Life happens in tiny steps.
If we think about it, everything we do, we make a decision to do. Little choices that we make everyday, comprise an entire life.
An entire life.
If we put it like that, life sounds dwarfing. But if we look at something that might seem insignificant at the time – getting out of bed, brushing our teeth, we realize that-that taught us to get out of bed everyday and brush our teeth. Life is an addictive habit that allows us to master our own experience. Or fall into the habit of being mastered.
Action or inaction is a mind game.
This is what I love about meditation: that in the first thirty seconds of trying to find quiet, we learn how little mastery we have over our own minds. Yet if one perseveres on a day to day basis, in a week you’ll find them sitting for five minutes in perfect peace and stillness.
That is the power of small bites, also known as the compound effect. Where the cumulative impact of small actions leads to significant results.
I’m a believer in starting so small, that it doesn’t feel like you’re doing anything at all. Dread going to the gym? Drive there for a week straight and sit in your car. Maybe go in and scope out the equipment, but don’t work out; go home. Go again, and then keep going, and eventually, the habit of going will grow into a habit of doing.
The best part of small steps? No anxiety or fears of failing. How many of us have been absolutely debilitated by the weight of maybe having an imperfect result? Small steps takes the anxiety that piggybacks the fear of execution, of no execution, of perfection or failing and reduces it to nothing. The mini steps plan is a game we can all win.
So this is your sign. Identify a goal that you’ve wanted to tackle, break it down into the smallest possible steps, and take one.
One step.
Make it painless. So painless that you won’t mind doing it the next day and the day after that. Look in the mirror when you’re brushing your teeth and tell yourself that you ARE the person who goes to the gym, journals, drinks more water etc. and you will be.
Take a sip. A tiny sip. And inch your way to change.
It starts here.
