Even though they play an essential role in our lives and development, failures and set backs can be frustrating and discouraging when we are honestly seeking and trying to improve in our lives. Too often, many of us, rather than pivot, adjust and try again instead opt to give up and settle for the status quo or worse yet mediocrity.
Whilst there is no formula for success, there are principles and best practices that can significantly increase our progress and probability of accomplishment, but these are still no guarantee for outcome. Our lives are far more complex than a mathematical equation in a textbook, therefore each of us must seek out best principles and practices for our own lives and experiment to see which ones work optimally in our lives.
With that said, let's talk for a moment about the principle of taking small steps. Most of us have goals we want to achieve. For some of us it's losing weight, building muscle, getting out of debt, writing a book, getting a degree, changing lifestyle, improving mental health, developing a skill, or another important area of our lives.
There is a temptation after setting goals to believe that we must do everything all at once, right away in order to achieve our desired outcome. Rather than taking one small step forward we decide to start with a sprint, which quickly exhausts and discourages us, resulting in an even bigger temptation to retreat and quit altogether.
Let's use physical health as an example since most of us, considering many of us carry too much weight, have made it a goal to improve our physical health at some point. There is no single thing, no secret or hack we can do to be healthy. Good health includes, but is not limited to, nutrition and diet, exercise that involves cardio, strength and flexibility, sleep, stress management, and several other things too.
Some of us, perhaps too many of us, once having set a goal to become healthier will unwittingly attempt to change by trying to do all of these things simultaneously, which is basically impossible to do or maintain.
One approach, and the one that I am continuously discovering works for myself, is to take small steps, so small that it is almost impossible for us to not achieve it.
Sticking with health as the example. Eating one extra piece of fruit or walking 10-minutes every day might not seem life changing but achieving this goal for one-week will feel like a victory and will inspire us to continue onto eating two extra pieces of fruit or walking for 15-minutes each day. This idea works for many other endeavors and areas of our lives.
One small step, followed by another is a sustainable way for us to reach our goals. It will take us longer to arrive but we remember that things which grow quickly often die quickly and those things that grow slowly last a long time. We see this idea in nature by observing the difference between a sunflower and an oak tree.
Each individual small step may not appear to be particularly impressive or to be making any noticeable difference, but each small step compounds and the cumulative effect on our lives yields spectacular, noteworthy and praiseworthy outcomes. So whatever it is we want to achieve, let us all remember to take small steps, especially when we are first getting started.
I hope this helps make life a little sweeter,
Matthew
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