Itty-Bitty Teeny-Tiny, Little, or Even-Smaller-Than-That Steps

I don't know about everybody else, but I am a rebel at heart.  If I dream up something for myself to do; something that will get me closer to the life of my dreams, I immediately think of all the reasons why I don't have to do it and go do something else.  Luckily I am also a stubborn, hard-headed woman who seriously pursues the life of her dreams.  So, I've always fought back against the rebel part of me and as a result come closer to the life of my dreams than I ever could have imagined.

As I've mentioned before, I accidently ran into a blog by Steve Pavlina who has written an immense amount about personal development.  I'm not crazy about his ideas about sex, but his ideas about motivating yourself work like a charm for me.  The one that has had the most impact for me is challenging yourself to take action steps - tiny action steps, for a tiny amount of time.  I do one-day challenges and then assess whether the action step was the right one for me, how I felt about it and whether I want to proceed.  Then I give myself a three-day challenge.  If it still feels right, I go to a seven-day challenge and then to a thirty-day challenge.  By that time taking the action is a comfortable part of my daily life, so if I still feel it's beneficial I can continue it.

By using this method I discovered that the reason I balk at change - even change that will benefit me - is that I'm afraid of failure.  So the itty-bitty, teeny-tiny goals that are so small it's almost impossible to fail to do them in a one-day challenge, gradually get me where I want to go without all the emotional uproar that used to face me as soon as I set a goal.  I have stopped kicking myself and instead, care for myself.
And that is the miracle.