“The staggering babies embody the deepest truth
about deep practice: to get good, it's helpful to be willing, or even
enthusiastic, about being bad. Baby steps are the royal road to skill.”—Daniel Coyle
If all of us will just decide to
tackle our important goals the same way we adopted as babies, I think there
will be far less stories of frustration and mediocrity in the future than we
see today.
Think about it!
When a baby realizes (by instinct)
that it is necessary to walk, he or she doesn’t just leap away from the bed to hastily
accomplish a worthy goal of independent movement. Instead, the infant begins small
and slowly by crawling out first. Then after some time, when the crawling has
been mastered, the toddler proceeds onto the next stage, taking baby steps,
staggering, falling and getting up back to try again, one day at a time.
The baby continues this process until
the skill is fully learned, until he or she knows how to walk in strides. Afterwards,
the running stage ensues. Meanwhile, it doesn’t matter whether it takes days,
weeks or months (or even years); every baby maintains a sustainable process
until the goal is achieved.
This important skill is what I want to
remind you today for the realization of your major goal. I say ‘remind’ because
I know you have already applied this strategy successfully before: you have
learned how to walk.
However, it is amazing how many adults
forget this powerful process when it comes to achieving big goals like growing
a business, learning critical skills and physically getting in shape. Because
by thinking big ab-initio, we tend to approach our target with a brute force
only to wear ourselves out shortly thereafter.
As a result, we get frustrated, procrastinate
a little, then a little more, and eventually resignation sets in. And a lofty
goal remains a mere pie in the sky simply because we can’t stay the course. Frankly,
this is the case for too many of us today. We easily forget the truth that real
success requires us to start small, commit to a sustainable process and
celebrate progress.
For a foolproof win on any daunting
challenge, the organic method of baby step is what we all need to keep hold of.
On this, the world-renowned transformational teacher, Marci Shimoff totally
agrees. She elucidates the process in her own words as follows:
“To make the quickest
progress, you don't have to take huge leaps. You just have to take baby steps—and keep on
taking them.
In Japan, they call this approach kaizen, which literally translates as
'continual improvement.'
Using kaizen, great and lasting success is achieved
through small, consistent steps. It turns out that
slow and steady is the best way to overcome your resistance to change.”
You see,
not only is this approach the quickest way to real progress; it is also the
best method to move forward. Baby steps are that powerful!
Now let’s
get started on how you can put it to good use in your own life.
Go Back to
Beginning: Adopt the Baby-Step Process
Whatever the challenges you face (even
the gargantuan sorts), I hope I have been able to convince you that baby steps are
the key to getting started, sustaining progress and eventually overcoming them.
Here are four simple steps you can try
to accomplish anything you set your mind to:
1} Choose one important goal that has
been eluding you for some time: just one.
2} Break it down into small,
very-easy-to-do fractions.
3} Allocate a fixed space to perform
in your daily schedule.
4} Then, commit to doing it every day.
The last step is perhaps the most
important because we advance only by doing—not just by knowing. So try your
best to do it every single day until the goal is achieved.
However, don’t place your focus on perfection
but on progress; that’s how we all made it as babies. Accept your own humanity
and celebrate your little progress. Never despair when you fumble on a difficult
day. Pick yourself up, and always remember the thoughtful advice of Daniel
Coyle when he said “To get good, it's
helpful to be willing, or even enthusiastic, about being bad.” And the
best-selling author of, “The Talent Code” concluded beautifully that, “Baby
steps are the royal road to skill.”
Now, we may
add; baby steps are the royal road to mastery, the royal road to strength and the
royal road to success.
