The Journey Of A Thousand Steps.
How do you start making progress towards any goal?
“The journey of a thousand steps starts with just a single one.”
Start. That’s it. Thats the first step. That’s how you get going in the direction of your goals. You will make mistakes, you will fall and break and maybe even cheat but you will also get back up and moving forward again.
Forward, towards the end but focus on the getting there because that’s where half the living is.
Im Adnan, a Blogger, Poetry Dabbler & Quote Enthusiast. I have a day job in retail and I’ve always wanted to have a life of freedom but never (until now) consistently been able to put the work in. Why?
Because I was always focused on the goals instead of the processes that would get me there. Every push up would get me closer to my fitness goal but I wouldn’t live the pushup, I wouldn’t be in the moment.
The whole way through I would be focusing so much on where I wanted to be and what I wanted to have, it just kept reminding me that I wasn’t there yet.
But that’s the wrong way to look at things. Perspective is such a powerful tool it can entirely change how you approach life, and I had to change my perspective. I had to start focusing on the journey and trusting that the destination would be reached so long as I kept moving forward.
As soon as I did that I started making progress. I’m less than a week into this part of the journey and I’ve gotten my blog online, establised a balanced sleep routine, consistently been exercising on a daily basis, consistently been investing time to learn new skills and I’ve been cutting harshly down on unecassary spending. In fact, at the time of writing this article it’s actually been 4 days since I’ve even spent a penny.
That might be laughable to a lot of you but for me I have been at the mercy of my emotional eating and spending for so long until basically 2 days ago I didn’t believe I would be able to go more than a day without spending anything. Now I’m heading for day 5 tomorrow. Never let yourself look down on your own progress because progress multiplies over time.
I feel a lot more balanced and though it’s still tough to avoid giving in to old habits from time to time the fact that I’m not is making me feel stronger day after day. It feels like I’m building momentum, perhaps slower than in the past but more powerfully and in a way that’s sustainable over the long term and that’s great! Because it’s going to take ’long term’ for me to get where I want to be in life but the more consistent I can be the quicker I’ll get there.
That consistency will guarantee I keep progressing until I make it past the point of no return and success becomes THE ONLY possible outcome.
In this post I’d like to share with you the lessons I’ve learnt and am learning that are helping me progress and maintain daily consistency in working towards my life goals. To that end here are:
Four keys to GUARANTEE progress in any endevour.
1) Getting Started:
How do you get started? START!
TAKE - THAT - VERY - FIRST - STEP.
Think back a few years, what life goals did you have back then? What where you aiming for, dreaming of or wishing you had in your life? Do you still have any of the same goals now? Yes?
Well good. Now think forward a few years. Imagine your life hasn’t changed a single bit. Imagine yourself looking back to now and thinking, ‘Damn! If I’d have only put in that little bit of work back then I’d be so much further ahead right now and have so much more freedom.’
Listen, this is as close as we’re probably going to get to being at the helm of a time machine. You, right now at this very moment are in your futures past. Right now you have EVERYTHING you need to take the first step. TAKE IT!!
How?
1. Figure out your goals.
What do you want out of life. Do you want to be wealthy or famous or fit as fuck or happier or stronger or more in control of bad habits.
Whatever it is write it down. How ever many goals you have big or small, get a notepad right now, prefferably a phisical one or a note taking app on a tablet that let’s you use a stylus and make a mind map of what you want out of life. Done that? Awesome!
Now, put a number beside each goal. This number represents the order of how important each goal is in relation to the others. Once you do that, write the goals out in a list in the order of priority that you gave them on the mind map.
2. Figure out the processes that will get you to each goal.
Now, start a new page for each goal and figure out the processes that will get you to those outcomes. Who are you going to have to become, what habits are you going to have to elminate or establish to be able to make consistent progress big or small, towards those goals. Figure this out for the goals that are most important to you. It’s likely but not guaranteed that the goals at the bottom of the list can wait till you’ve gone trough and achieved the goals at the top.
If that’s not the case then you may have made a mistake in how you prioritised your goals.
3. Every single day, work towards making those processes habitual.
This won’t be easy at first but you will get stronger over time. Don’t worry if you make mistakes or fall of the horse as this is normal.
Allow room for this in your planning phase and really focus on getting back up, dusting yourself off and carrying on moving forward. Don’t try to punish yourself by overcompensating and setting harder goals like doubling or tripling your workouts for example if fitness is one of your goals.
Instead, just keep going at the same pace you were before you faltered, until it becomes a habit. THEN you can work on modifying the habit to get to your goals faster.
It will be easier because you will already have all that momentum behind you.
2) Consistency is key!
This is why I’m saying you need to make habits of working towards your goals. Because it’s alot easier to carry on a habit than it is to start one up again after you’ve given in to weakness.
In the beginning you need to maximise your chances of success by making thinks easier so you can start to build up momentum, then once you have the momentum you’ll be able to multiply it to achieve anything you set your mind to.
How do you get to that point? Glad you asked:
By carrying on.
Carrying on when you feel like it, when you don’t feel like it, when you’re motivated, when you’re not motivated, when you’re well, when your’re not well, when you love the work and when you hate the work.
Making consistent progress is as simple as consistently working on progressing.
That’s it.
3) Balance:
I wanted to be able to get more done every day but one of the limiting factors (or so I thought at the time) was the inconsistent nature of the hours I worked at my day job in terms of the shifts I get given.
To remedy this I decided to get less sleep. I work in retail and my hours including commuting time can be as much as 6:30 to 20:30 6 days a week and then 09:30 to 5:30 on Sundays. Because of this is decided I wanted to wake up as early as possible. I decided I would get up at 3am every morning. It worked for about 2 days and then I ended up feeling so tired I just couldn’t work my brain after coming home from work.
The mornings were great, I got more done in a typical morning than I used to get done in a week but before long I was waking up a 3am one day and then basically sleeping for the next 2 days straight outside of work.
That was when I decided to add one more hour of sleep and bring the total up to 6 hours a night. I hated the idea of getting more sleep because I felt like I could get so much done in an hour that sleeping through it would just be a colossal waste of time BUT I actually managed to get more done over the next few days because I was waking up and working on my goals every - single - day.
That’s how I got this blog up and running again FFS! 2200 to 0400 is now my sleeping patter and I’m still going to gradually try and reduce it over time to see how little sleep I can get and still be functional but for now I’m sticking with 6 hours.
Consistency is inescapable. If you want to make progress you HAVE to be consistent.
Working at 10,000% capacity for only a day and then doing nothing for a week will get you nowhere! Working at 100% everyday, day in, day out will lead to GUARANTEED, and I mean GUARANTEED progress.
I went on a similar journey with exercise when I decided to workout 3 times a day (morning, lunch break & evening) despite the fact I was doing 70 hours a week at work at that time. It lasted 3 days and then I gave up and bought a pizza.
For the last 3 days I’ve up at 4am and done a mini workout (and I do mean mini) of just 15 push ups, 10 burpees and 5 navy seal burpees.
I’m not concerning myself with the fact that this will make it take longer for me to get fit because I’m more concerned with consistency. Once I’m consistent and have formed the habit of getting up and working out then I can increase the sets and reps overtime until eventually I’m doing a full blown workout that will get me more results in less time.
And this brings me to my next point:
4) Adaptability:
Do > Fail > Learn > Adapt > Repeat. That’s how you progress in a nutshell. Learn from your mistakes and you will count them as blessings. Don’t and you will curse yourself and them forever.
Keep analysing what your doing to achieve your goals as well as what the result is of what you’re doing. If what you’re doing is ultimately taking you away from your goals then you need to adapt and change in order to get moving in the right direction again. If the result of what you’re doing is working and moving you in the right direction then great! Keep on going!
All you have to do then is refine and repeat.
Remember, regardless of how you feel, regardless of how much motivation you have or are lacking, REGARDLESS OF ALL VARIABLES in any and every given moment you have everything you need to take that next step towards you goals.
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