Action your Decision with the First Smal Step
The Influential Leadership Advisory
Act!
To go big, start small, immediately.
The greatest life and leadership successes start with the first action… just do it
Once Your Strategy is Set—What Then?
Last week we started a series of Leadership Notes on how to make our resolutions (decisions) stick.
We discovered that only 2% of people respect their decisions, sticking with them.
To be an Influential Leader we must be amongst the two-percenters.
Our first advisory was:
Be strategic: The first item we tackled was the big picture—setting the end-goal. Unless we know the what and why of the decision, it is easy to be diverted, to be distracted, to lose energy, to fall by the wayside.
So, once we have made our well-considered decision with strategic clarity, what comes next?
Action… the first step towards the end-goal.
Act. Start With The First Step, No Matter How Small
It is like crafting a Matryoshka Doll set.
If you examine the infographic above, you will notice the smallest doll in the left-hand set. That tiny doll is the first step, the first action towards the end-goal—the biggest doll.
To get to the end-goal the crafter must follow multiple steps, small at first end then ever larger until the end is reached.
Habituate: Small Steps Get Ever Bigger
To ensure a decision sticks we must get a habit going, and to do that we must follow four laws of habituation:
- Act! Start. Getting started is psychological and visible evidence of your decision.
- Small at first. The benefits of small steps are to get comfortable, to find your feet, to learn, to get stronger, to be resilient.
- Early success. Building momentum through small steps encourages your actions while also reinforcing your self-efficacy—your sense that you can do it.
- Expel old ones. As you progress with a positive and productive goal—i.e., your resolution to make life better—you begin to expel old habits. This too is excellent feedback to keep you going. (Note: If you read between the lines here you will appreciate that resolutions (decisions, goals) are better couched in a positive form. More on this in a subsequent Note.)
In Practice
- Go first. While keeping an eye on the end-goal—the what and the why—get going with the action of a first step, a first move in the direction of the goal.
- Learn as you go. Do not worry about being a bit wobbly or even taking a tumble on occasion. Influential Leadership teaches us we shall surely fall, dust ourselves off and keep going. We only fail when we stop going towards the end-goal.
Why is it Important to Make Resolutions Stick?
- Success feels good. There is the obvious answer—to enjoy the success of achieving what you set out to do—to make your life better (with others).
- Strengthening your self-efficacy. When you succeed along a chosen path you create a virtuous cycle, i.e., your success breeds your success! As you string your small steps together, they become ever grander while the end-goal becomes increasingly vivid and realisable.
- A new habit. When you have been successful for a while, you will have a new habit that you hardly have to wrestle with, it becomes normalised over time.
If you have applied your mind to your resolutions and decisions, they deserve to stick—that is what makes them great.
Act. Start at once. Step off towards your goal, one small step at a time.
Regards,
Colin @ Karoo
Influential Leaders keep going!
Leadership Note # 0225 | 130125
e: colind@karoo.world
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