Want to Make Lasting Changes? Try Baby Steps!

I have worked with a lot of people over my years as an Executive Coach and seen them make amazing transformations. How are most of them doing it? Baby steps!

I know there can be the appeal of waiting for that one life-changing moment to turn things around and propel you to where you want to be. But, the reality is that it often doesn’t happen like that.

Sustainable change happens when we take small steps every single day, which alters our habits and rewires our brains so that over time, a real shift can take place.

I know slow and steady isn’t as sexy as “show me the results now!” But, consider that by walking 10 minutes a day, every day, for a year you have walked almost 4000 minutes! Over 20 years, that is almost 100,000 minutes. I think you can see where I am going with this. Small steps over time, end up having major impacts.

What is it that you want to grow, change, or improve upon in your life right now? Do you want to exercise more, allocate more time to mentor aspiring leaders at your organization, learn to meditate, or maybe develop closer relationships with others? Whatever your goal, it can be done in baby steps.

Take a moment right now, to write down with pen on paper (and I purposely said the old-fashioned way of pen and paper as it has been proven to solidify the idea in your mind more than just typing it out on the keyboard) to write down one thing you want to shift for 2024.

Great! Now that you have done that, think of the first baby step that needs to occur to get you on that path. Write it down.

Now, repeat that as often as you can. You may have to tweak your baby steps over time. But the idea is you are not overwhelming yourself with the idea of all the steps you need to take to get to your mountain of a goal. You are just focusing on doing the next right thing to move you to a better version of yourself.

I have found that raising two daughters by myself since the death of my husband has been overwhelming at times. I would see the whole mountain of parenting decisions and responsibilities that needed to be made by just me and I could feel the pressure crushing me.

I am trying to focus on taking just one step at a time. I am not saying it is foolproof, but looking at baby steps versus the mountain takes a lot of pressure off.

And as the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said The journey of a thousand miles begins with one single step.”