Breaking It Down to One step at a time: 4 ways to stay on the path and celebrate the journey.
1. Take ONE step toward your goal. A good planner breaks down every challenge into manageable chunks so they don’t get overwhelmed and discouraged. Once you’ve done that, don’t focus on the long term- take the step that’s directly in front of you. Don’t even think about the next one. You only have to take that one step. Just. One. You can do it!
2. Keep taking one more step. Heroes aren’t free from fear; they’re just so focused on a worthy goal that they feel they can’t turn back. Most of humankind’s great achievements—the sorts of things that make us say, “Oh, wow!”—were accomplished by people who were muttering or shouting, “Oh, sh*t!” Heroes don’t feel special, just dogged. They walk their scary paths with shaky knees and trembling hands. One shaky, trembling step at a time. The difference is a hero doesn’t stop. There is a hero inside you. Let your hero out to start stepping forward.
3. Watch the path, not the obstacles. “When you shoot,” Jim, a hockey player, says “You never want to look at the goalie. Look at the space around him. Where your eyes go, the puck goes.” A white-water kayaker warns “Look at the water, not at the rocks. Where your eyes go, the boat goes.” Got it? Where our attention goes, our lives go. As you take each step, be peripherally aware of dangers, but glue your attention to the path between them. Keep looking at the obstacles and you will hit them. Look at the way through and forward and onward you will go.
4. Celebrate each step. Many people think they don’t deserve to celebrate until they’ve conquered huge fears to reach epic milestones. No. To stay motivated, we must celebrate after making one lunch, taking our list to one grocery store, taking one cycle class. Even if you’re much more courageous than I am, I suggest you do the same. Celebrating makes the journey all the more joyful—and it builds confidence, which is much more useful than avoiding fear.
If you live this way—seeking out what captivates and intimidates you, pushing beyond your comfort zone, making sure you’re serving a noble purpose—you’ll live a life full of absorbing adventures. You may even travel the globe or save the world one person at a time. This is the kind of success story I want to see on FB or TV- not violent shows where the world is ending, news shows only reporting negative stories, or FB posts telling me what to worry about. I want to see and hear about people overcoming fear and being worth it. That is really how we shred fat and get fit. And just think how thrilling that would be.
