That First, Small Step

You may have noticed that New Year’s resolutions are often talked about with an air of disillusionment at this time of year. As I drove home today I heard a radio presenter warning that ‘most people make a list of goals for 2016, but by February they have forgotten them all.’

If you have experienced this disillusionment yourself, before losing hope and throwing out your hopes completely, why not ask yourself why people’s lists of aspirations often come to nothing?

Why is it that we can be so full of hope and motivation in December, and then by the end of January, somehow our desire for change seems to have melted away, leaving us with only the guilt of not having seen our hopes become a reality? If our goal is connected to something that we really do care about, for example ‘spending more quality time with my children’, then why is it that we can’t seem to make this happen?

There are a number of factors at play here, but I think the most significant of them all is that we try to start by trying to take giant leaps before we can crawl: we forget to start small. Our aspiration may be spot on, our enthusiasm high, our motivation authentic, but we have not identified that very first unseen, small, and yet absolutely critical first step. Without taking a series of seemingly less important small steps, we do ourselves a disservice by aiming for something that is impossible to achieve instantly, and does not have the foundations to be long-lasting.

To follow our example, if it is in your heart to be spend more quality time with your children this year, I want to encourage you to keep that on your list of new year’s resolutions for 2016. Then be gentle with yourself and ask, ‘what is the very first, small step that I need to take in order to make this happen?’ It may be spending twenty minutes over a coffee deciding exactly how much quality time you would like to have with your kids. Or it may be spending a few moments with a pen and paper identifying, honestly, what it is that is stopping you spend more quality time with them at the moment. You may decide that the very first step is to acknowledge that you are going to need the help of a trusted friend, and so you decide to pick up the phone and tell them about your hopes for the coming year, and ask them to check in with you from time to time to ask how it’s going. If you spend a moment to think honestly, you will know what that very first small step is, and as you continue taking small, thought-through steps, you will find yourself walking steadily towards the goal that is so important to you. As Lao Tzu said so well, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Lao Tzu

First published January 2016