Greetings G.O. readers! It’s Motivation Monday.
You know over the past couple of weeks, I’ve given a lot of thought to the subject of progress. Many times I’ll get frustrated when I can’t see progress happening in my life fast enough–especially when it involves an issue I’ve been struggling with for quite some time. I want things resolved, and I want them resolved now! I tend to want progress to occur in leaps and bounds, but what happens when that doesn’t happen? Do baby steps count for something?
I’m coming to find that baby steps most certainly count, but many times, in the quick-fix, perfectionistic world we live in, no credit is given to incremental steps toward improvement. Incremental improvement. Now that’s an interesting phrase. And it’s that phrase that got me to thinking about my “North Dakota to Florida” analogy. Actually, let me back up a bit. Listening to Earl Nightingale’s talk entitled, “The Strangest Secret” is what led me to thinking about incremental improvement and taking steps in the direction we wish to go in, in the first place. I highly encourage you to listen. It’s only about 31 minutes long. He also has other great motivational recordings on You Tube. You can listen to “The Strangest Secret” here.
Basically, my analogy goes like this. Let’s say I live in North Dakota, but I’m no longer happy there. North Dakota represents some circumstance in my life that I want to change or some situation I want to improve. Now let’s suppose that I have found that I now wish to live in Florida. Florida represents the more favorable circumstance I now want to experience in my life. In this analogy, I don’t have a car, so the whole trip will take place on foot–unless I get help, (I could have said by car or plane, but on foot works better for me to demonstrate how slowly progress can seem at times).
Since I’ve decided I want to now live in Florida, I’ve gathered up what I can and have set out on foot toward Florida. When I first set out, I must accept that I’m still in North Dakota for now. But that doesn’t matter. With each step I take, I’m getting closer to Florida and further away from my starting point in North Dakota. What trips most of us up, is we want to instantly be in Florida after only a day or two of walking. There’s really nothing wrong with wanting this, (it’s actually quite normal), but we have to understand, we have to cover a lot of ground before we get to Florida; and for a good while, we’ll still be seeing the cold terrain of North Dakota–even though we’ve now walked away from the city we started in.
Even when we’ve made it completely out of the state, we still have to traverse through some other northern states before we get anywhere near Florida. So we’ll still see wintery conditions for awhile as we make our way down south. Eventually we’ll get to one of the southern states that’ll give us the physical proof we’ve been looking for, that we’re closer to Florida. The thing is though, we were still on the right track when we were in Minnesota, and then Iowa. We were still walking in the right direction; but because it was still wintery, we felt like we weren’t really making any progress. We couldn’t feel any warmth or humidity or see any beaches to indicate we were getting closer to Florida.
It might not be until you get to Arkansas, Tennessee, or Alabama that you really get an indication that you’re much closer. And it would only be in one of the bordering states like Georgia or Alabama that you’ll actually see signs telling you how far away you are from Florida. We want to skip over the states in between and fast forward to being in a neighboring state that shows proof that we’re nearly there. But it doesn’t work that way. There are steps to be taken in between; but we should applaud ourselves for each step we take.
If we started off in Bismarck, ND, we should give ourselves credit for making it twenty minutes outside the city. Even though that’s still a long way from where we’re going, we’ve still shown courage by being willing to leave a place we no longer wish to be and taking steps toward making that happen. You don’t curse your current location. You just recognize that it’s not where you wish to be anymore and keep it moving. Then you have to give yourself credit when you’re three hours out. Then eight hours. Then you’ve made it to the next neighboring state. Then the next.
You don’t have to know exactly how you’re going to get to your destination. You just have to know what you want and where you want to go. Leave the how to God. In this example, you may come upon someone who can give you a ride part of the way; or someone who let’s you stay at their place a few nights while you rest up on your journey. These are the people God sends to assist you. Then you get to decide if you want to take the scenic route or the quickest route possible, (as you can see from the above map, there are a couple of ways you can go about making the trip); but then again, I believe that God can get us there more efficiently than we ever could have ourselves, when we’re open to His assistance. The main point is, you just keep moving. If you keep moving in the direction of your dreams, you will eventually get there. You just have to:
1. Decide what you want and be as clear about it as you can.
2. Go ahead and start moving in the direction of what you want, (if you want to act, take a drama class, attend some plays, taking acting classes, read up on acting, see if you can talk to actors at your local theater or playhouse, etc).
3. Keep moving and leave the how’s to God.
4. Trust that you will be given what you need at each junction.
5. Don’t let setbacks deter you.
6. Enjoy the journey, and be open and flexible in case God has something better for you than you originally envisioned.
*Note: This was just an analogy. No disrespect to North Dakota. I just used it because it’s super cold there in the winter and people tend to associate tough times as going through an “emotional Winter”; and I chose Florida because it’s known for having mild temps, and people tend to associate Spring or Summery conditions with fun, excitement and fresh starts. I’m sure both states are awesome and have great residents!
I think I’ve gone on and on enough. The main point I wanted to get across is to make sure that you don’t disregard baby steps. Baby steps are still steps! Quantum leaps are nice, and it’s awesome when they do occur, but in case they don’t happen or until they do, be gentle with yourself and give yourself credit for simply moving in the direction of your dreams.
Until next time,
Let’s strive to be the best versions of ourselves, possible!
Girl October