Small, repeated daily steps lead to success
Key topic
This lesson aims to explain the importance of taking time to do the little things in life, even if it makes you uncomfortable or it is against what others consider to be cool. It is about teaching you how to act on your knowledge and the importance of good decisions. All these elements tend to have a ripple effect in life, meaning you will eventually benefit from the overall effect of the positive small daily steps you are taking.
By adopting good habits and treating your life as a series of small daily steps and choices you will eventually develop a different approach to life; one that helps you nurture a sense of self-discipline and composure that are significant for your development as athletes and human beings.
Learning objectives
- Understand that little things matter and that they can eventually build up to something big
- Figure out ways to do the little things every day
- Develop the habit of acting on your knowledge
- Discover the importance of making good choices
- Create conditions that will have a positive ripple effect on your future
Little things do matter
Think of your favorite sports character from any team and any sport. I am almost certain, when this character was young, they were just like you; talented, full of dreams, wanting to become a famous sport star. This character’s parents were always asking them to be a better student and spend time on homework, to eat more vegetables, and/or attend family reunions.
If you had a chance to walk up to the neighborhood this character grew up in, it is highly possible to hear several different stories. You probably won’t hear stories about how exceptional in sports this character was as a 10-year-old; you will probably hear that many other kids were equally talented and equally devoted to sports, if not more than this character. But in the process of growing up, some kids from the neighborhood got interested in other things. Some of them went on to graduate from college, others got jobs early and had families early, others were not so careful and ended up messing their life with criminal acts and addictions to drugs or alcohol.
You are probably wondering what sets superstars apart from the rest of the crowd. Is it just talent? Is it the circumstances? Is it luck?
The first thing you need to understand is that “Little things do matter”. Every day, every hour, every moment of your life, you face a choice; and it’s not just that you have several choices, it’s the fact that in life you need to make choices all the time. These choices, more often than not, determine outcomes. Unavoidably you will sometimes make good, positive choices and sometimes not-so-good ones. But the reality is that the difference between teenagers who feel successful and become successful and those who don’t, comes from the little choices they make when it’s time to choose what to think, what to say, and what to do.
Simple actions, repeated over time, will determine the life you lead. Small actions build up over time, add up. For example, if you exercise for an hour a day, you won’t see much difference after a couple days or even a week. But after a couple of months, you’ll notice a big difference. A little effort each day will result in huge rewards that can have lasting effects.
Your sports star character of choice and the other young people in the neighborhood did not end up where they are today by chance or by accident. There is no such thing as luck, or perhaps luck is the moment when preparation meets opportunity. Your character of choice is now a sports icon and a superstar, exactly because of the choices they made every day. The little things that lead to success are easy to do. They can be as simple as getting up on time in the morning, showing up at school, and doing homework. It can be as little as showing up to practice early or staying at practice late, just to get another 10 repetitions of your favorite sports move. The steps can be very small—as small as choosing a different response when the moment to make a choice comes.
Every day you have to deal with having so many different choices to make, about so many things; you can make the choice to discuss something with your brother and sister, instead of fighting and shouting about it in the house; you can choose to put in extra work at practice, when others hit the showers and go home; you can choose to stay home and study, instead of going to the park to hang out with your friends. Little things are not that little, if you think about it.
Imagine a young soccer player, a young girl, who has a passion for the sport and has been playing soccer since she was 5 years old. She always thought that running drills to improve her overall playing skills was the most boring part of practice and she would be really annoyed when the coach made the entire team do running and conditioning drills. She usually thought that the coach was just bad, or wanted to punish the team. At the age of 18, however, she discovered how small actions compound over time. The older she got, the more competitive the sport got and the more running drills the team had to do. Imagine her amusement when college coaches recruited her for Division-I college soccer, based on the fact that she could last the entire game without showing any wear and tear and that she was able to play at 100% of the entire game time. The repeated “boring” running drills really paid off at the end!
Small actions compound over time. That means they grow in size and they impact your future and lead to much bigger things. This is one of the most important lessons you need to remember.
Action Steps – Exercise 1 (10 minutes)
- What small steps do you think you need to take to reach your goals? List 5 steps
- What steps could you start taking today? List 2 steps that you could start taking today. How do you think these steps, if done daily, will have a positive effect on your life?
Knowing vs doing
Your favorite sports character knew what was best and probably knew what needed to be done in order to become successful; probably other kids in that neighborhood had the same knowledge as well. It’s an assumption, but don’t forget that knowledge comes not only from books and schools, but also from observing and paying attention to people, teachers, parents, friends and your surroundings in general. The difference between your character and the other people in the neighborhood is that your character not only knew, but also acted on it, making the right choices.
Knowing how to do something isn’t actually ‘doing the thing’. Having the answer to a problem isn’t the same thing as using the answer to solve the problem; that’s because the little things that are important to do are also easy not to do, so a lot of people just don’t do them. You probably know this from your own life. What’s easier?
- Trying something you’re afraid of, or not even trying in the first place?
- Going along with what others think, or being who you really are, even if it means feeling alone at times?
- Avoiding your feelings because they’re too hard or painful to face, or facing them square on?
- Getting up and running in the morning, or sleeping late?
The answer is pretty clear—it’s often a whole lot easier not to do the simple things, even though you should exactly do that. Do the simple things; do the small things; do them over and over again. Remember, never get caught up in what other people think, or do, or say to you. Stay unaffected.
There was this young man, Kim, who took pride in being a grade-A student, until he reached junior high school and noticed that other boys called him names and didn’t include him in their activities, because he was not cool, and because generally top-notch students were not considered cool. Kim decided that being cool and accepted by others was more important than grades and he began to intentionally slack off, to be accepted and have friends. He skipped class, failed to turn in homework, was tardy most of the time and generally made a habit of being the opposite of what he was accustomed to. He finished junior high with a B- grade, which was well below his potential. When he got to high school, he realized that competition for good colleges and academic performance was important to students. His friends from junior high had already moved on to become friends with other people or dropped out of school. Kim got back to his grade-A expected standards, by switching everything around again and earned an academic scholarship to college by the end of his senior year.
Kim learned that success can mean going against what’s popular and sacrificing for what you really want. He started doing the little, positive things even when he didn’t feel like it. He started to believe in himself and in what he knew was most important; and he started using that knowledge, even if other people were telling him something different. Instead of just knowing the right things to do, Kim actually did them. Consequently, he grew as a person and made a better life for himself.
The ripple effect of small steps
A ripple effect is a situation in which, like ripples expanding across the water when something is dropped into it, an effect from something done initially can be expanded progressively. What that means is that by doing the small, positive things, you increase the chances that other positive things will happen to you because these small repeated positive steps will compound to something bigger. It’s like tossing a rock into a pond—you’ll see a splash and the ripples spreading out, but those ripples can go far beyond what you see. They can go all the way to the opposite shore.
It’s the same thing in life, although you often don’t see the ripples, until something good happens (or something not so good). For better or for worse, even your smallest actions may create a ripple effect that has a huge impact on you and the people around you, even when you don’t see it at the time, or you aren’t aware of it.
When you take a small, positive step, you never know where it will lead. But if you take that first step, the chances are great that more positive things will follow.
Use the link below and watch this 6-minute video as an example of the ripple effect of kindness. It has more than ten million views and it’s definitely worth the time.
The Good Samaritans in our lives
Action Steps – Exercise 2 (10 minutes)
- How did watching the video make you feel? Have you ever seen the ripple effect in your own life?
- Have you ever taken a positive step that led to another positive thing for you?
Making good choices
As discussed already, life is not only about choices being available, it is also about making choices. As a young person, you probably already have had many people advise you that you need to make good and positive choices in your life. What makes a good choice is something that you must decide and this decision will be based on how you define your personal success and what values you have that will help you define right and wrong. But, do remember that doing the right thing and doing it at the right moment is what matters the most; doing the right thing at the right moment is the starting point for your personal development. It usually takes courage to do the right thing, but at the end you will come to understand that it is really worth it.
Take three minutes to watch the video, using the link below. It will hopefully help you understand that making good choices pays off in the long run, but it also requires courage to do so. This short, animated movie shows the accumulated results of opposing choices and it shows how small choices become actions, how actions become habits and how habits become our way of life.
Success is more than just finding the right job someday, or making a lot of money, or becoming a superstar athlete. It’s about doing the right thing at the right time. That takes faith and courage. Once you start putting these lessons in perspective and learn how to apply them in real life, you will have both faith and courage to make the right choices.
Lesson wrap-up
Today we discussed the importance of the little things, daily choices and small steps that build and lead to positive habits. Your daily choices and small steps will help you develop self-discipline, composure and the ability to focus on your target.
At this point we will wrap up today’s lesson. First, we will go over the learning objectives of this lesson and we want your feedback as to whether they have been achieved and then we will address any questions you may have. Please feel free to ask anything you’d like in relation to today’s lesson and we would love to hear how the concepts we discussed today relate to you and your life!