Take One Small Step

Another key to closing the gap is to take extremely small steps so you don’t scare the beegeebers out of your Self.  More accurately, if you can “sneak past” and not wake up your primitive brain—your amygdala—by changing in ways that don’t seem too threatening (to this flight/fight mechanism), this will serve you well.  Small steps are the way to tiptoe past your fear/primitive alarm center. 

The amygdala may trigger thinking in a part of your Self that is convinced about big change causing disaster; primitive thinking likes to keep things the same.  For some of us, change is perceived as an enemy to this prehistoric, fight/flight section of our “knogen.”  We need to creatively and judiciously create pathways to change that actually work.  In the little, wonderful book, One Small Step Can Change Your Life, the author explains this in clear detail.  (Go google it and see!) 

The essence of the message is this:  take tiny steps that won’t scare you and derail your progress.  Take small steps repeatedly, consistently, and you will have less of a chance of waking up your amygdala or your inner gremlins that shriek, “STOP…don’t change!”  You then may stay freer of negating gap-keepers, like “Who do you think you are, trying to do that big, wonderful thing?”  (Sound like anyone in your history?  Well, of course.  Or it’s some modification of messages that kept you from reaching too high, too far, too wide.)

You get to change, reach high, reach wide and far—as far as your precious heart wishes.  Just do it in ways that don’t set off inner alarm buttons that will then derail you or stop you in your tracks:  small steps are the key.  This is one way you can keep closing a gap between where you are and where you wish to go.