When most people first get into self improvement and goal achievement, they go for it all. It’s exciting to do so and the obvious rationalization is that if you’re going to set a goal, why not set the biggest one and use what you’ve learned about self improvement and goal achievement to obtain it?
99.9% of people will fail using this kind of approach. 0.1% will succeed (there have been examples where people set an enormous goal, such as a financial one and attained it via the lottery but those are very, very rare).
For the rest of the population, two things will happen when this type of “go for the big one” approach is taken.
A) They try it and give up because they see no results are happening with the approach.
B) They wonder why nothing’s happening and subsequently learn about the power of breaking their goals down.
Let’s concentrate on Group B.
Out of Group B, two more groups will emerge.
Group B, Sub A- They have the knowledge in their head in the sense that they understand the logic of breaking their goals down, but don’t do anything about it.
Why?
It’s not the sexy, glamorous way. Who wants to start at the bottom and crawl, claw, grope their way up inch by inch? Better to get it done in one fell swoop right?
Group B, Sub B – they have the knowledge in their head and they give it a shot.
Out of Group B, Sub B, you’re going to have those people start from the bottom and start getting results, little by little.
Then, something happens within that sub group that splits it into two more groups.
Group B, Sub B, Sub A – they get greedy – they see results getting made and rationalize they can start setting bigger goals – in other words, make a big jump and set a high goal, but they get stuck and quit because it’s not working and they realize how foolish they were so they go back to the little by little way.
Group B, Sub B, Sub B – they resist the temptation to make the jump and keep making progress, little by little.
For me personally, looking way, way back in the day – this was my journey:
Group A -> Group B
Group B, Sub A (for the longest time) -> Group B, Sub B
then
Group B, Sub B, Sub A -> Group B, Sub B, Sub B
back to
Group B, Sub B, Sub A -> Group B, Sub B, Sub B
Loop the above a couple of times and then I got to a certain point when I was able to set a bigger jump and go for it at bigger “chunks” and succeed, a critical mass point if you will.
First off, why was I stuck at Group B- Sub A for the longest time?
I accepted the logic of starting small and going little by little, but the problem was that I did not see the “behind the scenes” logic of that. Add to that, it seemed like the road of hard work and I wanted to achieve the goal quickly. I didn’t have any patience.
Nobody went any deeper with the “start small and work your way up” logic, but when I understood the “behind the scenes” logic, then I was able to transfer to Group B, Sub B, the group that actually gave that method a try by breaking it down.
Most goals, if you think about it can be broken down, even if they can’t at first. Obviously, the numerical goals are the easiest example of that.
I want to lose 50 pounds this year. Sounds like a lot. How about 1 pound/ week? Doesn’t sound like too much now does it?
What about do or die goals? I want to get this specific job. I want to get into that specific university. You can’t really break it down like numerical goals, or can you? Of course you can!
For the job, you can break it down into honing your resume to perfection, studying and preparing for the interview, learning about the company, etc. For the university, it can be concentrating on getting a high score on entrance exam, then filling out the application, thinking of what to write for the essay, etc.
Case in point, if you think about it long enough, your big goals can be broken down and it should be.
Here’s why.
Obvious Reason #1: The goal becomes more “real” to you. In other words, at first, it seems like a monstrous task and what happens when we’re confronted with that big of a task?
“I’ll do it later.”
“I’ll watch TV first and then start.”
“Tomorrow is a better day.”
In short, the size of it scares you away.
That hesitation and “wall” you feel is your mind disbelieving you can do it because it seems so big.
But again, if you break it down, it gets smaller, and you can start to wrap your head around it easier. Your mind kind of relaxes and opens up and starts generating ideas because it starts to believe it can do it. It becomes easily actionable. It fuels your belief that you can do it.
Hopefully this is nothing new so far. Some may already have this in their head, but they refuse/and or can’t seem to apply it because the slow inch by inch journey seems just as painful as well.
When most people understand the logic of starting small and working their way up, they tend to think in “compartments”, meaning that when you break it down, you start from scratch, finish one “compartment”, then start from scratch again to finish another “compartment” and repeat the same thing over and over as you go up.
That’s not so.
You don’t start from scratch with each “component” because you get exponentially growing results that are for the most part, intangible.
Intangible results such as self confidence, knowledge, discipline, etc.
And here’s the kicker – because you develop all those intangible skills little by little, step by step, guess what? They become habitual and build off one another.
It’s the things you learn along the way that you cannot see until you actually do, that gives you everything you need to accomplish it.
If it’s taking time, and you’re slowly improving and getting there, you’re on the right track. You are. So look forward to that process. Don’t shun it.
Look at all the examples around your life. Brick by brick, a house is built. Bite by bite, a meal is eaten. Step by step, a journey is taken. Results are showing and you’re refueling yourself with confidence. Lessons will be learned. Failure will occur. But you can draw back on all that experience to help you move ever so forward.
Everything I’ve done, I’ve always broken it down. All of the knowledge, skills (tangible and intangible), contacts, etc., that I’ve accrued – all that becomes huge leverage for me to attain “critical mass”, in other words, start to set bigger goals to shoot for which I’m able to obtain, because of that leverage.
Thinking big is the sexy, easy way out and rarely is the easy way the correct way to go. Don’t get me wrong, you can make things easy, but in order to make them easy, there’s going to be a lot of ground work that needs to be done in the beginning.
For example, imagine copying this entire article by hand so you can have it on paper. That would be ludicrous wouldn’t it? Why not just press print?
Here’s the thing. Imagine how much time and effort was built into building a computer that could access the Internet and be able to transfer data from the computer to the printer. Imagine how much time and effort was built into the printer being able to replicate the data in its memory. A lot of people, at one point in time, had to start from the very bottom and work their way up to build all the hardware and software components to enable you and I to simply press print, so we don’t have to copy the article by hand. Because of all that being built, things become much easier.
Similarly, in the beginning, when you start small and go up and start getting results, the discipline you learn, the failures you bounce back from, the knowledge you accrue, etc. – all of that will help you later on so you don’t have to start from scratch again like in the previous example of writing a long article by hand onto paper. You can, metaphorically speaking, simply press print because you’ve picked up everything along the way to make that happen, (although probably the results won’t be as quick, but you understand what I’m saying).
Understand the “behind the scenes” logic and go for it by breaking your goals down to start small and work your way up, knowing that everything you gain as you learn along the way only adds to your reservoir of personal leverage until you’re truly able to take on the big ones.
