"Success: cumulative small steps tied together - then suddenly, a seismic shift!" - Futurist Jim Carroll
Part 4 of my short 6-part series revisiting my archives - born when writing my newest book sent me back through years of morning posts. Today, one of my own quotes gets the scorecard treatment: does it hold up?
I first wrote this phrase in my Daily Inspiration in October 2020, and in the spirit of my recent scorecard series, I'm going to grade it.
"Success: a sustained series of stressful small steps - then suddenly, some sweet surprise!"
Verdict: nailed it.
It wasn't a one-off thought. It was one entry in a thread I kept pulling on:
"It's by thinking BIG that you can make the first small steps of your journey happen!" (January 2020)
"Be relentless - you'll eventually find that moment when your small steps allow you to suddenly leap ahead!" (February 2021)
Back then, I framed it around Neil Armstrong: every giant leap is actually a whole series of small steps. Five years later, I'd go further. There is no leap. The leap is an optical illusion - it's what a thousand small steps look like from the outside, to people who weren't watching you take them.
Think about every transformation story you've ever admired. The company that "suddenly" dominated its market. The colleague who "suddenly" changed careers. The person who "suddenly" turned their life around.
Ask any of them and you'll get the same answer: there was nothing sudden about it. There was a decision, and then there were the ordinary mornings - hundreds of them, thousands of them - where they kept the decision. And kept taking small steps to an eventual goal.
You don't reinvent yourself at the moment of crisis. You reinvent yourself in all the unremarkable days that follow it.
That's not the inspiring version of transformation.
It's just the true one.
Take the small step today.
Then again tomorrow.
And again the next day.
The reinvention is further along than you think - and closer than it looks.