The Positive Power of Small Steps

I hate looking in the mirror when I go to the hairdressers. For some reason, it always makes me look more unattractive than usual, no matter how carefully I do my make-up, or how nicely I dress.  By contrast, the mirrors in my gym make me fabulous. I’m sleepy eyed, red faced, dripping with sweat, and my hair looks wild. But I still like the way I look so much more.  Not because I’m amazingly fit or well muscled. I haven’t even graduated from baby weights yet! But because, in the gym, I’m the person trying to make a change in my life.

It can be very easy, I think, to feel down about our lives. I know I do sometimes, when a video didn’t perform very well, or my writing turned out terribly, or I didn’t get much done in my day because books happened. I feel like a complete failure. Maybe you know the feeling. It’s a very easy mind-set to get into, and sometimes I get tempted to throw my hands in the air and hope someone will come along to fix all my problems for me. Wouldn’t that be lovely?

But the truth is, I hold all the power to making my life better. The trick is not to wait for anyone, but to do something to start you on the right track. It doesn’t even have to be something big. Feeling bad about your weight or fitness level? Start taking regular walks. Feeling like you’re never going to succeed creatively? Start making something small regularly. Little steps add up into big progress, and the act of doing something positive can drastically change the way you feel about things.

You are in control of your life and the changes you make. Like in the hairdresser’s chair, I can sit and wait for someone to make me look better for a little while, or I can go to the gym, create a new habit, make changes that last, and start feeling a lot more positive about my weight, fitness level, and appearance. I can wail at the lovely, patient people on Twitter about how bad my book is. Or I can commit to editing a few words every day to make real progress and feel better about honing my skills and fixing my work.

Start building small habits and take active steps. I promise you, you will feel more positive, and you will improve. Small steps lead to big rewards, but the biggest reward of all is working towards something that really matters. While you’re working, you’re improving, and the feeling of actively making a change will give you a more positive outlook too. If you’re feeling down about something today, do one positive thing for yourself, whether that’s to create something, go for a walk, sleep more, whatever you need right now. You can wait for someone else to fix things for you, or you can go out there and make changes that will last.