Success One Step at a Time

Yesterday we experienced another one of those beautiful days that often come at the end of summer in Pittsburgh. With moderate temperatures and low humidity, September days are days when you still want to go outside. With the children adjusting to only their second week of school, we are finding that every evening we spend time outdoors just playing in front of the house. Or, to be more specific I find myself outside reading while the children are playing in front of the house. Neighborhood children as young as one year old are outside with their parents and we all seem to just congregate as the children play. Given the urban setting of our home, most of the games are played in the street with cars parked on either side. The children routinely yell out “car” as a vehicle comes down the street. For the most part our one-way street does not get a great deal of traffic, and most of the cars coming down the street are usually sight seeing taking a look at the Victorian homes and interesting architecture.

It seems that somehow yesterday my sons finished their homework a bit earlier than their neighborhood friends. This meant that for at least a few minutes my sons would be playing together without the company of their friends. Even though my children are twins, at their current age they are reluctant to play outside with just themselves. Rather, they wait for the company of other children at or near their age so that they can engage in one or another of the “made up” games that they play every day. While the boys were waiting for their friends to show up my son Max walked over to a small patch of grass that borders the old church on the corner of our street. This patch of grass that we call the “church yard” has been the closest play area for my children and all of the other children in our neighborhood since the boys were old enough to walk. It has been the site of petting zoos and once even hosted an elephant providing rides for children for just one dollar. My own sons have learned to bat (resulting in one broken stained glass window), pitch, throw a football, and even race on this patch of grass which is less than 20 yards long and 20 feet wide. But grass is still grass no matter how wide or long and children will always find a game that they can play at the church yard.

Max walked to one end of the grass and started in an easy jog to run to the opposite end. Reaching the opposite end he turned around and then jogged back to the starting point. I watched as he continued this back and forth all alone on the grass over and over again. Curious, I finally walked over to the grass to ask Max what he was doing. He said that he was “running a mile.” I asked him how given the small size of the area on which he was running he would know when he had reached his goal? He then lifted up his shirt and there clipped to his belt was a pedometer that had been recently given to him as a gift from my brother. I did not want to burst his bubble by telling him that given the size of the space on which he was running he would likely need to run back and forth over 80 times to reach his goal. Rather, I just watched as he frequently checked his pedometer and continued to run back and forth.

I continued to watch Max running and I was pleasantly surprised by his persistence. He continued to run until finally his pedometer displayed a total distance of one mile. I did not count how many times he actually had to run back and forth, and I also recognize that generally pedometers are only “fair estimates” of total distance traveled. I personally wear a pedometer most days with a goal of walking 10,000 steps. Most days I meet or exceed my goal, but here again the accuracy of the pedometer is really not the point. The point for me is to have a goal that is relative to the last time I set out to achieve it. Whether my 10,000 steps is really 8,000 steps or is actually 12,000 steps is not the point. For me the point is to have a measurable goal that I can strive to achieve every day.

This morning I asked Max if he wanted to run after school. He wondered how far we would run and I said well I thought I would run with you to accomplish your one mile per day goal. I also asked Alex if he wanted to join us. They both wanted to know where we would run. I suggested that we could run around our neighborhood until we achieved one mile. I was amused when they both said to me that running a mile around the neighborhood seemed pretty far. Then I pointed out to them that it was no farther than Max had run the day before when he went back and forth in the church yard. While both of the boys agreed to give it a try I know for sure that they are both skeptical.

As I have thought about watching Max yesterday and then comparing it to his reaction this morning, I realized that when setting goals the increment really matters. Max’s goal yesterday was to run one mile. But, even though he did not plan it this way he had broken down the goal into very small pieces. He was only running about twenty yards at a time. Additionally, each time he turned around, the next little piece of the goal was clearly in sight. When I suggested today that we run a mile around our neighborhood the hesitation wasn’t so much the distance, rather it was the fact that in running around the neighborhood the goal would not be so plainly in sight. Which streets were we going to run around? Would we run out for half a mile then run back over the same course? Where we just going to run around the block four or five times? These questions and perhaps even some that would occur to a ten year old boy that don’t occur to me I am sure had a lot to do with their reaction.

All of us set goals. Sometimes the goals are those BHAGs (Big, Hairy, Audacious, Goals) that are really tough to achieve. Sometimes they are the common kinds of goals like I am going to quit smoking, or I am going to lose weight, or I am going to exercise daily. While many of us have set such goals, we often fail. We start out by not smoking at all for a few days then we have just one cigarette, and then another and then we forget about the goal all together. We begin our new diet by cutting out sweets, or bread, or something else that we regularly eat that we have now decided we will do no more. We begin an exercise program by buying new workout clothes, new sneakers, and even joining a gym. Then a month or so later we have a gym membership that is unused, new sneakers that we are now wearing on Saturday afternoon, and exercise shorts that we decide to start sleeping in at night. I think we need to take a look at the simple and innocent way that Max approached his goal. I believe that he has reminded me of how we can all achieve success.

When you want to achieve a goal you must remember to break that down into very small and manageable pieces. The goal should have many small successes built in. The achievement of your goal must also remain clearly in sight. Finally, always remember to avail yourself of some simple measuring device.

You might think that it is pretty boring running back and forth 80 plus times to run a mile. This is not the way that we normally think. For most of us if we wanted to run a mile we might set out on a quarter mile track or decide to run eight city blocks. Perhaps on your first time out you would reach the goal. But you see Max is only ten years old. He is not allowed to go to a track and he isn’t allowed to run in the streets. So Max had to improvise and set a small goal right in his own literal “church yard.” He decided how he would measure his progress, and he started out slowly. Max reached his goal because he did not know much about how many times he would have to run back and forth. He did not measure the distance of the church yard. He did not set an allotted time. No, the key to Max’s success was that the increments were small, the feedback measurement was continuous, and he knew that in the end he was under the watchful eye of his constant coach.

If you have a goal that you want to achieve then I urge you to use Max’s method. Start slow, establish small success benchmarks, and measure progress often. Finally, if you don’t have your own coach to cheer you on, then contact me. I love to see people celebrate the achievement of their goals.