Little by little.
The magic of incrementalism.
My friend Nathalie Molina Niño taught me a saying that goes like this:
Little by little, then all of a sudden.
There you are, unsure you’re making any progress, when all of a sudden it happens. The breakthrough. The forgiveness. The discovery.
The hardest part about this truth is that we never know how close we are and have to keep operating “as if.”
The control freak in me wants to reverse engineer the process and figure out the steps I took to make “the thing” happen. Why? So that I can ritualize the magic sequence — hastening other turnarounds in the future, this time with assurance it’ll happen. Perhaps it’s the cook in me who fine-tunes recipes so I can please my family time after time.
But that’s not how change works. There is always an element of mystery. Always.
Anyone who’s read Good to Great knows how author Jim Collins likens change to a flywheel. Our gradual process of building momentum takes a lot of effort at first. But consistency does its thing and the flywheel gains force, eventually turning faster and faster with less and less effort from you.
Will it happen on the date you scoped in your business plan? Unlikely. Will it happen when you’re high on affirmations and fist-bumping yourself in the mirror every morning? Probably not.
It will happen when you forget about the flywheel for a sec and are on hold with the DMV. Or at the vet.
This is both miraculous and maddening.
We want to think our vigilance is what brought things over the finish line. And there’s an element of truth to that. Continuing to show up and believe matters. But so does honoring that we’re not in charge. We do our part and then some other force takes over.
When I’m coaching clients who’ve been working hard towards an outcome, I honor their fierce determination and help them balance it with a lightness of touch. It’s a delicate cocktail, three parts steadfastness, one part surrender.
What result/change/breakthrough are you waiting on? How tight is your grip? Could you ease up just a little? Now just a little more? “All of a sudden” may be closer than you think.
Until next time, remember that creativity knows no bounds.