One Step....Case....Blog

"This one step - choosing a goal and sticking to it - changes everything." ~Scott Reed

First off, it's my mom's birthday, so everyone say, "Happy Birthday, Mom!" She's turning...yea right, like I want any part of that fight!

And now, on to today's blog. I feel like lately, I've been taking the "one step at a time" approach to several things in my life. I'm constantly telling myself, "Just do one (fill in the blank with the appropriate word here) at a time."

When I am running, I keep telling myself to focus on one step at a time, because if I think about the fact that the reason I am doing this is to run 13 MILES in July, I sort of have a panic attack and want to quit. (Yes, we've previously discussed that I talk/yell at myself while running. It's awesome.)
At work, when I look at the list of things to do, and sometimes even the list of things to do for one project, there are days when I want to crawl under my desk and hide. But instead...if I think about things one step at a time.....just read this set of cases....and then just Shepardize this set of cases.....and then just write this one section of the brief.....I come out from under the desk and seem to be able to function.

I'm totally a pre-writing blogger, meaning that I schedule them throughout the week and don't write them on a daily basis (lest you think I'm up and functioning well enough to write coherently at 6:00 every morning). There have been times where I've had 2 weeks worth of blogs ready to go. Today, I looked at my dashboard and saw that I have only one pre-scheduled. I immediately thought, I have to write blogs for the rest of this week, oh my gosh and then next week, and every week after that....I have nothing to say! I'm not that interesting! I'm going to fail at this! I could either continue to freak out, or I could get it together. I went with the second option, took a deep breath, and decided to start with just writing one blog (this one!) and that I'd worry about the rest later.

I was talking to one of my friends recently about running, and I said that I really thought it was 90% mental. She agreed, but added that if you think about it, life is probably 90% mental. We spend a lot of time building things up or worrying about things we can't control or trying to figure out how to fix problems that really aren't as bad as we think. We let ourselves make life more complicated than it is. We become overwhelmed with the big picture and wonder how we will ever accomplish whatever it is we are working on.

In an attempt to break this little trend, I'm trying my best to take things one step (be that a literal step or one case or one blog) at a time. And you know what? Everything that I have to get done will get done....it always does. The only difference is that if I can make myself focus on the "one step" approach, I might have a much more enjoyable time doing it!