Big ambitions are beautiful, but only if you know how to start them small.
It’s that clichéd thing. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Every day of your life is lived one day at a time, and sometimes it’s about keeping it in the day.
Arnold Bennett gave the same warning in 1908, to readers who had just been fired up by his book:
Beware of undertaking too much at the start. Be content with quite a little. Allow for accidents.
Arnold Bennett, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day (1908), Chapter III, Precautions Before Beginning
Most new habits die because the first week was too ambitious. A lot of it comes down to the rules you give yourself for how you measure things.
How I became a reader
Something I’ve written about on this blog before is how I became a reader.
When I left formal education I barely read at all unless I had to. I didn’t take pleasure from reading, I didn’t enjoy it, and I didn’t really see the point. But I heard over and over again that leaders are readers. Leaders are readers. Leaders are readers. So I thought, “You know what? If I want to be a leader, I’d better start reading again.”
I’d buy books, sometimes two, three or four at the same time, and they’d sit on a bookshelf and do very little else. That only changed when I changed my rule and my expectation of myself.
One page a day
The rule I’ve had for well over a decade, probably more than 15 years, maybe even longer, is that I read a minimum of one page per day. Some days I read just one page. Most days I read more than that. Even if it’s only one page a day, I read enough to be happy to call myself a reader.
If you want to be the noun, do the verb
If you want to be the noun, you have to do the verb. What’s the outcome you want to create, and how can you start taking action, even if that action is really small?
If you’re a business leader or a salesperson and you want more sales, how many more conversations do you need to start, whether you sell or not? How many additional people could you commit to talking to each day? Even a number as low as five can make a massive difference to a business.
If it’s your health, could you commit to a short walk every day? Fifteen minutes, half an hour, whatever works for you, but done every day. Could you commit to it regardless of the weather and regardless of what’s going on around you? That commitment is what drives your results.
Small, gentle and soft
Sometimes you need to change your identity in order to change your actions. Other times, changing your actions is the very thing that shifts your identity. So much of life is paradox, and I can’t tell you which of those directions is right for you right now.
If you’ve taken the time to read this all the way through, the chances are there’s something you know you want to change. What’s the small, gentle, soft way to start bringing it into your life? One little thing you could do every day, starting today.
