GOAL SETTING & SELF DEVELOPMENT

How Baby Steps Lead to a Beautiful Life

Why baby steps trump giant leaps on the path to success, with examples and strategies for application

A close friend of mine (let’s call him Sean) suffered an extremely traumatic personal loss recently. According to Sean, he had lost his heart; and with that, his desire to do, be or achieve anything for the remainder of his life.

Following this loss, Sean spent entire days in bed. This lasted for several months.

Increasingly concerned, I decided to check in with him.

Me: Sean, I am worried about you. You have to find a way to start moving again; to get out of this bed. How many steps do you think you take in an entire day?” Sean: Hmmm. Well, I take about 3 or 4 trips to the bathroom each day. And then other than that I may go to the kitchen once or twice.

Me: Do me a favor. Next time you go to the bathroom, can you count how many steps it takes to get there? And same for the kitchen? Sean: Sure.

A few days pass and I check back in with Sean Me: So do you have the number of steps? Sean: Yes. (He shares the numbers with me.) Me: So, you mean to say that you are taking less than 300 steps per day? Sean: Yes, is that bad?

Me: Well, my doctor said that 10,000 steps per day is ideal. I also read a few articles that said that anything less than 3000 steps per day is “the death zone.” And right now you’re only getting 10% of the death zone. Sean: So what? says Sean; concerned enough to ask, but clearly not even thinking that a 10K daily step goal is possible for him.

Me: Well, what if I send you a fitness tracker. Let’s see if you can average over 300 steps per day starting next week. I’ll do it with you. We can check in every night. Sean: OK — fine.

Over the course of the next few months, Sean went from averaging 300 steps per day, to 400, to 1000, to 3000. Currently, he averages approximately 10,000 steps per day at least 4 days per week.

Our “walking to save my life” campaign was in fact; life-changing.

How did someone who was 90% below the “death zone” get to a point in just a few months where he was walking more than 5 miles per day — more than a large majority of the population?

Simple. Baby steps.

Why we think giant leaps is the answer

Many of us are taught to dream big; to model successful people ahead of us who set lofty goals.

Our career counselors tell us that all we need to do is follow our passion. Our parents tell us that we can do whatever we put our minds to.

We are sold the big dream. And when big dreams go on sale with no accompanying plan, we should all complain until we get our money back.

Because there’s no one big leap to accomplishing all of our goals.

For everyone who gets a chance to perform on American Idol for 5 minutes, there are a thousand little things that they did to prepare before they ever auditioned.

And for everyone who made it past the first round, there are a thousand little things that they had to do overtime to keep moving from one level to the next.

They took baby steps, not giant leaps.

And even though people continue to believe that American Idol winners are some kind of overnight success, this simply isn’t true. And not only is it not true, it’s also dangerous to our progress towards achieving our goals.

Not by wishbone but by backbone

So wouldn’t it be nice if when dreams go on sale they could be accompanied by a tutorial outlining how we accomplish them?

We could all shout, “please don’t sell me that piece of furniture if you’re not going to include the instructions — please!”

But life isn’t always that simple. We oftentimes don’t get a manual. We don’t get the instructions. And that’s ok.

The mystery keeps us interesting, interconnected, and interdependent.

But if we really needed to put together a piece of furniture without having a manual, we would figure it out. We would call on someone who has done it successfully a ton of times without a manual. We would observe their process. We would learn from them.

We learn the value of taking baby steps from those before us who have achieved success. What we see over and over again is that the most successful people in any field think big, but act small.

Marcus Garvey said that not by wishbone but by backbone do people build themselves.

Giant leaps is your wishbone. Baby steps is your backbone.

And baby steps require focus and discipline. It doesn’t respond to the shiny new object that keeps us distracted, bouncing from one idea to the next day in and day out.

We rub the genie lamp but the genie doesn’t appear today.

Imagine instead rubbing the genie lamp for years, waiting weeks or months for a tiny body part to emerge — and years or even decades before the genie finally appears.

Would we be willing to do that — or would we give up?

We focus on giant leaps instead of baby steps because:

We are chasing a feeling — “If I can just accomplish this today, then I will feel happy tomorrow.”

But that’s a lie. We don’t need a major outside accomplishment to experience deep feelings of joy and fulfillment. We can cultivate that today. Any day. (I shared some ideas for how to get there in my most recent article, “To be Unhappy, Chase Happiness.”)

We focus on giant leaps instead of baby steps because: We are in love with the product, and not the process.

Once we have the degree, the promotion, the money, the recognition, the significance, the power, the external trappings of success — life will be magical!

Except — is that really true? What if we’re wrong?

Imagine what life would look like and feel like if you were in love with the process, and only in like with the outcome.

Like Leonardo da Vinci, painting for the pure love of painting, not for any semblance of fame. Or Thomas Edison, tinkering in his lab day in and day out, ignited by his daily discoveries — irrespective of the final result.

What if Leonardo only painted out of concern for how successful his paintings would be? Would he have kept going after 100 unsuccessful paintings? 200?

And how about Thomas Edison. What if he had stopped working in his lab the first 10, 100, 1000, or 10,000 times that he tried and failed before he finally invented the lightbulb?

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” — Thomas Edison

What would you do for hours and hours every day, even if you never made a penny doing it?

When and where do you get lost — so lost in the process; the joy of doing creative work, that you lose track of time?

These questions are the key to figuring out where you need to take baby steps. They’re also the key to what you need to step away from — as soon as you can.

Being obsessed with giant leaps and driven by major and immediate payoffs is a red flag. Usually, it means that you are putting too much weight on the joy of some final product. You are expecting this product to make up for the painful process that you endured.

This product is also a key, except that it opens the wrong door.

It opens the door to more work that you wish to escape. It closes the door to work that you deeply embrace.

And though that may be ok for a reason and a season — it becomes soul-crushing, if it persists over a lifetime.

Baby Steps in Action

Daymond John

You’d probably recognize Daymond John as one of the investors on Shark Tank, but he’s also the founder of the brand FUBU. He started in his clothing line using sewing machines at his mother’s house in Queens, New York. (Source: CO )

How did he do it? Baby steps. Buy sewing machine. Make clothes. Try to sell clothes. Keep trying. Baby steps. Fall down. Get up. More baby steps.

Booker T. Washington

And how about Booker T. Washington?

Booker T. Washington was born in slavery in 1856. After being freed by the Emancipation Proclamation he moved with his family to West Virginia. There he went to school and worked in the coal mines to earn money.

He went east to Hampton Institute, a school established to educate freedmen, and went on to become the first leader of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where he served throughout his life. He became a prominent national leader for African Americans and a leading voice for former slaves and their descendants. Source (Entrepreneur)

How did he do it? Baby steps.

Slavery to dream Dream to plan Plan to purpose Purpose to process Process to progress Progress to prominence.

From the depths of despair to the highest of heights.

Dreams, like any living thing that we are hoping to come alive; require attention, love, nurturing, and care. A deep commitment to daily watering and feeding. An excitement in witnessing even the tiniest evidence of growth.

We don’t have a baby today and tomorrow wish it were a 21-year-old, packing up and already moving out of the house.

We have a baby because no matter what the outcome, we know that we have signed up for and committed to a meaningful process that we will work towards each and every day.

Our dreams are our babies. Don’t kick them out the house before enjoying the task of raising them every day.

Take baby steps.

Baby steps — examples

What are ways in which we can take baby steps in our daily lives? Here are a few examples.

• Want to write a book? Commit to writing 1 to 2 paragraphs every day. Commit to enjoying and learning from the process.
• As you get better, ramp up to 3 or even 4 paragraphs every day. Each week, look back over time to how far you have come. Your progress will help you to remain invested. Over time, like the genie, the book will appear.
• Want to run 10 miles? Commit to walking 2 minutes per day every day. Then 10 minutes, then 20. As you get better, start to skip, then jog, then run.
• Call it your “tiny steps to ten miles” challenge. Text a friend whenever you do something — no matter how tiny, towards that challenge. If you’re like me, that will keep you revved up!
• Want to be more focused? Take baby steps in the opposite direction — subtract instead of adding. Delete your least favorite app. Then your second least favorite.
• Keep going and keep subtracting — go from Netflix to Amazon Prime only. Go from silencing your ringer to turning off your phone completely. You can define baby steps for yourself. Just keep taking them. Progress, not perfection, is the goal.

Why baby steps over giant leaps?

In the age of microwaveable dinner and instant downloads, patience is losing its virtue.

When do you want it? Yesterday! When do you have to have it? Today!

We are more hooked on instant gratification today than we were on phonics back in the 90s. It’s our new drug. We need it. We crave it.

It provides us with an escape. A life where everything is perfect. Everyone is happy. There’s no pain, no suffering.

The giant leap and instant gratification are close cousins. But here’s what these close cousins refuse to acknowledge.

At the end of the journey, when we have achieved everything that we ever wanted. All that we will be left with is, well… ourselves.

We will still need to create a daily routine that we enjoy We will still look towards new goals and aspirations We will still need to cultivate a beautiful life every day, today.

So why wait until some unforeseen time in the future to do it? Why not do it now?

We can figure out what baby steps look like for us — each day, each week, each month, each quarter.

Baby steps provide clarity, focus, and momentum. Giant leaps create frustration. We question why our “success” is taking so long. We get frustrated.

We don’t do the disciplined work. We under-estimate the daily practice.

We quit before we discover our greatness. We fail to achieve our goals.

Slow down. You’re not late. Don’t worry about missing the bus. Know and believe that you are the bus — and also the driver.

Take the route that serves you, and enjoy the journey, irrespective of your destination.