Step Three Musings


I was thinking today about what Shazza said about Step 3 baby steps, and Holly's phrase "incremental substeps."

At the same time I was thinking of this, I was driving across town to a place I had never been before (aren't you all thrilled to know that I carry you around in my car with me?! LOL)

The woman had sent me directions, which of course I didn't read until I got into the car. As I'm pulling out of my street, I glance down at them and it is totally overwhelming. She must have named every cross street I was going to pass over, every landmark, every roadsign. Lots of detail, and there were lots of turns.

I'm pretty good with directions, but this was a bit too much for me to take in. I started to feel like this would be impossible, but then I thought... Okay, I know I need to go up I-75 and take Mt. Paran Rd. From my side of town, that will take me a good 20 minutes of driving and that is ALL I need to worry about for now.

So I did that, able to concentrate on driving, not worried about what would happen when I got to my exit. When I got to Mt. Paran, I took the exit and pulled into the first gas station I saw. I read through the next set of directions and got back on the road and followed those. Then, the last few turns were in a neighborhood, so I could go really really slow and read at the same time. I got there, didn't get lost once, was right on time, and was very calm and collected.

If I had stayed focused on ALL the directions at the beginning of my trip, I would have been driving with this "fretting" going on in the back of my mind. Putting me and other drivers at risk because I would be less attentive to the moment at hand. I probably would have gotten lost, because my fretting brain would not have allowed me to stop and calmly review the last portion of the directions at that point in the drive.

And I would have been frazzled when I got there, and not as attentive to the business at hand. I would have distracted the other people I was meeting with with a tale of "getting lost."

SO! Whether we call it "baby steps" or "incremental substeps" or "turn-by-turn driving directions," the thing that my driving experience has in common with doing the food is: When we focus just on the step we are on, we can do it FULLY and we can move masterfully to the next step/turn, and when we get to the end we are not frazzled.

When we are at the beginning of step three, and already trying to get our heads around the final phases of this one step... We get distracted and frazzled, start to fret and forget to make the turn in front of us. We get lost.

There you go... Just wanted to share the musings that came up for me as I was driving to the other side of Atlanta today. :-)

Martha