One Small Step

One of my goals for 2010 is to run 1,000 miles. Another is to com­plete my first marathon. Both — no sur­prise — are requir­ing me to run far and run often. When I chose these goals I assumed that the hard­est part would be find­ing the strength to push ahead as the dis­tance steadily increased through my train­ing pro­gram. Sur­pris­ingly that is not really the case. What I am dis­cov­er­ing as I cover longer dis­tances, steadily build my endurance, and become a stronger run­ner is that the hard­est part is sim­ply tak­ing the first stride.

It is the same chal­lenge, day after day. Get up and go or sit on the side­lines. 100% up to me. If it is the morn­ing, do I hit the snooze bar 10 times or get out of bed, lace up my shoes, rub the sleep from my eyes, and go. If it is the evening, do I put the kids to sleep and plop down in front of the tele­vi­sion or do I head out the front door and run. One deci­sion. One small step. One choice that will deter­mine my fate. If I say yes. If I take one sim­ple stride, all that fol­low come very eas­ily. It all starts with the deci­sion to take the first step.

Why is this so? I sup­pose one could look to Sir Isaac Newton’s first law of motion which says that “every body will per­sist in its state of rest or of uni­form motion (con­stant veloc­ity) in a straight line unless it is com­pelled to change that state by forces impressed on it.”

It is always eas­ier to do noth­ing. To find an excuse not to run. To put it off until tomor­row. To make the deci­sion not to move. Get­ting your­self in motion requires you to exert con­sid­er­able force. How­ever once you have taken that one tiny step to over­come iner­tia, it is incred­i­bly easy to keep going.

Whether you want to run a marathon, improve your com­mu­nity, learn to play gui­tar, start your own busi­ness, cre­ate a blog, write a book, go back to school, find a new job, spend more time play­ing with your kids, what­ever… real­ize that you are prob­a­bly just one lit­tle step away from mak­ing it hap­pen. Just one step can change everything.

It’s just one step. Take it.

Isaac New­ton, The Prin­cipia, A new trans­la­tion by I.B. Cohen and A. Whit­man, Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia press, Berke­ley 1999.

Image R.E.D. by sling@flickr.com