When pursuing your dreams, you don’t need to make giant, monumental strides forward with every single effort. In fact, you can learn to be a leader, a winner, and an inspiration to others at every level along your journey, no matter where you are!
When you want to have a conversation about 90s-era comedies, everyone thinks about classics like Happy Gilmore, Ace Ventura, and Dumb & Dumber. And every February, people start thinking about Bill Murray’s classic, Groundhog Day.
Those are all funny movies, but one that my wife and I really liked—that fewer people seem to have watched—is What About Bob?
What About Bob? stars Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss. Murray plays a likeable but irritating psych patient with a LOT of phobias. Dreyfuss plays the egotistical therapist, Dr. Leo Marvin. The doc is sure his new book, Baby Steps, is going to make him a household name. In their first session, the doc pitches his book:
The “Baby Steps” concept is actually pretty brilliant and has stood the test of time, despite being a parody of the many self-help books that had flooded the market in the 80s and 90s. In fact, I’d say the idea of “Baby Steps” probably has more traction today—more than 30 years later—than it did in 1991.
Entrepreneur Jeff Walker, creator of the “Product Launch Formula,” says Baby Steps is “absolutely one of the most important lessons that you need to absorb.” Even though Walker has sold 10s of millions of dollars worth of products over the years, he’s been at it for almost 2 decades. His first product launch took forever to get ready and all that effort netted him—are you ready for this—only $1,650. But it was a start.
I was reading in the New Testament, Matthew 13, where Jesus is delivering back-to-back parables to his disciples. In verses 31-33 He compares the Kingdom of Heaven to a mustard seed and to yeast. And it struck me: He purposely used things that start INCREDIBLY SMALL. It’s as if He was saying that SMALL BEGINNINGS may very well be the BEST KIND of beginnings!
In the Old Testament, an Angel of the Lord said to the prophet Zechariah, “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the LORD rejoices to see the work begin….”
The old saying is still true: Rome wasn’t built in a day, and you’re not going to build the business (or the life) you want overnight. Every so-called “overnight success” story has a backstory filled with millions of baby steps to get there. The work must begin. And it is probably going to start small. That’s not just OK—it very well might be the BEST WAY to start!
Life is sort of like a rowboat. Your dreams—whether personal, business, or both—are like a distant shore that is almost invisible to the eye. But the shore IS there. You know it’s there. Yes, it’s far away. Yes, the vision is fuzzy. But with effort and a steady bearing, that distant shore eventually comes into focus. It grows clearer with every pull on the oars. The key is to stay focused. Keep rowing.
With every bit of effort—no matter how small—you put towards reaching that distant shore of your dream, you are decreasing the distance between it and you. Your position is getting better.
As former Navy SEAL Eric Greitens says, “You don’t need to know what perfect looks like, just what better looks like. Better is your bearing. Better is enough to point you in the right direction.” I would add: Better is a small beginning, a baby step.
In fact, years ago I started calling this the HSA Mentality: Half-Step Ahead. When pursuing your dreams, you don’t need to make giant, monumental strides forward with every single effort. Just move a Half Step Ahead and you’ll still be making progress. It’s even the same if you’re trying to lead others. You don’t need to be light years ahead of them to have something to offer. Just stay a Half Step Ahead. In fact, when you think about it, it’s a lot more encouraging to try and follow someone who is just ahead of you—almost within reach—than it is to try and follow someone who seems impossibly far ahead of you, so far that you could never catch up in a million years.
Ryan Levesque [La-VECK], author of both The ASK Method and Choose says, “An expert can be nothing more than a learner teaching other learners. To a 4th-grader, the 5th-grader is a genius.” I really like that.
Here’s another example. I LOVE baseball. And it’s fascinating to me to think that a person in the Baseball Hall of Fame isn’t light years ahead of other MLB players? In MANY cases, they’re just a half-step ahead! All you need is to be an inspiration to others, and as long as you are a half step ahead, you absolutely WILL be!!!
- You don’t need to be a millionaire to be a financial Hall of Famer.
- You don’t need to have Club kids who are adult world-changers to be a mentor Hall of Famer.
- You don’t need to manage thousands of employees to be a management Hall of Famer.
- You don’t need to have multiple degrees to be an intellectual Hall of Famer.
- You don’t need to have the body of a Greek god/goddess to be a physical Hall of Famer.
Every half step you take towards your dream has the potential to create a real-life domino effect of more opportunities than you had before you took the initiative. Some steps may seem to cause no reaction. Others may cause obvious ripples. But each half step is necessary in the process. Keep stepping.
Don’t despise your own small beginnings. That kind of thinking will make you stumble every time. Instead, keep in mind that “Better” is your bearing.
Baby Steps.