Every day…write one goal for yourself somewhere visible, and all you are focusing on for that day is achieving that one goal. At the end of the day, you get to put a check mark next to the goal…and if you fail, you leave that goal where it was, and that is the same goal you attack the next day. Start with this one little goal each day, and then when you are achieving that one goal consistently, you add another….and another….and another.

This is how I did it. At the beginning, it started off very small. “Focus only on what you can control today.” So I went through the day focusing not on all the craziness going on around me, but what I had direct influence one. And then I found the gym…and that helped change the direction in my life for certain. I could control what I put in, and I could control what came out. Life’s easiest equation is found in the gym.

When I started writing…things were a mess. I was soon launched into something that made that mess even more chaotic…and I just felt numb and stuck every single day. Anxious, upset…couldn’t get my mind off of what had happened. But, you have to start somewhere…and the goals I had were very very very small. Like, “smile more today, “eat healthy today,” or “write.” I don’t think many people know this really, but there were times…weeks that went by where I couldn’t write. I literally could not get myself to write for many reasons. I had too much internal conflict, and at the time my writing wasn’t pure enough to accurately represent what was going on inside of me. It was only when I started to get really familiar with the feeling of being cleansed after I finished writing a given piece that I committed to an everyday process. It was only after that point where things really took off in terms of my own development.

So go after one little thing a day. Those little guys add up to become big wins in the long-term. When you have the mindset of chipping away, you lose all your fear because the size of the task in front of you becomes lost. The U.S. continental coming from the west was hand pickaxed for miles. That’s granite…in the winter…for a task that was deemed impossible. Well, you know the rest of the story, but when you dig into that mountain…you are on your way. Don’t let the mountain itself deter you from starting. Go for it.

Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project