One Step at a Time
Many times, I wonder, what is the best way to achieve my goals. The answer is to focus on taking baby steps. I tend to forget the simple message behind this — to focus on what is rather than what might be.
“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
This quote is easy to understand. But its depth can only be understood by those who have given countless hours not counting chickens before they hatch but taking small baby steps, those who keep taking that baby step.
Throughout our lives, we walk countless journeys, some we finish and some we don’t. We quit a journey when we lose track of our goal or the reason why we started it in the first place. This is reasonable. Planning and working towards it effortlessly, is tiresome.
The feeling of being lost, while pursuing something we want, is overwhelming and encourages us to quit. It is similar to how swimming students are thrown into a pool of water; we jump into the unknown and feel lost. But when we look at those who finished their journey, those who learned to swim, we find one thing in common — they are so focused on the next step and work on it without worrying about anything else.
Taking that small step is the key. At first, it may seem small, but just like the step of a staircase, it is when you reach your destination you see how many steps you took to reach a new height.
During school, college or university, we are given countless assignments to write. (Ah! A loathsome task) We put it off saying that I will do it tomorrow (as if tomorrow it will be easier to finish it). We fail to understand the importance of writing as we do not think of writing as a means to communicate efficiently. To us, at that stage, it is an unnecessary task.
Writing is not a job-essential skill rather it is a life-essential skill. It helps measure a person’s education, values, ideas and person.
Adults who reported reading books for more than 3 ½ hours per week were 23 per cent less likely to die over 12 years of follow-up, compared with those who did not read books.
Reading, thinking, and writing form a never-ending essential cycle. A research study led by the Yale University of Public Health revealed — that adults who reported reading books for more than 3 ½ hours per week were 23 per cent less likely to die over 12 years of follow-up, compared with those who did not read books. Experts claim that reading for a few minutes a day can help us organise our thoughts. They also believe that organised thoughts can help express ideas clearly.
An incentive to start writing is indeed like experiencing Dysania. There’s a way to work on this. Many expert writers say that to write regularly, we must first establish a routine. This routine consists of simple things — reading and writing.
When this routine is mixed with quality and consistency, it grows into an essential skill. To be consistent, all you need to do is start reading 5 mins per day and write 5 sentences per day. Eventually, time can be increased, and goals can be conquered.
