The advice was the same I’d given myself many a time and he, my client, didn’t like it any more than I did.  Still it was the only advice I could give: “success comes one step at a time.”

“One step at a time.”

So often we want to go from “here” to success in one step.  “Success would be easy,” goes the thought, “if I could just start from a different place.”

The problem is… the only place you can start from… is right where you’re standing.

Many people waste years stuck, wishing that they were starting from somewhere else and wondering how to get to that other place before starting on their goal.  We wish we could start from a different place because we can’t clearly figure out how to get from “here” to “there.”

The problem is, that when you’ve set your goals out where they should be – somewhere between reality and fantasy – we CAN’T see how to get from “here” to “there”.

Layer on a goal that really matters to our soul and we become afraid to move because of what failure would mean.

The combination of fogginess and fear keep people stuck, sometimes for a lifetime.

Often, the largest pain you feel will be the realization that you have to start from “here” – where ever you are – to get to “there.”  And… that in order to get from here to there… you’ll probably have to do what you least *want* to do: confront the “here” that you wish you weren’t starting from.

The woman who realizes that she won’t be able to grow until she leaves the marriage she’s in, stuck… trying to figure out a way to grow without leaving the marriage, not wanting to start from where she is: unhappily married and not wanting to get a divorce (the thing that she fear’s most).  “I don’t want to be here,” she says, “I just can’t figure out how to get to ‘there.’”

The man who realizes he needs to lose over 50 pounds; that his weight is affecting his health… and wishes that he had time in the day to exercise (not wanting to start from where he is: where other things have taken priority over his health) or wishing he had a professional chef to cook healthy meals (again, wishing he could start from somewhere else) and not wanting to go to the gym where he’s afraid he’d look like a fool (fear).  “I know I’m killing myself,” the man says to himself in the mirror, “but I just don’t see a way to change.”

The unfortunate answer for how you’ll achieve any of life’s profound goals is: One step at a time.  Starting where you’re at.  And figuring it out as you go.

That “unfortunate” answer is also one of your greatest “secrets”…

(Read on for “The Secret of One Step at a Time” here!)