Dream Big, Start Small

Even the tallest buildings in the world would not exist if it were not for the first stones laid into the ground or the first ever strike by the drill rig that brings about minor and yet compoundingly significant cracks into the ground below. You cannot possibly cross the road, hoping to do so in one giant leap (unless you are the Hulk, which for the sake of this blog I am gonna assume you’re not). Every small stride across is what gets you to the other end. Then why is it that when it comes to our careers or our professions, we tend to forget about the little tiny steps that’ll help us waddle across? Are our reptilian brains inherently programmed to jump to step 8 instead of looking at what we can do in the here and now? Are we as humans averse to taking the first step because it is easier to look at our lives and what they could be from afar? 

Every 100 storey structure looks impossibly huge because even bent over backwards, the top is invisible standing right under from ground 0. But history is proof that building a 100  storey structure is very much within the ballpark of possibility. This is where the golden combination of dreaming big and starting small comes into play. It is the perfect alchemic blend of seemingly impossible dreams and well thought out execution. 

Dreaming big is only the first act, the second requires us to chunk down these monumental dreams into small doable portions. The wisdom of small, deliberate steps is the formula for success over time. Showing up every single day for yourself and your dream is what counts. Set your eyes on the goals but your hands on the smallest act.  

I personally believe that if your tunnel vision is only directed towards step 8, everything that comes before it will be a half hearted attempt at success, with you just struggling to get to the summit at any cost. 

There have been multitudes of times where my desired goal seemed so far ahead and urgency begged for me to implement step 8. This is where acknowledging the importance of each miniscule step came into play. Mindfully suppressing urgency and focusing on one deliberate, calculated step at a time is what helped me. To narrate a story from my own life, I lost a pageant back in 2006 when I was just 14 years old. That’s when I made up my mind to win Miss Universe but my odds of winning were overwhelming to say the least. The population of India back then was 117.24 crores of which 54.8 crore were women. Even the thought of representing such a large population of women at an international level was difficult to wrap my head around. Everything & I mean everything about this goal seemed far - fetched at that point. Had I focused on the magnitude of the task I had set out to achieve, I would have faltered at the apparent impossibility of it all. But one step at a time, just one step is what inched me closer to my dream. If there’s anything that you take back from this blog, I want it to be this:

For every time the world seems too overwhelming and insurmountable, Just one step that you can take IN THAT MOMENT is all it takes to get the ball rolling. 

Co-Creator : Meherzeen Siganporia