The next, best, smallest step (or what to do when you don’t know what to do)
For about six months I have had the outline of a new project in mind. I made some attempts to bring it to life without much success and found myself stalled out. However, the idea would not go away so I figured it was time to knuckle down and coach myself to either find a way forward or let it go.
When I looked the issue square in the eye I saw my main obstacle. This issue is something I encounter in almost all my clients when they are in the process of bringing ideas, creative visions, or dreams into reality.
Every time I thought about this project I thought about how difficult it would be to market. I was terrorizing myself with the idea of having to sell my wares. The main problem with this is that “marketing” is a vague, general concept. In reality, “marketing” is a collection of many tasks with lots of small steps and decisions. When I just think of general “marketing” I am creating a phantom problem and unfortunately, phantom problems don’t have real solutions. And further, I realized I was not anywhere near the stage of marketing my project.
I think we tend to terrify ourselves with the potential difficulty of a step in the process that lies out there in the future distance. Because it is not yet real, it does not have any real solutions. It just looms as a specter, casting a shadow over our ambitions, making the way forward look cold, dark, and scary. It might even stop us in our tracks.
Realizing this brought clarity. I knew what to do: work out where I actually was and what needed to come next.
At this point, it all felt really difficult and I got some coaching around it from the very excellent Win Chesson. When I am in a scary or painful blind spot, it is so helpful to reach out for some perspective and support from a coach.
In that safe coaching container, I learned that part of what was making moving forward so difficult and even painful was that I had some unresolved baggage I was dragging along from past experiences. There was grief**. There was also the need for me to cultivate more clarity and focus on what I wanted to achieve as a preparatory step.
By getting clearer in this way, I started to orient myself to the truth of where I actually was instead of an imaginary place I thought I should be or might be one day.
Once we have oriented ourselves in the truth of where we are and the direction we want to be heading in, everything gets so much easier. The truth always feels good, people. Always.
This is where we can take the next, best, smallest step. Martha Beck calls this flavor of step “turtle step”. It is a step or action so small and accessible that you have zero resistance to taking it.
Yup. Zero. I think we can get caught up in the idea that to move forward we must blast through our fears or take huge risks. You know, the old “feel the fear and do it anyway” battle cry. But when we find that sweet spot of truth, we can take the next step easily and enjoyably. And yes, you get to enjoy your forward movement! Asking yourself what you might enjoy doing or what might be fun is an excellent way to determine your next small step.
Once you have taken it, you have moved forward. And the next step will emerge. And so on and so forth. The energy of small, kind, and connected to reality has remarkable power and momentum.
So often we ask ourselves to leap over the wide scary river of the unknown without realizing that we can safely and methodically put down stepping stones from here to there. We make the distance from here to there much too large for anyone to take and then retreat thinking we were not up to the task when no one would be.
The problem is not us, the problem is how we think about the problem.
Right now, I feel a little tired. So perhaps my next smallest step is taking a wee nap. Naps are often a surprising and delightful perfect next small step to our biggest aspirations**. What’s your next tiny step?
*This is the phrasing used by the late Don Weed in his ITM teacher training about working out what to do next in an Alexander Technique lesson.
** I think it is quite common to interpret grief as “resistance” or “procrastination”. Being present in our grief requires very different energy from the energy we need to create something or take risks. We can’t be easily productive in the face of energy that is all about going to ground and letting go, that needs containment and deep, deep safety.
***Not my idea, this advice comes from Martha Beck. I know it to be true (it feels so good!) but am still a work in progress in putting “naps as essential next steps” into action. How fun to be so resistant to something so enjoyable, healthy, and easy to do.