What Your Next Step Should Be To Achieve Your Dreams

A lot of my students come to me with their big dreams. They come with an idea fully formed, eager to get started, but unsure of where to begin. That’s the problem with a dream so big: what’s the next step when you can already picture the end product? Today, I’m going to teach you how to hold onto those dreams — while still creating a manageable next step.

How to Decide Your Next Step to Achieve Your Dreams

A lot of us will come up with a big challenging action and get excited. We say, “I’m going to write a book” or “I’m going to start my own business.” It’s a big thing, and that’s what excites us.

What happens, though, is that we often tend to lose interest even though we were so sure this was gonna be it! Why?

One word: fear. We lose interest because it’s too big. We lose interest because our mind-frick says, “You can’t do this. It’s easier to just live the way you’ve been living already.” We go back into our old ways, settling for less than what we really actually want to be doing.

Create Doable Actions

Instead of taking on a big challenge, a far easier and much more effective way to get exactly what you want in your life is to create bite-sized, doable actions.

I’m not saying to take smaller actions. I’m saying: think of the first three things that you’re willing to do that will move you towards your big vision. That way, instead of a grandiose goal, you’ve now created a next step.

One of the reasons that we lose interest in big challenges is because our programmed brain is trying to save us from fear of failure. It’s easier for the mind to lose interest than to say, “I’m a failure. I can’t do this.” It’s a safety valve. We don’t want to make ourselves look bad…even to ourselves!

It’s like taking a pill to alleviate pain. Instead of saying, “I can’t do this, and I’m a failure,” we say, “It’s not that important to me. I’m not that interested in that anymore.” This is what we do.

To combat this, don’t create huge actions for yourself. You can create a huge vision, but how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Just ask yourself, “What’s my next step?”

Forget the Goal, Focus on the Process

Don’t get into the big-thing idea, because, if you do, you’re going to end up losing interest as a failsafe in order to not feel bad about yourself. Instead, keep it simple.

People have asked me, “Harv, when are you going to write another book?” I don’t know. I write for a couple of hours, or one hour. Sometimes I say I’m just going to sit down and write, sometimes I just don’t worry about it.

I bring that up to say that if you want to write a book, for example, just start that way. It’s a lot easier, and you’re happier that way.

Of course, what’s going to happen is that you’re going to have a conditioned mind that’s going to say, “That’s not good enough. You didn’t do enough. You didn’t accomplish enough.” You just tell it thanks for sharing and keep doing what you’re doing.

Give yourself some momentum. A body at rest will tend to remain at rest and a body in motion will tend to stay in motion. Get yourself into a tiny bit of motion.

How It Works for Me

I practice this own process myself when I am writing. Sometimes I’m doing a bunch of other things. Let’s say I’m watching the hockey game or a movie, and I don’t really feel like continuing to write.

Know what I do? My mind says, “Just relax. You don’t have to write tonight.” However, I urge myself to just check one of the concepts that I wrote on a post-it note and see where that goes in my outline. I tell myself that it will be pretty quick, and then I can stop.

I pick up the next post-it note and think, “Where does this one go? Oh, wow! That’s cool! This is actually starting to come together and make sense!” Then I start writing maybe for five minutes. Sometimes it turns into much more.

Guess what I’m doing? I’m writing.

I don’t need to prod myself, because I know I just need to do one thing. I just need to go back to the keyboard, relaxed and easy, pick up one Post-it note, and enter it. That’s all.

One tiny little step creates momentum.