A Thousand Little Things
January 04, 2012 Filed in: Work &
Progress
When I
look back at 2011, it was nothing short of being an
incredible year in terms of personal growth. Life is
like that sometimes. We have those moments in time
where everything seems to click for us. I don’t mean
click in the sense that everything happens the way we
want it to. I mean “click” in the sense that the
answers we are looking for somehow present themselves
and we are able to move forward and make significant
progress. That’s how 2011 was for me.
If you recall, last year at this time I posted a blog entitled “F-bombing the F-words” and I seriously took my resolution to heart. Every day this past year, even if I only thought about FEAR and FAILURE for a fraction of a second, I corrected my thinking and continued my pursuit for answers. And sure enough, even when I wasn’t completely certain that the direction I was taking was always the right one, the determination to continue moving forward was enough to sustain me until the next piece of the puzzle fell into place.
I realize now that honoring my 2011 new year’s resolution wasn’t about conquering fear and failure in one fell swoop. There was no moment of realization or major battle I had won. Instead, it was about addressing a thousand little things everyday with the audacity and conviction of becoming better and smarter than I was the day before. And trust me, the little things do matter. They quickly add up to very big things — good and bad. And like it or not, we are the result and culmination of what we do every day. No matter what obstacles we face or excuses we use for doing less than our best, our habits define us. We begin the process of changing those habits when we become mindful of the (seemingly unimportant) thousand little decisions we make each day. The devil (or the divinity) is always in the details.
If you recall, last year at this time I posted a blog entitled “F-bombing the F-words” and I seriously took my resolution to heart. Every day this past year, even if I only thought about FEAR and FAILURE for a fraction of a second, I corrected my thinking and continued my pursuit for answers. And sure enough, even when I wasn’t completely certain that the direction I was taking was always the right one, the determination to continue moving forward was enough to sustain me until the next piece of the puzzle fell into place.
I realize now that honoring my 2011 new year’s resolution wasn’t about conquering fear and failure in one fell swoop. There was no moment of realization or major battle I had won. Instead, it was about addressing a thousand little things everyday with the audacity and conviction of becoming better and smarter than I was the day before. And trust me, the little things do matter. They quickly add up to very big things — good and bad. And like it or not, we are the result and culmination of what we do every day. No matter what obstacles we face or excuses we use for doing less than our best, our habits define us. We begin the process of changing those habits when we become mindful of the (seemingly unimportant) thousand little decisions we make each day. The devil (or the divinity) is always in the details.