How do you walk 2650 miles?
How do you walk 2,650 miles? One step at a time. My husband and I have been looking at our wall map of the entire United States West Coast for a year. It shows all of the Pacific Crest Trail, from Southern California to Northern Washington. Looking at our project this way, it seems overwhelming and nigh impossible.
But we also have a stack of walking maps. That breaks the project into 11 more manageable chunks. Each of the map books contains 14-18 map spreads. Each map spread takes about one day to walk. So now the entire project “just” consists of walking the first day, and then the next, and then the next.
Your whole life works like this. It’s fine to have goals—even ambitious ones. But if all you have is the goal, it’s like only having the wall map. And then it all becomes too overwhelming, and you might never get started. The secret is to break the task into manageable pieces. Some projects can be broken down into small parts right from the beginning—like our hike. With other goals, you might not know the whole path when you start. But if you can just figure out what the first step should be, then you can get going. And the first step leads to the next. And the next.
P.S. If you want to follow along, we keep a blog at www.vesterli.dk/en