Having a Big Dream for a goal has its down-side too. Big dreams can seem far off and illusive to achieve. In order for us to get closer to our big dreams, we need to take smaller steps. That is where small achievable outcomes can come into play. Another clear research winner is baby steps. Take your Big Dream and find whatever the first step seems to be to move in the direction of your goal. Focus on that with actionable steps to get moving.
Your first step on a journey is sometimes the hardest, so make it the easiest. For example, if you plan to change your diet to feel better, and you hate vegetables, don’t make your first step in changing your diet to eat 5 servings of vegetables every day. In fact, probably don’t try to work on veggies at all as your first step, unless that is the only thing you plan to change. Changing to a healthier diet has so many possible components. For me, the veggie thing is easy. I like them. For me the hardest change has always been around sugar. I am an addict, clearly and truly. Whenever I get ready to change my diet and develop new habits, I do not start with sugar. I start with fruits and veggies because for me, those are easy. I know that they say 5 veggies and 2-3 fruits is ideal, and I almost automatically do that, so I begin with what is easy, and almost already a habit. Sometimes I fall off of the habit a bit, but I like it, and it takes just a little bit of planning to put it back into place.
Begin in the easiest place. Your first step will be the most successful when it is something you feel confident you can do, seems pretty easy, but is still movement toward your larger goal. It seems like a no “brainer” to me why this works, but I will say it clearly. Start with something easy that you will be successful with, without a ton of time or effort to establish a quick successful move in the direction of your goal. If I were to start by cutting out sugar completely cold turkey, I would probably fail, because it is hard and I am addicted, and so I my failure would discourage me, and I would probably quit. I actually know I would because that is exactly what happens.
The concept is sometimes called, “Going for the lowest hanging fruit.” Like picking it from a tree. We don’t want to start at the top where it is hard to reach. We start nearest the ground where we don’t have to stretch too hard to reach it, so we can have the fruit quickly with little or no effort. As we get good at grasping the fruit, we can challenge ourselves to higher levels of stretching and reaching with more effort. Going after the harder changes to make.
Not all goals are about changing habits. That is just one option you may have chosen. It works for other goals too. If your goal was to finish or get a college degree. There are many options to start that off: pick a school, pick a subject to major in, pick a geographical area to go to school in, figure out how to pay for it, etc. Some of those tasks will be easy for some people and others will be harder. Which are hard and easy will depend on you, and people will not agree on which are the hard and which are the easy things to do. Like veggies being an easy step for me, isn’t an easy step for everyone.
Whatever type of larger Big Dream goal you created, find the lowest hanging fruit to move toward and try to grasp. Another example: I wanted to reduce the amount of shoes that I bought. (I was spending too much money on shoes.) It was hard to think about giving up my “Shoe Lover” rewards program with my favorite store. I got points, and then I had to use those points to get more points. It was kind of addictive, and I love shoes. I started smaller than that. I did something simpler. I changed my email settings so that I did not receive multiple emails a day telling me about their great sales and deals. It turned out, that was the only change I needed to make to that part of my shoe habit. Once I stopped seeing so many “deals”, I was not inspired to buy. It worked great. Something easier to do. I did miss the emails at first, but then I got used to it. If I need shoes, which won’t probably be for a while. I do know where to find them.
Meditation Mantra: I can achieve my Big Dreams by starting Small. I choose to focus my efforts on the easy things first. The first, easiest step toward my goal is __________. (Again, write it down. We are more accountable to things in writing.)