How to eat your elephant…
When something looks too big to tackle, and you feel
overwhelmed and then don’t bother to change it, you need a simple set of
strategies to get started.
- Write down your goal – be as specific as possible.
- Break bigger tasks into smaller ones
- Set a timescale but be realistic about it
- Keep reviewing this process to make adjustments
- Acknowledge your baby steps of change, rather than focussing on the end goal. Reflecting on the small changes allows you to feel good about getting started, moving forward and taking charge of something which bothers you. Celebrate your minor successes!
- Don’t get hung up on the things that haven’t worked out as per your plan. That’s life! Learn from the changes – think about them and what you could do differently, or maybe it was what other people did or didn’t do…
- Be brave – sometimes the thing we build up as a big deal in our head is much less so in reality. It helps to tell someone else about it – it allows you to externalise your thoughts which helps to get them clearer. They may bring new ideas, or a sense of perspective you hadn’t seen previously.
- Think about and list your fears. What are they – what might happen? What steps can you take to avoid these?
- Don’t give up. Change is not easy. You are stronger than you know. Take pride in how far you have come and have faith in how far you can go…
- Keep taking time to reflect on your change plan - it will need to be tinkered with along the way
- Remember the Serenity prayer – have the serenity to accept things you cant change (rather than focussing on them and stressing about it), courage to change the things you can, and to have the wisdom to know the difference.
- This process may be about to making a big change, or a small one. The most important step is the first one – getting started!
“Start by doing what is necessary, then do what’s possible
and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” Francis of Assisi
