Tag Archives: Small steps tward change

Complete a small task each day

Admiral McRaven talks about the importance of making your bed every morning while he was in the Navy Seal Booth Camp.  In his book, he writes that little things matter.  For him, if you do the small things right, it paves the way to doing the big things right.

Now making one’s bed every morning may seem to be, for some, a simple task.  However, once completed, know that you have just completed a task that has a beginning and an end. This can be important in that it gives you a sense of completion. The task doesn’t have to be making your bed each morning.  It could be anything that is doable. From this small completed task comes forth a movement away from the status quo. Surprisingly it can lay a foundation, however small, from which you can build bigger things over the course of the day.  Even if your day does not end well, you can always go back to that small task you completed in the morning.

Sometimes you may be feeling so bad in the morning that pushing yourself to do even the simplest of tasks can be loaded with reasons not to even attempt it. That’s when you need to push yourself the most. This is true even if the task finally decided upon is smaller than the one originally planned for.  It matters little the size or difficulty of the task but only that it is completed and can be looked upon as such.

Again, small successes can lead to bigger successes. Remember any journey starts with that first step. Consider your morning task as your first step to eventual forfillment.

In my next blog, I will write about Admiral McRaven’s second lesson for living in his book,  “Make Your Bed” His second lesson in life is entitled, “You can’t do it alone”