Baby Steps

The story is told of a woman who bought a parrot to keep her company, but she returned it the next day.

“This bird doesn't talk,” she told the owner.

”Does he have a mirror in his cage?” he asked. “Parrots love mirrors. They see their reflection and start conversation.

The woman bought a mirror and left. The next day she returned; the bird still wasn't talking.

"How about a ladder? Parrots love ladders. A happy parrot is a talkative parrot.”

The woman bought a ladder and left. But the next day, she was back.

“Does your parrot have a swing? No? Well, that’s the problem. Once he starts swinging, he’ll talk up a storm”.

The woman reluctantly bought a swing and left.

When she walked into the store the next day, her countenance had changed.

“The parrot died,” she said.

The pet store owner was shocked.

“I’m so sorry. Tell me, did he ever say anything?” he asked.

“Yes, right before it died,” the woman replied.

“In a weak voice, it asked me, ‘Don’t they sell any food at that pet store?’"

Many a times I wonder if the big dreams in our lives matter as much as the smaller once. We hear people saying, ‘Dream Big’, because if you dream big, then you will be able to go larger distances. But somehow this has never motivated me. People are full of ideas; some people have brilliant ones to say – but most people fail not because of lack of ideas but because of the lack of proper ways to execute the same. While dreaming may be a pastime, executing the dream ought to be a profession. So many people’s ideas and dreams have failed because they had no knowledge of how to execute them. Another reason of failure in my opinion is that people are too concentrated to think BIG. In their quest to achieve larger targets, they forget the smaller ones.

Same thing happens when we are faced with a problem. We straight away jump to conclusion and think of the worst. I remember when my son was admitted to the hospital at a very early age, for pneumonia, and we were glued on to the internet trying to find out the cure and remedy, which was throwing up results which we didn’t even want to read because it went on to state that the condition could end up being fatal– so tensed as we were, we approached the senior doctor who was treating my child and asked him about what we had learnt from the internet. He smiled a little and asked ‘You say you are a Captain of a ship, right? On my nod he went on, ‘So if I look up on the internet and try to know about how to navigate a ship, would I be able to understand anything? Don’t think too much into the future and worry about what may happen, think of what is happening now and try to steady your ship, and being a doctor I am doing just that, so don’t worry about the worst.”

I leant many lessons that day. Whether it is our dreams or the horrors of life, we delve deep into the future without spending time in the present. We forget the basics and right-hand thumb rules. We neglect the smaller things in our pursuit to achieve larger dreams. We get scared by what may happen and let go of our efforts. Most importantly, we think of the benefits before putting in adequate amount of work. We expect the parrot to talk but forget to feed him.

Recently there was an uproar on Face book where the founder Mark Zuckerberg made a statement which said something like “You should be worried more about the dead squirrel on your doorstep than children dying in Africa.”

Face book went berserk with this. Lots of reactions to this message specially most of them derived that Mark had no empathy and it also went on to be termed as ‘racist’ and what not. I read this statement a couple of times and tried to put myself in Mark’s shoes (expensive shoes!) and thought of it in another way. Possibly Mark may have meant it to be like this. It could have been that he was trying to say that it is our immediate surrounding which is more important than circumstances on which we have no control. He may have said this because so many of us concentrate on things which are not concerned to us in any way while we neglect those on which we have full control. So, while it is good to think big and think outside your lines and country and state and outside of your purview of time and space, it is also true that you should first study the dangers of ‘thinking big’ and first get your immediate basics right.

The challenge for a lot of us is that when we go about our lives, we interact with so many “big” things and we forget or don’t even know how they originally started. It’s difficult to understand how the evolutionary process of products and brands contributes and is vital to what they are today. We have big aspirations and want to get there fast. My idea is that you are most likely to succeed if you make it smaller. One of my most interesting realization from this thinking and from seeing many examples is that we probably should think and execute on a smaller level. If we do this, we’re more likely to succeed. Most of us jump into the context of trying to change the world right away.

While taking a people health survey, I was asked to fill in a form and had to list down my short term and long-term goals. I gave it a lot of thought and to my surprise my short-term goals were pretty much more than the long-term ones and I also realized while writing these down that the long-term goals were linked to the short-term ones in such a way that they would only be fulfilled on achieving the goals in the short term.

I’ve heard from a lot of entrepreneurs who set goals involving health, wealth and self-improvement. They’re frustrated. Some have already abandoned them while others are discouraged and on the brink. This is a huge problem because every time we fail, we trust ourselves a little bit less. Generally, we all have a desire for success. Whether it’s success in losing weight, learning a new skill or growing a business, the fundamentals remain the same. There’s a solution, a simple yet powerful way of looking at your growth through a different lens. The one primary motivator that leads us to persevere is baby steps. Ones you start with these baby steps, you tend to focus on minor details that affect the consequence. You tend to take a process approach. You tend to take it one at a time. You tend to celebrate the smaller successes. You tend to have clear understanding of what is going wrong or what’s working brilliantly. You tend to buy ‘food’ instead of the ‘swing’ or ‘ladder’ for the parrot. You realize that happiness is linked to achieving the basics first and not the thought of result.

And don’t forget – a parrot only talks when he is fed!