop you from speeding up or doing more when you‘re ready to do so; it just means you start out with small, easy to obtain steps, that allow you to see success and movement. This will then allow you to grow into someone who is consistent and able to complete what you’ve started. All without the guilt of feeling like you are not doing enough, or what you perceive as enough. As long as you are taking a step forward - you are moving forward.

In the end it will make no difference how quickly you get to your goal, or dream, or hope, as long as you actually get there. Stop the starting and stopping by taking little steps and you will find how easy it is to actually get somewhere in life.