Consistent Baby Steps

Oftentimes people ask me why I do these self-inflicted challenges and more often than not, I respond with, "Why not?"

Life can sometimes get humdrum without adding even a little variety to it. Since I'm not able to do nearly as much as I'd like, I try to make these incremental improvements to my life that will hopefully benefit me in the long run.

Big changes require consistent baby steps along the way.

I remember driving home one day and noticing how beautiful the blooming tree branches looked. I could have sworn that it didn't look that way just yesterday. How was it possible that an entire block of trees all bloomed on the same exact day?

Since I'm from the Midwest, winter seems to last forever and even though you know for a fact that spring is coming - there's always the looming possibility that winter will hold on just a bit longer...

And then, BOOM! It's spring! Wait, what? Where the heck did spring come from? It was just winter yesterday. It was gray and the tree branches were bare, but now?

Everything on the planet that evolves takes consistent baby steps. Those flowers on the trees didn't just bloom over night. They were working on that all winter long! Day by day - they worked consistently on making their debut when the time was right.

The sucky thing about consistent baby steps is that when we're making them in our own lives, we can't see the finish line. Our results seem to take for frickin' ever and so we sometimes backslide in the other direction.

With these challenges, I remind myself that consistent baby steps lead to much more satisfying outcomes; especially during those times when I can't see the finish line.