2024 April 23 Little steps can make a great journey

Hi, this is Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website about reimagining your life. If you like what you hear today, please leave a like, tell your friends, and send me a message. Thanks for joining me tonight to talk about how you might be surprised about how much progress you actually make towards your goals, even when it happens slowly and might not even be noticeable.

Tonight's focus, recognizing our consistent small progress, is one that trips up a lot of people. We tend to miss the obvious that every day we take little steps towards our goals, but because they are little, we tend not to notice them.

Change often happens slowly in our lives, in nature, everywhere, but it can still result in big changes. We've talked a little about the 10X is better than 2X philosophy, but when it comes to making major changes and physical changes in ourselves, slow and steady is often how you really have to approach it, especially as one ages. 

It's pretty easy to miss the little changes like having to sit down to put your socks on and then suddenly discovering a big change, like you can't touch the floor anymore. Some of this is preventable, but it doesn't help that, for many of us, our work or living situation kind of tends us into a more sedentary lifestyle. Just because many of us aren't doing as many things, we aren't quite as active overall as we used to be, we tend not to notice the little positive changes going on in our life.

We forget that those positive changes also can happen slowly. One day we look up and realize that all those little good changes that we made add up to a big positive change as well. I had one of those moments a couple weeks ago.  Someone asked me how my back was feeling. It had been constantly hurting me—to sleep, stand, everything.

I realized that it really hadn't hurt in a while. I suddenly realized that all those painful mornings of stretches and leg lifts and all those other little things I've been doing bit by bit have strengthened my back to the point that it no longer hurt. Baby steps to success. Each individual day, it seemed like nothing much had changed. Then all of a sudden, I hadn't even noticed how much better I felt by taking little tiny steps consistently. 

The same is true for many things in our lives. Not only exercise, but budgets, friendships, learning, new experiences, anything. If you stick with something, then you'll either reach your goal, or realize how much closer you are, and move towards your goal, even though each individual change is very small.

Part of it is setting good, measurable goals. Saying you want to be a good guitarist is not a good goal. There's no way to know when you get there. But saying you want to learn 12 chords and be able to play them reliably is a better basis for a goal. If you add a deadline to that, saying I want to learn 12 chords and play them pretty well and do that in two months, now you have something you can measure.

If you don't reach your goal in the expected time, you've learned something about yourself and your abilities. And if you do reach your goal, you know you've actually done it. So, you win either way. This really isn't about goal setting per se. We've talked about that a lot before in depth. Remember that while you keep aiming for your big vision, you're probably making little itty bitty steps all along the way.

Small enough that you may hardly even notice them. But all of a sudden you realize you're further along than you had thought. Best of all, you probably weren't fighting with yourself the whole time, because all those little steps were small enough that you were able to accomplish them, and they didn't seem overwhelming or even difficult to do.

The only thing to watch out for is that, since the progress may be so subtle and small at a time, you may find yourself engaging in negative self-talk about not making any progress. Just don't do that. Seriously, celebrate all the little wins. Because when we do little tiny things, we tend to forget how much we've actually advanced.

And by celebrating those little wins, even just saying, Wow, I can walk a mile today, or I can walk up the stairs without taking a rest in the middle. Whatever it is, no matter how small it is, just recognize it and do it for yourself. Instead, every day or week, spend a moment and think about some of the positive things you've done, no matter how seemingly small.

Your brain likes consistency, and it likes to find success. So if you consistently recognize your progress, your brain will want to keep making sure that you do the same sort of thing, and it will continue. 

That's it for the evening. Good luck with your reenvisionment and recreation projects. If you keep moving consistently towards your vision and your goals, you'll likely surprise yourself at how much progress you can make. Your homework (always optional) is to think about something you recently wanted to do or to accomplish, and then think about how many little steps you've already taken towards that goal.

Extra points if you can come up with some ways to motivate yourself every single day by recognizing your progress so as to encourage yourself as you move along. We don't always succeed to the degree we want, so try to recognize where you didn't get quite to where you wanted to be and how you can help yourself and do a little better tomorrow. 

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As always, thank you so much for stopping by. If you found something interesting or useful, please pass it along and please hit that like button. If not, please drop me a comment as to what you'd like to hear. Have a great week. Remember to live the life that you dream of, because that's the path to true contentment. Love and encouragement to everyone. See you next week on 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com. Thank you.