For years, I had so much resistance around small steps and incremental progress.
It made sense to me logically that small steps add up over time. But in my reality, my problems felt way too big for baby steps. Baby steps felt like bailing out a sinking ship with a thimble. Really, what was a single tiny action going to do against the tidal wave of exhaustion, stress, perfectionism, and overwhelm I lived with every day?
Until something clicked for me, and I finally realized:
Small steps were never about the size of the step. They were about the energy shift the step creates.
That changed everything.
Because when you’re stuck, procrastinating, overwhelmed, perfectionistic, anxious, or just exhausted, you don’t need a “big leap.” Even if, like me, you may want a big leap, you probably don’t have the emotional, physical, or financial resources to make that big leap happen anyways!
What you need is movement. As physics tells us, an object at rest stays at rest… until something nudges it.
And that tiny nudge is enough to get energy moving in a different way, a way that shifts you out of the stuck place you’re at, even if it’s the tiniest shift. And that shift of energy is the gold.
Energy is everything. And if your energy just isn’t in a great place – if it’s stagnant, or you’re stuck in fear, perfectionism, overthinking, uncertainty, the best way to get out of that is action, not thinking. But big action is going to bring up tons of resistance or it’ll be completely unsustainable. And taking big action that you can’t sustain reinforces the pattern that you are stuck.
A tiny step, however, takes very small amounts of effort, yet it still has the power to shift the energy, and that’s what you really need. A shift in energy. The tiniest bit of traction.
If you have major credit card debt, you likely aren’t going to get out of it in a day, week, month, or maybe even a year. Just that knowledge alone can freeze you in your tracks, and keep you in a place where you’re unable to do much of anything at all.
If your house is cluttered and messy, and you’re working full-time, living with chronic pain, and you’re the primary parent for your kids, as much as you’d love to just slam a coffee and clean it top to bottom in 4 hours, that may not be a realistic option for you. And so your house continues to be a mess, week after week after week, while your energy continues drain.
These dynamics can often become self-sustaining loops, so that over time, the situation not only becomes worse, it becomes more difficult to get out of. The energy is either stuck completely, or it’s moving in a direction you don’t want to be going anymore.
So, think of it in terms of the smallest thing you can do to interrupt that pattern. Imagine you’re in a car that’s rolling downhill. You can’t step on the gas and shoot up to the top of the hill – you’d actually end up going even faster down the hill. You have to step on the brake first, allow the car to come to a stop, take a breath, and shift out of reverse and into drive, before you can even think about putting your foot on the gas pedal.
That’s all it takes in your life too, whatever the situation. Our brains may tell us it has to be big and it has to be now, otherwise it’s totally ineffective and pointless. But our brains are wrong.
The other piece of this is a shift in thinking from discipline, consistency, effort, to self-compassion, self-encouragement, self-love. Instead of seeing baby steps as uselessly small efforts that were never going to measure up against the huge issues in my life, I started to encourage myself like a small child. “This step is enough. You are enough. I’m proud of you for doing this.” Even for the tiniest things, like going through 3 pieces of mail in the mountain that was accumulating on my desk. I started to focus on what I was doing, instead of focusing on how much was left to do.
And I started to put myself first. Instead of thinking about all the things I “had” to do, I started thinking about all the things I could do — to make my life easier. I began asking myself questions like, “How can I save time and effort in this area of my life?” “What are the things that only I can do, and what are the things that I can leave for someone else to do?” “What do I need from this situation?” So often, we forget completely about ourselves and slide into this role of doing, doing, doing, with no regard for our well-being. Shifting your thinking in this way can help you reclaim the fact that you are a human and you deserve to put your energy and focus towards improving even the most basics aspects of your daily life for yourself, for no reason other than that you deserve to feel better in your life!
Let me tell you what baby steps have looked like for me, and how they have helped to dramatically shift the energy in my life.
While washing dishes on Sunday night, I washed my kid’s water bottles instead of waiting till the next morning. (We don’t have a dishwasher, so all of our dishes are washed by hand, and water bottles are one of my least favorite things to wash. So of course, I procrastinate.) The way it felt so much easier to grab a clean bottle in the morning and fill it, instead of having to wash it first – it’s such a small thing but it shifted MY morning energy a lot. Especially because I reinforced this action with internal appreciation for my past self for doing it. The result? I stopped avoiding prepping the kids’ stuff the night before. Instead, I (oddly!) started to look forward to prepping washing the water bottles, because I was reinforcing how good it felt to prepare them ahead of time for myself.
Another example: I wanted to set up a second checking account for paying bills, but was putting off going to my credit union to do it. It’s just one of those things that takes time and energy that I often didn’t feel like I had. So, on the weekend, I sent a message through online banking to ask how I could open a second account. I was pretty sure that they were going to say that I couldn’t do it online and would have to go into a branch to do it, but taking 1 minute to send that message shifted the energy. Suddenly, I was taking action on this task that I had been putting off. Sure enough, the credit union responded on Monday morning, saying I had to go into the branch to open the new account, and they provided a link to schedule an appointment – aha! Another small step I could take towards the goal, dropped into my path like a breadcrumb guiding my way. It may be a tiny thing, but it made it that much easier for me to move forward.
Here’s where the magic really happens: the collective effect of these tiny steps starts to add up. Suddenly, things are moving in areas of your life that previously felt dull, heavy, stuck, impossible. A bit of energy is freed up for you. You feel more energized, and start seeing all the small steps you can take to make your life better, easier, more fun.
Yes, small steps add up over time, but the real power in small steps is that they shift your energy and the energy of the situation. They soften perfectionism. They calm the nervous system. They help you trust yourself. They break that frozen, overwhelmed state and remind you that change is possible.
Small steps aren’t the point. Energy is the point.
And when you shift your energy — even a little — your whole life starts to change.
What about you? What are some big, overwhelming things you’ve been facing? What are some of the smallest actions you can take? And if those small actions feel too hard, go even smaller – maybe so small that you think it’s ridiculously small. And tell yourself it’s okay to take such a small step. In fact, it’s wonderful, it’s perfect, and you’re doing amazing! Your job right now isn’t to resolve the entire huge situation, it’s just to make a tiny shift. Try it and see how things start to change in ways you wouldn’t have expected.
