Exit Realty Arkansas & Oklahoma

It is that time of year when hopefully, we have written out our goals and aspirations for the upcoming year.  Now comes the hard part... the action.  We can analyze and plan all we want, but without action we will never accomplish those goals.   We have written down these great and lofty goals we want to acheive this year but where do we start?  It can often be overwhelming! 

I read a great analogy of  how to accomplish this in one of Dave Ramsey's blogs "Big Goals, Little Steps".  In his blog Dave says " go back in time to when you where a child playing with blocks.  If you wanted to build something, you would put one block on the floor and stack them from there.  So why is working toward a goal any different?  Build somthing grand by going one step at a time."

Break your goals down into little steps.  Work on that one little step until it is accomplished.  Then move on to the next step and so on.  Often times our attitude is "I am not going to bother doing that because it won't make much of a difference.  WRONG!  It is the little things that matter.  Great Change is made through those small steps. 

I was given a great book a couple of years ago call the Kaizen Way by Robert Maurer.   The whole premise of this book is to take small actions.  In his book Maurer says" small actions are at the heart of kaizen.   By taking steps so tiny that they seem trivial or even laughable, you'll sail calmly past obstacles that have defeated you before.  Slowly---but painlessly!-- you'll cultivate an appetite for continued success and lay down a permanent new route to change."

This start small and buildup philosophy is the exact opposite how most of us try to tackle our goals.  For instance, most of us have the goal to lose weight on our New Year's resolutions.  Go to any gym the first few weeks of January and you won't be able to find a parking place because it will be packed.  But by the first of February things will be back to normal and the crowd will be gone.  Why?  Because the usual pattern to accomplish a goal like weight loss is for a person to start off with a burst of activity for a few weeks.  Because this is so drastically different from what they are accustomed to, they become overwhelmed, give up and  return to a comforatble spot on the couch.

Why not try something different this year.  Let's start with baby steps and work our way up to bigger steps, gradually making those great changes we want to accomplish.