Do you ever get frustrated with how slowly you seem to be making progress?
I sure do!
This perfectionist has high standards! And I can get really frustrated with myself when I don’t meet them all!
But I’m slowly learning that faithful, consistent, baby step progress actually leads to achieving a lot!
I have grown to love the concept of baby steps, which I learned about from FlyLady (www.flylady.net).1
In my head, I need to be the hare. But the tortoise actually won the race, with slow, faithful but consistent baby steps. 2
A few years ago, I was looking at a mountain of work that needed doing. Feeling overwhelmed. So a friend encouraged me that I could be a tortoise, slow but consistent, and just do what I could for the long haul.
It worked. The work got sorted. The mountain disappeared. And I learned a lot about how I work best. Steadily, consistently, even gently, one baby step at a time.
Maybe I can just be the tortoise!
Years ago, I knew God wanted me to write. But I didn’t think I had time. So someone suggested I find half an hour a day. I decided that was too big a goal, so I tried for 15 minutes most days. It worked! I began to write a novel, 15 minutes a time. Gradually, the time began to extend, and the novel is pretty much done (now I’m praying for a publisher!). I piggybacked other routines onto it. 15 minutes of song writing. An hour of writing on a Saturday. And so on. And often the time slots are longer. Most of the time, it works. It’s not a perfect system by any means! But baby step progress is still progress. And consistently doing something adds up to a lot more than doing nothing at all! And maybe consistent baby step progress as a tortoise is better than crashing and burning as a hare.
I can torment myself with trying too hard, trying to super-cover all of the bases. But actually, I think the Lord is encouraging me to be consistent, faithful and calm. For the long haul.
Just baby steps. Baby steps in the right direction.
Like driving. I don’t find driving easy, and it’s been an anxiety battle. But I decided to apply baby step progress to it (you can read my post about it here). And, baby step by baby step, it’s working. I’m guessing it won’t be fixed tomorrow, but who know where I’ll be in a year’s time!
If I try too hard, I wear myself out, and get stressed, and ultimately end up less productive.
But giving myself grace to be steadily, consistently, gently faithful still gets me there.
And faithful baby step habits and routines actually add up to a lot!
Could baby step progress be a blessing for you too?
Caroline Abblitt 