A good place to begin…
‘Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.’ - Arthur Ashe
I’m musing today about good starts and how to make progress on goals.
I like the Arthur Ashe quote, it appeals to my pragmatic side. When you boil things down, what else can you do?! However, it is pretty common to find yourself trying to do something far less sensible! I certainly have at points in time.
People often get themselves tied up in all sorts of knots about what has happened, what they haven’t done, what they think they should have done, what negative things might happen, what other people might think or do… this unhelpful internal dialogue can have a negative effect and prevent positive progress towards a goal, or even stop you from settling a goal at all.
Keep things simple.
There is lots of good advice out there about how to get started on and then work towards completing a goal, but I’m a fan of keeping things simple. I’ve got my own tried and tested systems for working on big and small goals. I have evolved them through a whole lot of study, reflection, testing and refining. I’ve worked on them on my own and also with various personal coaches over the years.
Think through your options, what you have and what you can do.
A good coach will help you find what works for you. They will help you think through your options, what you have and what you can do. They are future facing and can often help you see things from a different perspective. You might be pleasantly surprised about what you already have and what you can do when you look at it carefully with a helpful coach!
Small steps can lead to big leaps...
My own personal addition to the powerful Arthur Ashe quote …My own personal addition to the powerful Arthur Ashe quote is that small steps built up over time can really lead to big leaps...
Start with a focus or goal and break it down into small steps, then anything can be done.
Keep moving forward 1% at a time and over time those single percents add up…
I like to study what highly successful people do and in particular highly successful coaches. I’m a big fan of the David Brailsford ‘incremental gains’ approach to his work coaching high performance cycling teams. In that sort of hugely competitive environment making any gains is very difficult as the levels of performance are already so high. Brailsford’s concept of incremental gains is so simple, effective and utterly transferable to any goal. Make a small change, that results in only 1% of improvement, but keep on doing it 1% at a time and over time those single percents add up and before you know it you have a gold medal winning team!
So my suggested take away on success when starting anything is to hold Arthur Ashe’s ‘Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.’ words in your heart and pair it with an incremental gains mindset and you are making an awfully good start!
x T