Goals: The Power of Starting Small

To write even a 100 page book will be a daunting challenge if you have never written a one page article before. Similarly to perform for an audience of 1000 will frighten you if you do not have the experience of performing before 10 persons.

Motivational and success speakers often tell us to set big goals. Preachers tell us that if God is your partner set big goals and make grand plans. But we need to be careful not to overstretch ourselves on this matter. No matter how big a tree is it began life as a small seed and grew up. The real question for me is how big is big?

Just like a seed and a tree I believe we need to move from small goals to big goals rather than jump straight into setting big goals. To start small don’t necessarily mean you are small. You can dream big but by all means start small. Many dreams have crashed because the dreamer fed on much more than he/she was able to chew.

You must start small even if you have a big dream. Beginning small has power and has its advantages. It is better to make mistakes and fail in your smallness. It is cheaper and less painful than to make mistakes or fail on the big stage. Being small is not an end but a phase. A child even though they cry for and like food is not fed solid food the day it is born.

Similarly at every stage of life you have sufficient capacity only for so much. Many dreams have crashed and many have failed to reach their set goals because of a lack of required capacity to see it through. It is with the small goals you build capacity and experience needed for the big goals. You must know what is within your capacity to handle at any given moment.

I like the guy David. One of the defining moments of his life was when he slew Goliath. That was a big goal but that was not were he started from. He still had to gain valuable experience and develop sufficient capacity for killing bears. As he developed he slew some bears. I believe he will have failed miserably if he had nit developed experience and capacity killing lesser or smaller goals like the bears and the lions.

With the achievement of every small goal you set comes increased capacity to handle bigger challenges. I have heard some speakers say that if God is on your side, then make your dreams big. I have also heard some say that God will not give you something you can accomplish on your own. Again true but we really need to put things in their proper perspective. God knows your capacity just like any loving parent knows the capacity of their child and will not demand from more from them than they know the child is able to handle.

God gave Moses an assignment to lead Israel out of Egypt. That was the large goal but it did not just happen. There were smaller goals he had to accomplish and as he did so his capacity increased commensurate with his next bigger goal.

I believe in dreaming big, but my advice to anyone intent on setting goals and reaching them is, don’t neglect the small stuff. Think big but start small. I believe “thinking big” or having big goals means have a big vision for life. Here is how it should play out: Set some small goals achieve them rest awhile set a bigger goal rest awhile. And you just keep going and at the end of the race you would have developed sufficient capacity for the almighty big goal.

Start small. You will definitely make mistakes, fail some or many times but it is all part of the process. You will however gain experience and your capacity will be built up to accommodate newer bigger challenges and goals. So have big goals but start small and grow.