Thursday, June 4, 2015
This post was originally published in November 2013
You might be familiar with the quote by Martin Luther King Jr., which says, “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step”. It’s one of my favorite quotes, especially when making a life change.
If you’re anything like me, when you’re about to make a big change or even take a small risk in life, you want to know all the steps – everything that will happen and/or need to happen to in order to get you successfully to your end result, and also what that end result will look when you get there. However, what I’ve discovered is that hardly ever happens. You typically don’t know all the steps ahead of time. I believe this is because you need to take that first step in order for the next one to be revealed to you and only after you take steps one and two will step three be revealed. That’s why the quote says to take the first step in faith. You must believe the next steps will come to you when you are ready, and that is typically when they do present themselves – when you are ready.
If you saw all the steps prior to initiating making the change or taking the risk, you’d never do it. For example, step nine might scare you to death and that might stop you from ever beginning. However, by the time you go through steps one through eight, step nine seems like a piece of cake. That’s because you’re ready for it. Steps one-eight have prepared you for step nine. It’s a process and a journey; one where you’ll learn what’s required to reach the end goal as you move through each stage. I believe that is why we typically don’t know all the steps we must take ahead of time. We know them one step at a time. They are revealed to us in the right order and right time. In my experience, it’s the only way to successfully complete the journey. Knowing too much ahead of time might deter you from starting. Often it’s the first step that’s the most difficult to take which is why we need to take that step in faith. Have faith that once you start, the next steps will reveal themselves to you in the right order and you will know exactly what to do when it’s time.
That’s how you begin to make changes, big or small, in your life – one step at a time, acting in faith. As you do that, eventually you will look behind you and see each step of the path you traveled. Typically, that is the only time you see all the steps in the process – when you look back. And to get there, you must simply start with the first step knowing that the rest will be revealed at the best time, when you are ready.
