Jumping Stairs

Imagine you’re on a huge lake – I mean so huge you cannot see the other side! You are a few hundred yards out and rowing at a good pace. In a short while, as you continually check your progress, you begin to get frustrated. After all, you cannot tell if you’re making any progress because the finish line is not in sight. Eventually, the heart and drive drops from your motivation and you stop rowing, because, heck, why keep rowing if it’s not producing any (noticeable) results?

Or try this. Stand at the bottom of a set of first floor steps and picture the next floor as your goal. Would you continually try to leap all the steps to get there? If you would, you’d be a heap on the floor in a short time. No progress and lots of bruises – physically and mentally. 

Simple as this sounds, many of us chase our goals only to end up in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. We try to do too much too fast. It seems like we’re always so anxious to get the result that we forget the steps necessary to get to the result.  Try this. Take a step. Then another. You’ll get there. Patience and consistency.

To win the match, you win the set; to win the set you win the game; to win the game you win the point. So let’s forget the match and win the next point. And then the next one.

The key is not in the progress, but in the small steps you control, which will eventually get you to the goal.

I’m guessing here, but it’s likely that the best way to live a good life is to strive to live a good life, one day at a time.

Which might be why Dr. Laura always used to end her show with, “Now, go take on the day!”