The One Simple Key To Life

Don’t watch the clock. Do what it does. Keep Going. That quote is plastered on posters meant to be inspirational for employees in thousands of workplaces. Typically, that poster is mounted next to the one with the adorable kitten dangling from a rope with a caption that reads, “hang in there.”

Even though people scoff at such posters, there is considerable wisdom to the raw simplicity of just keep moving in life.

In so many facets of our lives – from relationships to work and from family to routine chores – just taking small steps and moving forward a little each day can bring us copious rewards.

The cathedral at Notre Dame, for example, took 180 years to complete. Can you imagine the workers there who realized that the construction would take them a lifetime and still not be completed until long after they were gone? Leonardo Da Vinci legendarily spent 12 years just painting the Mona Lisa’s lips and decades to complete the entire masterpiece.

So for us who are decidedly less talented than DaVinci, we can devise a strategy to make things happen in our lives. It’s a strategy so simple no pie charts, Venn Diagrams, jourmal entries or motivational mantras are necessary.

Just keep moving. Every day.

Don’t go big...think small

“Many people find even the simplest challenge overwhelming,” explains North Carolina-based life coach Karen Ousterhouse. “I had a client whose two-car detached garage was filled to the ceiling with stuff. Cleaning the garage was on his to-do list for three straight years. When I started to work with him, I asked that he amended his to-do list to say ‘will work on garage every other day for exactly five minutes.’”

“in a few weeks, the garage was organized like one of those TV home renovation shows,” Karen recounts. “He just needed to take it on in small manageable chunks and that worked.”

Renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) found that being active every day helped him think and be productive. Kant was a regular walker, with an emphasis on regular. He took his daily walk at precisely 5 PM every day, and his neighbors were said to set their clocks to his routine.

“Some people are always waiting for an activity or circumstance to be perfect,” Karen points out. “One client who wanted to be a writer redesigned his office space 12 times until he felt it was just right to begin writing. Those redesigns took 12 years.”

Karen relates the man’s goals were to write a spy novel in one year. He had the plot, outline, characters and even chapter outlines. He just needed to write.

“But the specter of writing an entire novel of close to 400 pages just spooked him,” Karen says. “So we trashed that goal and made a more modest one that had the virtue of doing something every day.”

“I asked him to write a page a day and never miss a day,” Karen explains. “The novel was done and in great shape for submission in a little over a year.”

In a constantly changing world, you can't rely on the perfect moment. If opportunities present themselves, you need to take advantage of them, or else they will pass you by, Karen explains.

One day at a time

Maizy Frazier wanted to be an X-ray tech but the thought of attending school for two years to get an associate’s degree just overwhelmed her.

“I spent seven years as a server telling anyone who would listen that I was going to be an X-ray tech,” Maizy recounts. “But I was too overwhelmed to begin, so I never did.”

Then one day Maizy served an ER doctor and she told him her dream. The doctor, a man who came from a family always on the verge of bankruptcy and homelessness, had taken a series of small steps that led him to becoming a doctor. So he helped Maizy apply and when she got accepted, the doctor told her “please don’t even think or say out loud that it will take two years to complete the program.”

“Instead, he told me to make my goals short-term and modest,” Maizy remembers. “He told me to mark on a calendar every day I attended school and focus on that goal and not the two years.”

Maizy is now an X-ray tech at a major hospital in the Nashville area and now focuses on moving forward every day instead of those big, lofty goals that seem so intimidating.”

“If you do just one thing a day, you will reach your goal,” says Karen Ousterhouse. “Sometimes even doing that one thing can seem overwhelming, and if so, just get started and you can always give yourself the weekend off. Pretty soon, you will find that doing this work to get to the next level of your life is actually rewarding, and you will start to feel better."

"Even making a little progress can go a long way. The key is to stick with what you’ve started, " she adds.

For many, obstacles seem insurmountable. I don’t have a ride to work or school. I’m not smart enough. I just can’t learn that. I don’t have the willpower. Excuses abound for dreams never pursued or goals never achieved.

“Last year, I did some volunteer work at a social services agency, helping people without jobs, education or just plain hope,” Karen says.

“My first case was a 50-year old woman who had been laid off after the financial crisis in 2010 and had just not been able to get back into the workplace. She’d sit around all day, watching TV, just being overwhelmed about finding any job,” says Karen.

Karen coaxed the woman outside to walk every day. They worked up to a one-hour walk. As they walked the neighborhood every day, Karen and her client began to strike up casual conversations with business people in the area. Soon, she was offered a position in a doctor’s office that she accepted.

Libraries and bookstores abound with inspiring stories of success, achievement and brilliance. Yet those accomplishments – big and small – started with a first step and a determination to keep moving forward.

As famed UCLA basketball coach John Wooden once said after being asked about how his teams achieved 10 NCAA titles:

“Little things make big things happen.”

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