How to Take Small Steps to Achieve Your Goals

Are you feeling overwhelmed about starting? Don’t worry many people do. They feel fearful, confused, paralyzed, overwhelmed, worried, anxious and apprehensive when it comes time to start.

There is agony and inertia that is experienced before attempting something risky that takes you out of your comfort zone. The inertia could be likened to driving a car with the parking brake on; to move forward and further you would need to release the brake.

The agony is even more intense especially if you are doing something for the first time. Many nerve wrecking thoughts fill up your mind including the perception that you have to take big leaps to make a significant difference in what you are attempting to do.

The truth however, is that you don’t have to start big to succeed. There is great wisdom in starting small and growing big over time likewise there is great wisdom in starting your journey to success one step at a time.

The key to growth and progress is to do a bit more each new day than you did the previous day and make small improvements as you move along.

Little steps taken over time have the potential to make a difference. The small steps and actions add up over time incrementally. No step is too small. Keep building on it. Dream big and start small is useful advice to remember.

Sometimes you will start and restart a number of times as you try to get the right footing. Do not be discouraged by how many times you have to start to gain your balance, once you gain your balance take a few easy steps and then a few more.

You don’t have to do it all at once, this is a common misconception, you need to take one bite at a time. To keep you focused on your journey towards success you need to have a captivating and exciting reason to keep moving forward every day. This excitement should ignite your spark plugs and provide the power to chug along like a steam train.

A baby learns to walk by taking one step at a time, they stand up walk and fall down, then they rise up again walk fall down and they keep repeating the process over and over with great determination and eventually the baby walks on their own and they can throw up their little arms in ecstasy in celebration of the milestone they have accomplished. Watching this process is truly inspirational.

One positive aspect of starting small is you discover what works and what doesn’t. Perhaps you had assumptions that looked good in theory but when you applied them they did not work out as you had thought. This affords you an opportunity to evolve and discover new ways of achieving your objectives. Your plans and ideas could expand into ways and areas that you had not imagined before.

You could gain more insights about the goal you are pursuing and you will learn more about yourself. Your level of confidence will also increase as you persist by moving forward. When starting small you can focus on every detail that needs your attention. You can also experiment and test new ideas. Starting small and taking small steps helps you to test the waters before diving in.

Think back about the time you were a kid and you were outside playing. Try to remember how it was when you wanted to jump up as high as you could. When you want to jump high you simply start by jumping up a little, then jump a little more higher, then a bit more higher, over and over as momentum and sheer determination kicks in each subsequent jump becomes higher than the previous one until you are jumping as high as you can.

All this high jumping was made possible by the initial small jump that you did which was the foundational jump that you kept building upon. The beauty of it all is that the more you succeed in jumping higher the happier and more motivated you become for reaching your goal and you instinctively set a higher goal which you jump towards.

The main things to remember in starting small and taking baby steps are: take small regular steps, don’t try to grow too quickly, make incremental changes and improvements over time, don’t try to do too much at once, don’t try to jump in one big leap, work on one piece at a time improving and evolving as you go, and don’t be afraid to start small.

Everything big that you see around you started small – a tree started from a seed, a building started from one brick – brick after brick, wood after wood and a house emerges.

When starting the first step, take a leap of trust that things will work out and take the plunge. Get ready to work your way up. What you learn now helps you in the next step and the next.

Key Takeaways/Points to Remember

1. Dream big and start small.
2. Take regular small steps.
3. Make incremental changes and improvements over time.
4. Everything big that you see around you started small.

Executive Summary

• Are you feeling overwhelmed about starting? Don’t worry many people do. They feel fearful, confused, paralyzed, overwhelmed, anxious and apprehensive when it comes time to start.
• There is great wisdom in starting small and growing big over time likewise there is great wisdom in starting your journey to success one step at a time.
• Little steps taken over time have the potential to make a difference. The small steps and actions add up over time. No step is too small. Keep building on it. Dream big and start small is useful advice to remember.