What is more powerful: small incremental moves, or one great leap? The answer can be found in looking at the secret to all growth.
True sustainable movement and growth can always be traced to small, but consistent, moves.
Your potential is unlimited. You are not bound by the events of your past, nor by negative voices from inside (or outside) yourself. If it seems like you are incapable of living up to your potential, remember that your frustration is a sign that you want to change. However, bridging the gap between wanting to change and taking action is where many people falter. The most accessible antidote to that challenge is to make small moves. The following explains the value of small steps in light of the 4000-year-old spiritual tradition of Kabbalah.
Every Journey Starts With a Single Step
Think back in your own life: When did you accomplish most? While you were still at home, provided for by your parents, or when you left home? Comfort zones are more comfortable. But they are never more growthful. Yes, there is a time for being in a nurturing environment, a home, where we can feel comfortable to explore, to just be. But the real challenge – and true growth – begins when you leave your comfort zone, when YOU are compelled to initiate and create on your own.
When you want to find your true self (not as you are defined by the forces that have shaped you) and reach your greatest potential, to be the best you can be – first you must leave your comfort zones, your biased attitudes, your previous contexts and old patterns. Open yourself up to a new perspective, travel on new roads, meet new people, lift your eyes and see new vistas. Wherever you are in life, whether you have no absolute guidelines that direct your life, or whether you live by fixed laws that regulate every aspect of your day, true growth is only possible when we get out of our comfortable habits, to cease conforming to the past.
And that journey is not about taking great leaps and bounds. It’s about a qualitative internal shift. Your journey beyond your comfort zone begins with a single step — a small move, a shift from the past to the future, from the old to the new.
Trial and Error Requires Small Moves
Every form of training — to master an art, music, language or a sport — is a step-by-step process. No one becomes an expert overnight. It takes repeated steps, learning from mistakes, and developing good habits and best practices to excel at whatever it is you are trying to learn. Even when you are skilled in a given area, it is only with years of experience that you become confident in yourself and your accomplishments.
The same is with your life journey: you learn and grown through a step-by-step process, with plenty of trial and error. Through experience and training – testing different approaches that work or don’t work – you develop successful methods to navigate life’s twists and turns.
You cannot gain experience without failure. When you take small steps, you are able to slowly and carefully adapt and assimilate healthy approaches by learning from your failures and successes. These small steps help build your confidence and resilience.
As you discover your own skills and talents, you’ll probably surprise yourself with how much you are truly capable of doing.
Behavioral Shifts Reach Your Soul
Behavioral shifts that introduce confidence into your actions acclimate you to your inner strength — the unblemished part of yourself known as the soul. By digging from the outside – behaviorally, through small moves – you reach within your soul. Coupled with a growing inner awareness, behavioral confidence will fan the soul’s pilot flame and make it come alive. Then you can truly access your great potential.
Exercise: Think about your goals. Identify the first small step you can take toward reaching one. Begin. Journal about it in your MyMLC journal.
Go deeper into this subject: Mighty Lessons from the Simple Sukkah | Think Different | Changing the World | Unplugged | Confidence | Raise Your Expectations to Achieve More | The Key to Taking Charge of Your Life | How to Create a New Habit | The Spiral Staircase
SOULGYM I MASTERCLASS
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