What’s Easy To Do is What’s Easy Not To Do

Dave Ramsey is famous for his baby steps. Not the actual footsteps he took as a child, but the seven baby steps in his debt payment program.

The tiny steps are based on the idea that it’s easier to do something small than something big. It’s easier to get started with something within reach than to attempt a far more challenging task.

Photo Credit: marfis75

The First Step

Getting started is all about that first small step. Like I mentioned in my previous post about running 40,000 steps to complete a marathon, it takes just as many tiny decisions to complete anything big, but only one tiny step to get the ball rolling.

Then, isn’t it interesting that as easy as one step may be, many people never complete a single marathon, or get out of debt, or build that business they’ve been dreaming about?

Why don’t more people accomplish the big stuff?

Simply, because consecutive small steps require something more.

The hardest part of achievement is actually not the process of getting started. The hardest part is taking another step.

The Second Step

Ask a stranger on the street to walk forward one step and they will probably do it. Ask them to repeat that over and over and over and over and over again.

Eventually, they will stop.

Their discipline will wane. Their willingness to continue will cease. Their initial excitement and adrenaline will wear off.

The challenge for most of us lies in all those steps after the first.

It’s Easy Not To . . . Or is it?

We have three problems here: one, getting started (taking the first step); two, continuing when the honeymoon phase is over (taking the second step); and three, not taking either step.

As easy as it is to take that first step, to begin, it’s just as easy to put off. Not going to the gym is easy. Not reading that book is easy. Not looking for your ideal job is easy.

But, as we just discussed, the first step is tiny – so tiny, in fact, that it may be just as easy to do nothing at all.

Break it Down to the Smallest Increment Possible

I realize that I have used words like small, tiny, and easy quite a bit here. Don’t get me wrong, first steps can be daunting.

However, that’s just it. The initial challenge is to wrap your brain around the first step so that it’s NOT daunting.

Taking that first step IS easy, as long as you have broken down your steps into the smallest increments possible.

Notice how in the example above I didn’t ask strangers on the street to walk a mile with me. I asked them to walk just one step forward – the smallest increment possible.

Take One Step

So, here it is – time to take one step. Start the process. Initially, it doesn’t matter if you plan on taking any steps after the first.

Just make step one your priority.

Start.

An Apple a Day

I’ll leave you with this quote from the late Jim Rohn, the famous personal development guru, who beautifully illustrates the magic of getting started and the necessity of discipline.

Change it all. It starts as simple as an apple a day. It starts as simple as the first book of your new library. It starts as simple as the first journal that you get and make the first entry that when people see it they’ll say,

“This is the beginning of a study of a serious student. They’re going to be healthy. They’re going to be powerful. They’re going to be rich. They’re going to have it all. Look, they have committed themselves to a whole new journey.”

I’m asking you to do that. But what’s easy to do is what’s easy not to do.

All we know is that some get the spark and say, I’m going to change my life. I’m going to change my health. I’m going to change the relationships with my family. I’m going to change everything.

Once you look back on it you will never turn back. You will never go back to the old ways and the old language and the old neglect. Never.

I’m asking you to pick up some new disciplines so that you will be healthier. Drive yourself to do it, book-by-book, entry-by-entry. It’s all available for you.

– Jim Rohn