What is one small thing you can do today about a big dream you have for your life?
Big dreams get a whole lot of glory. Like SO much of the glory. We’re always thinking about what our ten year plans are and what we want for our lives and where our entire existence is headed. But in so much of all the BIG SKY DREAMING (which is really important at times) we lose, completely, the power of small — small steps, small plans,, small ideas.
When did small get such bad wrap? And when did we all stop honoring the immense power of all the small things teaming inside of us. Did you know that really big, long-term goals are actually proven to be ineffective. In a study done by the USC Mind and society center, goals over 90-days were shown to demotivating. Rather, it was 90-day plans and under where people saw the most effective results. Plans that were small encouraged people to feel like they could actually achieve them and gave them the motivations to get into action.
And that makes sense right? When you think something you want to do is REALLY big, you immediately get overwhelmed and don’t know where to start. When you feel like you have all the time in the world, you don’t really know what to do right now that will get you there eventually. Time becomes too big a container and you aren’t sure exactly how to fill it up in order to get what you want.
Our friend Mary experienced this same problem when she was writing her book. She got a great book deal with a great publisher, something she had always wanted, but with lots of time and a whole book to write, it was hard and demotivating to figure out where to start. Instead, when she started breaking up the time she had to write it into 90-day sections and all the things that needed to happen in each of the phases, it became super clear how to trickle back from something big into a bunch of small things that were totally productive actions.
So, for that big dream you have in your life, asking yourself, “What’s the smallest thing that I can do today?” will be incredibly powerful for getting into action sooner rather than later. It takes all the pressure off the future and helps you just do something right now. And doing something now is the alchemy of dreams. Doing something now is all you can do. Doing something now is actually all there is to do. You don’t have to have a big dream. You have right now. So go doing something intentional, and small, something that will get you one tiny step closer to this dream you’re dreaming.
