In Praise Of The Little Steps

"Practice yourself in little things; and thence proceed to greater." ~ Epictetus

 Little things really do mean a lot.   Working on little things add up to bigger things.  We start out crawling and learn to walk, run and jump.  Step by step it all adds up.  Along the way we have to allow ourselves the option of failure.  It's important in order to get the bigger things.   Where my frustration, negativity and anger sometimes lives is in the fact I want to be good at something or successful at something the minute the idea hits me.  I have often not wanted to attempted something new because I just knew it would a) be way to much work to master, b) afraid of failing or c) another easier idea comes into place.  


Now I'm all for easy.  I really am.  I'm sort of a lazy person at my core.  I have over the years gathered a lot of value by being lazy.  It is okay for me to like things to be easy. As Tom Hank's character said In A League Of Their Own, "if it was easy everyone would do it.  It's the hard that makes it great."   So, how do I resolve my need for things being easy and my desire to proceed to the great things in life?  Enter my creative process.


I use my creative process to stream line my big ideas.  Thus reducing or eliminating the frustration, negativity and fear in my big ideas.  Using my creative process to assess what it is I want to do or create breaks down the idea into small steps.  Those steps add on each other (sometimes get tweaked along the way) until I've each the end product.  It is pretty sweet for a self proclaimed lazy person.


This weeks project is my testimony to this creative process.  It is my raised bed garden!  I love fresh vegetables.  Gardening is way too much work for me, yet I really wanted to grow more of my own food.  I turned this into an art project.   Yes, getting this garden up and running was a lot of work, but it was fun.  I have all sort of creative touches and I allowed myself to play and design.   When it got challenging for me, like lugging pounds and pounds of dirt in the pouring rain, I looked for the opportunity to create and have fun.

I'm proud of the results.  I currently have peas, beets, carrots, radishes, parsley, onions and chives growing.  I  built pea trellis, bore holes for a soaker hose, made netted covers and I have an array of helpers from frogs, gnomes, angels and pinwheels.  Given my past luck with plants, I have no idea if any of this will grow.  I'll keep you posted.  Bottom line here, I challenged myself to do something new.  It feels like a small step towards the greater.
What would be your small step towards the greater?


Until next week...create to feel great!


23 projects complete! 29 to go!