You can apply this to many parts of your life.

I am the kind of person that becomes paralyzed when I am overwhelmed. While in college whenever finals season came around, I’d suddenly have the overwhelming need to hibernate. Stress is up at work? While yes I did just spend 4 hours playing candy crush.

Often times I get so caught up in looking at the big picture that by default I put myself in paralysis.

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Back to my book writing.

I’ve always wanted to write a book, but nothing has ever really called my name. However, yesterday lightening struck and I finally got an idea that I could run with. Instantly I turned to google and looked up “how to write a novel.” I have to write an outline? No thanks. I wanted to jump right in and start my book.

A few more clicks and I landed on the part that paralyzed me. Get this, most novels are 50–80k words. I just had 700 words. How in the world was I going to get to 50k?!

Instantly my mind began to race. I made calculations for how long it would take if I wrote x amount of words. Months. It would take months. I thought to myself “there is no way I can write 50k words.” I stared at the ceiling while I accepted defeat.

Suddenly I thought of something. Writing this book is like running a marathon. Yeah 26.2 miles is a lot but if I decided I wanted to run a marathon I wouldn’t just get up and run 26.2 miles. I would have to train. Step by step I’d run my first mile. Then my next and so on.

The same concept applied to my book. I wasn’t going to sit down and write 50k words in one sitting. I would do it word by word and slowly build my novel.

This concept can be applied to so many aspects of our life. Especially in moments when we get overwhelmed by the big picture. It helps to look at each of the small steps it takes.

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