Three Steps, No Fail
In a book by Jana Stanfield, Making and Selling Your Own CDs and Cassettes, in Chapter 6 “Maintaining Your Sanity While Making and Marketing Your Albums," Jana states that the biggest challenge isn't raising money or finding a recording studio. The biggest challenge is to keep maintaining a positive attitude to keep you going when you want to give up. She talks about how many commitments people already have.
Jana talks about the “3 Steps No Fail” as a way to build a bridge from where you are to where you want to go. It shows one a way to prevent yourself from getting overwhelmed by ideas and thoughts. If you get overwhelmed, you may make little or no progress toward your dreams. Jana was overwhelmed and making little progress on what she really wanted to do with her life. Her Uncle Clyde (Rev. Clyde Stanfield), a Methodist minister, taught her this process at a time when Jana needed it. During a lunch they were having together, he said:
What we need to do is build a bridge. You don't have to be able to see the other side yet. You just need to be able to see the first three steps.
In the book Jana goes on to say that the great thing about “Three Steps, No Fail” is that you don't have to know exactly where you're going to for its magic to work.
Reverend Stanfield then gave Jana an assignment for the next week:
Make a list of three things you can do in a week that will take you closer to where you want to be. There's only one guideline for choosing the steps. Each one has to be something you couldn't possibly fail at in a week’s time. Each step will begin building not only a bridge but a feeling of confidence. Soon you'll be able to believe you have the ability to make your dreams come true, if you just take it one easy step at a time.
This was Jana's first list:
- Buy a book about making it in the music business.
- Call a voice teacher to see how much lessons would cost.
- Order cable television so I can watch “The Nashville Network.”
The list that she had wasn't complicated or hard to do. She says the one thing that was holding her back was hopelessness. None of those things were going to make her dream come true, especially not right away. What it did do was end the stagnation.
Many of us feel stagnant about our recovery. We feel as if we are stuck and just can't seem to get moving. When we look at everything that needs to happen for us to be well or to be “perfect,” then we often feel hopeless, and become stuck and unable to move on.
If you stay stuck, you don't move on. If you can start to accomplish something, even if it is the tiniest little thing, you are starting to move forward. With each small success comes a bit of confidence, then another bit of confidence.
Then after those three steps are done, there can (and will) be three more steps, and then three more steps. Excitement starts to build that things are possible instead of looking totally impossible, as they were yesterday. Nothing on the list is ever so big that it can't be done in a week.
Maybe there might be a goal to read a few pages a week or you might follow up on something else. What is important is that each step is small enough that you can be successful at accomplishing it. Enter this contest or have that experience.
Take a look at Jana's book and find out more about her experience. It talks about how she kept working on 3 steps a week for a year, and ended up starting to live her dream.
Jana is no longer in the same place. She decided to pursue something different. Where she went wasn't where she thought it would be, and she moved on to be something else. Take three steps a week toward recovery.
Don't make the steps too big.
One example might be, to call someone to ask if they could take care of your cat, if you need to go in the hospital or go away for a visit. Then add that phone number to a plan.
Another example might be, to go to the library and find out how to do research on a new craft or hobby to try.
A third example might be to pick up seven or three or twenty pieces of trash, and put them in the trash can.
The goal is not to write out the whole crisis plan, or to go out and buy all of the materials you might need for a hobby. The goal isn't even to clean an entire room. It is just to make progress at a rate that makes it impossible to fail.
Three steps, no fail.
Three steps of things to do in a week that will help you move on more toward where you might want to be. No more than three. Nothing so big that you might possibly fail to accomplish it.