Wake Up and Think Small

How often have you set a massive goal for yourself, dreamed really big, and the thought of it has become so overwhelming that you do nothing to move towards achieving it? Perhaps you’ve attended a seminar or worked with a trainer or coach and in the moment you’ve got really excited about what would truly transform your life. You may have visualized what reaching that goal would have looked like. You might have written it down, very specifically, in great detail and with time limits surrounding it. You could have drawn a picture, created a vision board, written affirmations and so on. You get absolute clarity and you’re excited by the prospect.

Then, when you’ve gone back into the “real world” life takes over and nothing gets done. The daily activity of living life just as it was before the goal setting process kicks in. Family, work colleagues, customers and staff demand your time and your attention. Before you know it, a year has gone past and you realized you hadn’t moved any closer to that dream. In fact, you realize that you have moved into paralysis around your goals. You are totally overwhelmed by it all.

You’ve achieved paralysis by clarity!

If this is your experience, then I want to reassure you that you are not alone. It’s perfectly normal, and you’re perfectly normal. It doesn’t mean you’re a failure and it doesn’t mean that you can’t still achieve what you dream about.

I know this to be true because I’ve also been there, got the t-shirt and attended that seminar…along with many many others. And time and time again I’ve got just that sort of clarity and sometime soon after getting it, paralysis set in. Doubts begin to arise. Uncertainty about whether it is even possible. Perhaps you’ve had similar experiences?

So what does it all mean? Well nothing really. I believe it is simply an indication that we are not ready to get what we say we want. We have more learning to get, more skills to acquire, more understanding to gain and we are in fact always on a journey towards realising our potential and achieving or attaining all that we need to live the way we would like. We’re just not in a place emotionally or physically to do the things that need to be done to get to where we want to be.

So that’s all well and good you might say, but how do you get everything that you want? How do you avoid this “paralysis by clarity”?

Think SMALL!

That’s right. It may sound contrary to much that we’ve learned. People talk about expanding our possibilities, thinking BIG. We can achieve anything. What is conceivable is achievable. If someone else has done it, you can do it too. If someone else has shown the way, ask them how and you can replicate or innovate. Where the path has been laid, just walk the same path.

All of this is also true of course and where we fall over, stumble or simply stop, is that we aim so high we think we’ve got to get it all done, right here and right now. We are so attached to our dream that we miss the bigger picture. Thinking SMALL will help to see the bigger picture with even more clarity.

To put in another way; it’s ok to think big and create the breakthrough goals, the BHAGs (big hairy audacious goals) and the life changing dreams. The art of achieving them is to create them and then simply break them down into bite size chunks and enjoy the process of doing the SMALL things consistently to achieve the big things in the end.

The most important part of all though, is to enjoy the process. If we are so attached to our goals that we just beat ourselves up because we haven’t yet got them, then we don’t get to enjoy the journey towards achieving them. On the other hand, when we celebrate every step we make towards them, when we break them down into bit size chunks and see ourselves achieving small results every day, the whole process is fun and exciting.

So, my invitation to you is to join me in breaking down your big goals into small steps and taking one step at a time. Think SMALL and you may just achieve everything you want to in a much shorter space of time that you could have imagined.

Wake Up and Think SMALL!

Enjoy.