Stuck? Here's your first step.

If you are embarking on something that is gigantic or complex you wouldn’t expect to start at the finish line. Yet as the wonderfully sneaky self-saboteurs’ we humans are, we have a tendency to overlook the incremental nature of progress.

So, in big change, we either expect to be far further along than we are or we stop before we even start!

Many people want to do good. Even great things within their lifetime. But the call of comfort or familiarity lures us into our well-worn neural pathways, keeping us safe and secure in the homey knowledge of what we already know.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever received, upon feeling incredibly overwhelmed and hopeless in the face of extreme poverty in Kenya was “Do one thing about one thing.”

I couldn’t comprehend how terribly hopeless the situation seemed and in asking the director on the ground there he told me that there is always hope, and to stay in the faith that one thing about one thing will always help progress.

Can you imagine if everyone today, did just one thing about what they deeply care about the most?

I remember curating this TEDx talk with Kate McIvor . The essence of it was that from little things, big things grow. She created massive impact in a country she’d never been to before, about a subject she didn’t realise she cared about, until she showed up one day and decided to do a ‘little thing’ that grew bigger.

Her advice stays with me also. Start somewhere. Anywhere.

Imagine if… we didn’t have to give up all our comfort or familiarity to walk a little way down a path of change that we deeply desire, but feel is too unreachable.

Perhaps, just do one thing about one thing. And see where it goes.