The Power of Small Steps
Sometimes even thoughts of the upcoming task plunge us into depression. The path ahead seems to be long, boring, hard, and insurmountable. We give up and feel stressed before we even start.
Stress has become a shadow for modern man. We try to avoid stress on any path. But wherever we go, the shadow follows us. It’s not about the path but in relation to your path. The same thing can look different for different people: stressful or interesting.
Imagine that you have a difficult business trip ahead of you. You haven’t gone to bed, but you’re already thinking about tomorrow’s hard day. And when you wake up early in the morning to catch your bus, you are horrified at the thought that in a couple of hours you have to be in a strange city to meet many people and solve existing problems. You haven’t gotten out of bed yet, but you already feel stressed. It seems to you that you will not be able to cope with this task, and you are already texting the message to the superiors in your mind that you are sick, and why don’t they send someone else to that city?
But actually, all you need to do now is make a cup of tea or coffee and eat a delicious breakfast. The next step is to get ready, leave the house and breathe in the fresh morning air (I like the polluted air of the street in the mornings no less than fresh). Next, you need to buy a ticket and wait for your bus. And here you are on the way, comfortably seated in a chair, you are satisfied that your little journey has already begun. Then what was the suffering in the morning for?
We always try to avoid stress. We want a comfortable life without suffering. And it’s right. Because the stress hormone, cortisol, is bad for our health. Cortisol is destructive to our body. One of the reasons for its production is difficult situations, which we call stressful.
We do not always have the opportunity to avoid stressful situations. And it is not necessary. Otherwise, what would our life be like? Like the constant indulgence of our whims or weaknesses? Path to the dream and escaping from stress are not the same thing. Therefore, it is wiser not to change your path every time at the slightest difficulty. It is better to change your attitude toward the difficulties on your way. If you stay true to your path, and your goals, your path will surely reward you. The only thing left is to choose the right goals and decide on the path to achieving the goals…
Rewards on The Way
How can the path reward you? Coffee and a delicious breakfast will give you cheerfulness and energy. With the first breath of fresh air, you will plunge into the dynamics of the coming day. You have taken your seat on the bus, and you already feel certain completeness. You feel that you are doing the right thing at every step. You got on the bus and are already one step closer to a new meeting. No, you have become a few steps closer. And in every step you take, there is a reward. Every small step is a dose of dopamine that your path rewards you for walking it.
Your brain will gladly give you a dose of dopamine for every step you take, for every task you complete. Although no, not gladly, your brain will do it automatically, it doesn’t care. Such processes occur unconsciously. But therein lies the power of the automatic dopamine release program — that this process, like many other processes controlled by the brain, does not require our conscious intervention every time.
However, consciousness is the key to setting up the dopamine release program. Some people use alcohol or psychedelic drugs to hack into the dopamine release. But it is clear that taking psychedelics is the wrong way. By hacking the brain’s dopamine program, you will break your entire brain and all your life.
It is better to use pure consciousness as the key to the dopamine program. You must determine for yourself the work for which you will receive rewards. And it doesn’t have to be grandiose: make your bed, get your dopamine. As I said, your brain doesn’t really care what you do exactly, but what matters is that you get it done.
Forest and Leaf
Forest
When you plan your path, you need to look at the whole picture to understand what you have to go through. This will give you the opportunity to prepare for the upcoming path and generally understand whether you want to go this path.
Leaf
Once you have chosen your path, you will sometimes need to make stops to adjust your path, or just look back and realize how much has already been covered. To make adjustments is quite normal for a living person, who can change, including as a result of the path traveled. I’m not talking about a trip to another city now, although you can avoid traffic jams there. I’m talking about the life path. This is usually what happens: the life path makes its own adjustments. Your plan and map will not always be one hundred percent in line with reality.
When you walk, you cannot constantly keep the big picture of the forest in your head. You need to focus on what is happening now, look around and take the next step. All you need to do while walking is the next step.
Often, on the way to some goal, we do not notice what is happening on the path itself, what is happening here and now. We are too focused on the big picture, we think about where we will end up at the end of the road, and we level the present. We look at the map and do not notice the beauty around us. We think about the difficulties of the upcoming trip, and do not notice the small steps, in the form of the first breath of fresh air or buying a ticket. These small steps are the small segments that we have passed, these are the small victories of which the path consists.
When we think about the whole path, it seems very difficult, it seems that we can not cope with it. But then it turns out that our thoughts were different from reality. The path turned out to be not so complicated, and in general, it turned out to be different. Then why are we so worried?
All we need to do on the way is the next step. We need to be in the moment so that we can notice this step, and reward ourselves for every small victory. We need to be in the moment to be aware of the completion of the points passed. Through mindfulness in every step, we will be able to correctly tune our dopamine reward program, and get more pleasure from life, from our journey.
