Remember all that stuff you've been carrying around?

Maybe you've set some of it down. Not all of it. Maybe just enough to notice the difference in your shoulders.

And then, somewhere inside that lightness, a new thought arrives, and it is not the one you were hoping for.

If I'm not carrying all of that anymore, I might actually have to move.

That's the moment I'd like to meet you in.

Because for most of us, the word move arrives with a picture attached, and the picture is enormous. Hand in the notice. Have the conversation. End the thing. Start the thing. Tell them. Go.

The picture is a leap.

And you look at it and think, I cannot do that. Not this week. Possibly not ever.

Then comes the language I hear in almost every coaching session at this stage of a threshold.

I just have to do it.
What is wrong with me?
Why can't I just...

Let's start there.

Nothing is wrong with you.

That step you're looking at, the one that feels so daunting you can't imagine yourself taking it?

It might simply be too big.

The step before the step

A client tells me she's going to start running. Three times a week, at the track by the high school, starting Monday.

It's a good goal. It's also nowhere near where she is today.

So I ask what would have to happen first.

She thinks. Well, she'd need to know where the track is. And her gym clothes, which are somewhere. And her shoes. She isn't even sure she still owns the shoes.

So the first step for her actually turns out to be: find my running shoes.

That's it. That's the whole first step for her to start running.

The 11-Second Test

I'm probably not going to be sitting beside you when you're figuring out your own first step. So here's a question you can take with you.

Once you've named your step, ask yourself:

Does anything have to happen before that?

If the answer is yes, you haven't reached your first step yet. Go back one and ask again.

If the answer is no, you've found it.

It takes about eleven seconds.

And instead of debating whether you've found the perfect first step, you're simply checking: is there anything that has to happen before this?

Most people are surprised by how far back the real first step sits. But that's the point. You're not trying to leap across the chasm anymore. You're finding a step you can actually take.

Small is not a lesser kind of brave

And if there's a voice in your head saying, That's not brave. That's barely anything, I'm here to challenge that thought.

Somewhere along the way, a lot of capable people picked up the idea that effort is the proof. That if something didn't cost you, it doesn't count. That the size of the strain is the size of the meaning.

But the small step and the big leap have exactly the same relationship to the doorway.

They both move you.

One of them you'll actually do.

And choosing the thing you'll actually do is a pretty good place to start.

Small is not a lesser kind of brave. It's still bravery. It's still a step.

And you don't have to give up the vision to start small. The perfect version can stay on the page. It just doesn't have to be the entrance.

So if there's a doorway in front of you this week, you don't need a plan for the whole hallway. You need the one step nothing stands in front of.

What's the smallest step in front of you right now?

There's more to this, of course.

Because sometimes the challenge isn't finding the smaller step. It's that we don't feel ready, or we're making the step harder than it needs to be, or we're not even sure we want to walk through that particular doorway.

That's some of what I explore in the full essay, including what micro bravery might look like when we think of it less as performance and more as a small act of care taken on our own behalf.

Read the full essay: Steps Small Enough to Take: The 11-Second Test

If you're standing at a doorway of your own and the next move keeps arriving in a size you can't pick up, and it would help to sort out what actually matters to you and what the honest first step toward it is, with somebody whose only job is to help you hear yourself think, that's the work I love most. My door is open when you're ready.

If this one found you mid-hesitation, hit reply and tell me what your smallest step is. I read every response.

Cheering you on,

Cathy

Read or share this online: https://cathyferringo.com/steps-small-enough-to-take/

Missed the last one? Sometimes the Doorway Isn't the Heavy Part

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