Most of what we do naturally when we’re young is a good lesson for our later years, but for some reason we forget those early lessons and begin to believe that there’s a better way.

Any parent will tell you that their baby didn’t go from being held and rocked straight to running, although sometimes the time seems to fly so quickly that it seems that way. All of us, the young, the old and those of us in the middle, transitioned from lying helpless to rolling, creeping, crawling, reaching, a single step, then a few steps, and eventually a walk or a run.

Once we knew how to run however, we just never looked back to see how we got to this beautiful place. Instead we look far ahead to the distant future and hope to simply take a giant leap to that dreamy place where life is perfectly aligned — and when we don’t arrive immediately, we lose hope and give up.

Sometimes I wonder where our determination goes when we hit our teens or early adult years. So many of us want to see immediate results or we just give up. Instead we need to revisit those early lessons and learn from them. All of the hype of today’s world, fast food, fast cars, fast cash and fast love… They’re just that — hype. We’re programmed to think that if it’s not immediate, it’s not a good deal, so we don’t even try.

Take Tatiana for example, a 30-year old client of mine who called to interview me to be her coach. I always recommend at least 3-months of coaching because real change, permanent change, takes time. Tatiana told me that she’d try 6-weeks and hopefully we’d be complete in finding her inner peace. Instead of telling her that I could help her, I asked her what she’d say if I told her that there was no way she would find true inner peace in six short weeks. She sighed, said she’d be disappointed and then hesitated. I told her that I wasn’t going to promise inner peace in 6-weeks and that she was welcome to interview other coaches if she preferred.

I think she appreciated my honesty, although I know she was hoping to find that fast and easy road to inner peace. Right now we’re working together on week 9 — she’s still calling, and yesterday I received an email from her that said thank you.

So what’s your first step? Accepting that real change happens in baby steps. When you accept that you’ll have to take a few small steps to get to the goals that are near and dear to your heart, you’re already on your way.

Soon you’ll be looking back on the small, simple, easy steps that you’ve taken — and the future that you anticipated will be in the palm of your hands. I promise.

Your biggest step is stepping back to the lessons you learned when you were less than 2-years old. Put simply, tiny steps work and they keep you from falling on your face. So take your first small step today and accept that there’s not a quick fix to those things that mean the most to you.

Julie Fisher
http://womenbalanceworkandhome.abundanceforwomen.com or visit http://www.abundanceforwomen.com for more information.