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The Importance of Small Actions

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When working towards a big goal, it’s easy to get lost in the big picture and the ultimate end result. This is a common occurrence, and it’s one many of us will experience during our lifetime.

Grandparents gardening with young grandaughter teaching about the importance of smaller steps

While it’s important to “keep your eyes on the prize,” focusing exclusively on the end goal can feel overwhelming and eventually make us get stuck. Here, we understand why we tend to get stuck, and the importance of smaller steps when it comes to pursuing a big goal.

Why Do We Get Stuck When Pursuing a Big Goal?

When pursuing a big goal, it’s easy to get stuck in the weeds. The goal may seem distant, too big, or not immediate enough. It can be easy to focus on the big picture, and lose the day-to-day connection to the goal, which is what keeps it real and important in our minds and everyday life.

For example, if your big goal involves, say, losing 30 pounds in the next six months, it can be easy to keep pushing the goal off, telling yourself you still have five, four, or three months to reach your goal. Because you feel disconnected from the goal on a daily basis, it’s easy to defer for a day, which can become a week, which can become a month. Before you know it, six months have passed, and you haven’t done enough daily to achieve your ultimate goal.

Why are Smaller Steps Important?

Smaller steps can break up a large goal, making it less daunting and more manageable. Rather than allowing yourself to be overwhelmed by one distant goal, smaller steps allow you to break the goal into realistic chunks, which provides a number of benefits, and makes you much more likely to reach your ultimate goal.

Not as Overwhelming, More Likely to Stick

Smaller steps allow you to focus on one thing, or one aspect of your goal, at a time. This makes your goal seem less overwhelming and more attainable. Small steps are more likely to stick, because they are easily achievable actions that you can accomplish on a short-term basis.

While smaller steps may seem less important than your long-term goal, they are actually the best and often only way to get where you are trying to go.

Helps Build Consistency

Regularly achieving smaller steps and smaller goals helps you to build a daily, weekly, and monthly routine. This builds consistency, and consistency will be one of your most important tools along your journey to success.

When you can convert a goal into a habit, you are most likely to follow through, continue moving forward, and ultimately meet your end goal.

Allows for Flexibility

Grandfather gardening with young grandaughter teaching about the importance of smaller steps

When fixated only on your ultimate goal, it can feel restrictive, and black and white. Either you achieve the goal, or you don’t.

When broken up into a series of smaller steps, you allow yourself more grace and flexibility. First, you have the power to choose your smaller steps. They can involve as little or as much effort as you desire and can focus on different aspects of your goal as you see fit. In short, setting smaller goals gives you a sense of control over where you are going and what path you are taking to reach your end goal.

If you, for some reason, aren’t able to meet a small goal, it doesn’t spell disaster. You can allow yourself the compassion and grace to either go back and try again to achieve that smaller step, or forgive yourself and move forward to the next one.

More Frequent Progress & Success

Breaking a large objective down into smaller steps also makes it easier to monitor your progress. Being able to keep track of your progress and know where you are along your journey not only ensures you’re moving in the right direction, but can also inspire you to continue moving forward. Experiencing small bits of success with every step achieved motivates you to keep moving, so you keep seeing positive results.

Can Fit into a Busy Life

While focusing on one giant end goal can seem overwhelming, especially when you’re already leading a busy life, small steps can both put the goal into perspective, and fit seamlessly into your already packed scheduled.

While a goal as big as “I’m going to write a book by the end of the year” can seem like an impossible task to fit into your busy lifestyle, smaller goals such as “I’m going to write 10 pages when I get up the morning” are manageable, easy to fit into your schedule, and are a surefire way to keep propelling you forward, closer to your end goal, every single day.

How to Start Achieving Goals Through Small Steps

In order to start achieving goals through small steps, you must first sit down and create a plan. Break your end goal up into pieces, ensuring that every small step is directly related to making progress towards the big goal.

Make a schedule and hold yourself accountable for the small goals you’ve set up along the way. Stick to your schedule and take your smaller goals and steps seriously. Over time, you’ll hopefully see these small steps turn into habits, and slowly but surely, they will move you closer to your final goal.

Build and Keep Momentum Through Coaching

Figuring out how to use small steps to reach a big goal can be overwhelming. But you don’t have to figure it out on your own.

This is one of the many reasons people choose to hire a life coach, like Jonette Dyer. Through her personal coachingand life coaching services, Jonette has helped countless people achieve their goals through careful planning, step-by-step programs, and unwavering accountability.

She can help you establish some key building blocks to both understanding yourself, and achieving your goals, like identifying your core values, learning about and strengthening your self-confidence and self-esteem, and understanding who you really are.