The Beauty of Babysteps

Sometimes the smallest of small steps are the biggest.

At the beginning of November, I was in Portugal helping friends tell their story about a piece of land they want to turn into a research lab for our future, inviting artists, scientists and the community to work on the land and explore ideas that will help us get to not only a livable future but one where people are happy and where society supports the care of the planet and its people.

But finding a way to articulate this message and the project hasn’t been easy.

Storms erupted and full gutters sent water pouring into the house in three rooms, waiting for the US election results took mental energy, acacia trees that needed removal became yet another thing to do that was not telling this story, and all numbers of other distractions presented themselves and gave rise to full-on resistance.

Sharing our dreams can make us want to crawl back into bed or find the first most promising distraction.

When moving out of our comfort zones, we know it takes effort and we think to ourselves, how bad can it be?

We’ve all experienced getting up in the morning and getting ready to go to work or school when we didn’t feel like it. There is resistance but we know we have to and we do it in spite of the cold or feeling tired we stick our feet out of the covers and our foot on the floor.

Doing something creative, that pushes us beyond our creative comfort zone is not this kind of discomfort.

It is more like asking ourselves to believe the world is round when we grew up thinking the world is flat.

Our entire being can go into resistance from mind to body.

And our mind does something strange.

We haven’t even accomplished the first podcast episode or send the first sales letter and we begin to think, this isn’t enough. My efforts will never get me where I want to go.

It is enough.

You are enough. You only have to take the tiniest of steps to start climbing the mountain.

The way through feelings of discomfort is to take a deep breath in and take your next small step.

I know this resistance very well.

I’ve been living with it for over 20 years, ever since I decided to become a filmmaker.

One of my favorite ways to manage my resistance is to take baby steps.

Because the only way through being stuck is by doing.

My friend has had his equipment here in Portugal since January.

We talked about doing a podcast for the first week I was here and nothing got done.

The equipment didn’t even come out of the closet, so to speak.

Finally, I hit upon an idea.

Micocasts.
Microcasts!

Even the name sounded much less intimidating than podcasts.

These would be short 1-3 minute introductions to the project to be shared on Facebook to their private group. Stephan would speak as if talking directly to the people he already knows.

After all the plans for interviews and longer-form content, this worked.

He did the first microcast yesterday.

Now Stephan realizes the material in the microcasts (5 more topics are sketched out) can be used for the fundraising proposal he wants to create.

And after accomplishing one microcast, he’s thinking of who he wants to interview.

We get past resistance by doing.

There is beauty in starting small, moving forward one small step at a time.