Stick With Your Goals: Baby Steps

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

-- Chinese philosopher, Laozi (604-531 BC)

“If you want to feel better, take just one aspirin at a time; not the whole bottle.”

-- My mom.

I recommend a few books on creating and maintaining life changing habits: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg and The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. In their own way, each book discusses how creation of life changing habits (positive or negative) is either intentional or unintentional. The easy road means coasting into mindless habit that will not push us toward our goals and dreams. The hard road is paved with intention, most times resulting in forward progress.

The challenge is to set ourselves up for success by reducing our goals to their smallest common denominators. Little, seemingly insignificant -- yet intentional -- choices will compound over time to move us closer to our goals.

Admittedly, with the exception of some addictions, if it's easy to start something, it's also easy to stop. Late January is strewn with broken resolutions.

What we have to do is take baby steps. Make the hurdle so low that you can step over it without much effort. Let's say your goal is to journal each day. Rather than planning to writing paragraph upon paragraph expounding on your day, decide to write one sentence to summarize your day. Put your notebook and pen at your bedside ready to go, and all you have to do as you sit down on the edge of bed to get ready to swing your legs up and lay down, is reach over and write a few words. Start with that and see where it goes. After all, doing that much is better than doing nothing at all toward your goal. You have effectively lowered the bar to its lowest rung, and given yourself a chance to create a habit that will move you toward your goal.

Many years ago, Zig Ziglar, this generation's granddaddy of motivational speaking and writing, proudly spoke about how he lost (and kept off) 37 pounds in ten months as part of his his goal to be healthier. How did he do it? He set a goal weight, set a goal date, and did the math. If he could just lose 1.9 OUNCES on average per day, he would make his goal! 37 pounds is a LOT of weight. Less than two ounces? Not so much. He broke his goal down, took it one day at a time, and made little choices to get himself there.

I'm a pretty tall fella: 6'4". I once weighed nearly 250 pounds, which was too much for my frame. My knees hurt and back hurt after standing all day in the classroom. Spurred-on by a "biggest loser" challenge for faculty at my high school about 10 years ago, I decided to shed some of that baggage by cutting soda from my diet. My life style as a high school band director is fairly hectic, so this seemed like a manageable first step. I replaced the habit of soda with the habit of water, and an amazing thing happened: every time I chose water, I remembered of my goal. The more I remembered my goal, the more little choices I made that could help me along the way: no late night snack today, no second helping of Thanksgiving mashed potatoes, just half a candy bar rather than the whole thing, etc. Six months later, I had dropped to 212 pounds!

These two examples highlight weight-loss, but making small, seemingly insignificant steps toward any goal will work for you!

Here’s a suggested plan for attacking your goals with BABY steps:

1.     Review all of the goals you’ve set in the past, but did not accomplish.
2.     Identify ONE goal from that list that you’d still like to accomplish
3.     Boil it down to small, seemingly insignificant tasks
4.     Take action a little bit each day.
5.     Pick another small task related toward your goal.
6.     Get it done
7.     Repeat 5 and 6 as many times as necessary.
8.     Before too long, you're habitually moving toward your goal!